In the past decades several features of U.S. unemployment dynamics have been investigated empirically. The original focus of research was on the duration of unemployment. In later studies the cyclicality of incidence and duration, compositional effects and duration dependence of the exit rate...

This paper first documents the increase in the time lag with which labor input reacts to output fluctuations ("the labor adjustment lag") that is visible in US data since the mid-1980s. We show that a lagged labor adjustment response is optimal in a setting where there is uncertainty about the...

In this paper we derive a structural measure for labor market density based on the Ellison and Glasear (1997) "Index for industry concentration". This labor market density measure serves as a proxy for the number of workers that can reach a certain work area within a reasonal amount of traveling...

The negative relationship between the unemployment rate and the job openings rate, known as the Beveridge curve, has been relatively stable in the U.S. over the last decade. Since the summer of 2009, in spite of firms reporting more job openings, the U.S. unemployment rate has not declined in...

We present an equilibrium-search model with heterogenous workers who search for a job in one of two sectors and who lose part of their skills during unemployment. We show that an import tariff increase the wage and the employment prospects in the protected sector. This results in a labor market...

This paper shows that we can normalize job and worker characteristics so that, without frictions,

We simulate the effect of the introduction of premium differentiation (experience rating) in the Dutch Unemployment Insurance system on the demand for labor for a variety of sectors in the Dutch economy. For the simulations we use the Bentolila and Bertola (1990) framework as a point of...

The influence of industrial structure, more specifically of business ownership, is investigated on the level of unemployment in Japan. The question is to what extent business ownership, i.e., entrepreneurship, can reduce the level of unemployment. It will be concluded that Japan is hardly an...

The main goal of this study is two-fold: (1) to provide a general overview of the contributions to the literature on the informal sector, with a special focus on the Public Choice approach; and (2) to compare these contributions across two institutionally different types of countries: developed...

This paper discusses various ways to organise these consultations, so that a compromise agreement is reached on the solution of the (re)distribution problem. These institutionalised structures of consultation are referred to as 'matching zones' here. Practical experiences, mainly from the...