This paper is an attempt to account for the empirical results of Krueger and Summers (1988) which suggest significant inter-industry wage differentials. We derive a dynamic efficiency wage model where firms use their wage policy to reduce turnover costs. Industry wages are shown to be a positive...

This paper derives the effect of state-mandated redundancy payments on a firm's firing decision as a function of the characteristics of its stochastic environment. We both summarize the main determinants of the effectiveness of firing costs using numerical simulations and point out some...

This paper estimates the probability distribution of relative county unemployment in Britain for the years 1981-1995. We find that the distribution is unimodal in all years, with a falling variance between 1989 and 1994. We use bootstrap methods to determine critical values for the two tails of...

This paper looks at changes in the distribution of unemployment across education groups in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US. The rate of unemployment among the less educated is higher than among those with more education in all the countries, with the exception of Italy....