We develop a two-sector endogenous growth model with a dual labour market resulting from the presence of an effort extraction function in one sector. Effort of workers can be influenced by pay and monitoring. This results in an endogenous non-competitive wage differential between sectors and a...

This discussion paper has resulted in an article in 'Economica', 2002, 69(273), 21-40.

Most ‘wage curve’ studies treat local labour markets as independent ‘islands’ in the national economy. However, when a local labour market is in close proximity of other labour markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward...

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...

We analyze a general search model with on-the-job search and sorting of heterogeneous workers into heterogeneous jobs. This model yields a simple relationshipbetween (i) the unemployment rate, (ii) the value of non-market time, and (iii) themax-mean wage differential. The latter measure of wage...

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...

We provide a set of comparable estimates for the rates of inflow to and outflow fromunemployment using publicly available data for fourteen OECD economies. We thendevise a method to decompose changes in unemployment into contributions accountedfor by changes in inflow and outflow rates for cases...

Availability of (partial) insurance mechanisms is arguably important for the decision of (riskaverse) workers to start up a risky entrepreneurial venture. Using administrative data from Denmark, where unemployment insurance (UI) is available to both wage earners and self-employed on a voluntary...

We study a unique sample of 1,547 nascent entrepreneurs in Germany and analyze which factors are associated with their self-reported satisfaction regarding their start-up. Our study identifies a new facet of procedural utility and offers new insights about the motivations and goals of nascent...