Randomized experiments provide policy relevant treatment effects if there are no spillovers between participants and nonparticipants. We show that this assumption is violated for a Danish activation program for unemployed workers. Using a difference-in-difference model we show that the...

An advantage of collective wage agreement is that search and business-stealing externalities can be internalized. A disadvantage is that it takes more time before an optimal allocation is reached because more productive firms (for a particular worker type) can no longer signal this by posting...

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

Do people move to cities because of marriage market considerations? In cities singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. Singles are therefore prepared to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the marriage market benefits disappear while the housing...

When agents have present bias, they discount more between now and the next period than between period t ( 1) and t + 1. How fast the future discount rate (evaluated today) decays is an empirical question. We show that the discount function can be non-parametrically identified with contracts that...

When workers send applications to vacancies they create a network. Frictions arise if workers do not know where other workers apply to (this affects network creation) and firms do not know which candidates other firms consider (this affects network clearing). We show that those frictions and the...

This paper describes a search model with a continuum of workerand job types, transferable utility and an increasing returns to scale contact technology. We apply a second order Taylor expansion to characterize the equilibrium. One third of theincreasing returns in contacts are absorbed by firms...

In a market in which sellers compete for heterogeneous buyers by posting mechanisms, we analyze how the properties of the meeting technology affect the allocation of buyers to sellers. We show that a separate submarket for each type of buyer is the efficient outcome if and only if meetings are...

This paper develops a model in which market structure is determined endogenously by the choice of intermediation mode. We consider two representative business modes of intermediation that are widely used in real-life markets: one is a middleman mode by which an intermediary holds inventories...

We consider a labor market with search frictions in which workers make multiple applications and firms can post and commit to general mechanisms that may be conditioned both on the number of applications received and on the number of offers received by its candidate. When the contract space...