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...

Despite the importance of business creation for the economy and a relevant share of new firms being started out of unemployment, most research has focused on analyzing the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) policies on re-employment outcomes that ignore self-employment. In this paper, we...

We ask whether sectoral shocks and the subsequent labor reallocation are responsible for unemployment within selected European economies. Our measure of sectoral labor reallocation is adjusted for aggregate influences and the remaining variation is linked to unemployment in country specific...

Using a competing-risk framework of exiting unemployment to jobs in a local or a distant labor market area, this paper investigates whether unemployed individuals in West Germany choose search strategies that favor migrating out of declining regions. Moreover, the paper investigates how such...

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurship (as measured by fluctuations in the business ownership rate) and unemployment in Japan for the period between 1972 and 2002. We find that, although Japan’s unemployment rate has been influenced by specific exogenous shocks, the...

This paper describes a search model with a continuum of worker and job types, free entry and transferable utility. We apply a second-order Taylor expansion to characterize the equilibrium, derive the "cost of search" and show that it is decreasing in the substitutability of worker types. This...

In the economic policy debate, income tax progressivity is mostly seen as a means of redistribution. The more progressive the tax, the more redistribution from the rich to the poor. However, high tax progressivity also means high marginal tax rates for those with a high income, which leads to...

This paper analyses data from a large-scale field experiment where unemployed workers were randomly assigned to an additional caseworker meeting with the purpose to impose a broader job search strategy. We find that the meeting significantly increases job finding and is cost effective. However,...

Changing the income tax progressivity in labour markets with collective wage bargaining generates a trade-off. On the one hand, higher progressivity distorts individual labour supply decisions at the hours-of-work margin, on the other hand, it reduces unemployment by exerting downward pressure...

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....