This paper examines the causes of observed increase in the duration of unemployment relative to the unemployment rate in the Post-War United States. First we analyze if changes in the demographic composition of U.S. labor force can explain the change in the structure of unemployment duration. In...

This paper examines how policies affect people's welfare during business cycles when markets are incomplete. In particular, we analyze cyclical policies such as cyclical taxation and cyclical unemployment insurance. Those policies play two roles: smoothing the income (and consumption) process...

The question of how technological change affects labor markets is a classical one in macroeconomics. A standard framework for addressing this question is the matching model with vintage capital and exogenous technical progress. Within this framework, it has been argued that the impact of...

How does the size of the transfer system evolve in the short and in the long run? We construct a model where taxation is distortionary because it discourages capital accumulation. We compare the Ramsey allocation with the time-consistent allocation. The latter can be interpreted as the outcome...