We combine micro and macro unemployment duration data to study the effects of the business cycle on the outflow from unemployment. We allow the cycle to affect individual exit probabilities of unemployed workers as well as the composition of the total inflow into unemployment. We estimate the...

We investigate experimentally the economic effects of wage taxation to finance unemployment benefits for a closed economy and an international economy. The main findings are the following. (i) There is clear evidence of a vicious circle in the dynamic interaction between the wage tax and...

This paper focuses on the relation between worker's productivity and retirement decision. Assuming that productivity follows geometric Brownian motion with drift, there exists such a level of productivity for which it is optimal to retire. The worker buys an insurance, which gives a constant...

We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increase job search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influences the arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workers send out....

Using data from the Current Population Survey from 1980 through 2010 we examine what drives variation and cyclicality in the growth rate of real wages over time. We employ a novel decomposition technique that allows us to divide the time series for median weekly earnings growth into the part...

We provide a set of comparable estimates for the rates of inflow to and outflow from unemployment using publicly available data for fourteen OECD economies. We then devise a method to decompose changes in unemployment into contributions accounted for by changes in inflow and outflow rates for...

When workers send applications to vacancies they create a network. Frictions arise because workers typically do not know where other workers apply to and firms do not know which candidates other firms consider. The first coordination friction affects network formation, while the second...

Knowledge triggers regional growth. Evidence suggests that skilled labour force concentrates in islands of innovation, determining an advantage for innovative regions and a challenge for lagging ones. We address the role of knowledge in shaping effective markets for skilled labour. Estimates are...

(Spatial) panel data are routinely modelled in discrete time (DT). However, there are compelling arguments for continuous time (CT) modelling of (spatial) panel data. Particularly, most social processes evolve in CT, so that statistical analysis in DT is an oversimplification, gives an...

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...