This paper delves into the recent events that led to the formation of the housing bubble in Spain and the resulting structural change that is arguably needed to put the economy back into the right track. For this purpose we calibrate a model with different equilibria descriptive of the labor...

In this paper, we use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement and sickness/disability benefits. The reform, becoming effective on January 1st 2004, required the...

We document the consequences of losing a job across countries using a harmonized research design. Workers in Denmark and Sweden experience the lowest earnings declines following job displacement, while workers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal experience losses three times as high. French and...

We aim to identify winners and losers of a sudden inflow of low-skilled immigrants using a general equilibrium search and matching model in which employees, either native or nonnative, are heterogeneous with respect to their skill level and produce different types of goods. We estimate the...

An empirical analysis of labor market transitions for spouses in couples is implemented. Object of study are transitions between the states of nonparticipation, unemployed search, and employment. Motivated by a model of household search, the emphasis is on spousal variables and interactions....

The Japanese lost decade has become an intriguing puzzle for both economists and policy-makers alike, as the unemployment rate climbed to unprecedented levels and the growth rate of productivity decreased considerably. More recent times seem to present with a more optimistic outlook, but this is...

This paper analyses the labour markets of Spain and Ireland, which have experienced a severe downturn in the recent global crisis as reflected by the largest increases in their unemployment rates among other developed economies. Spain and Ireland might seem at first to feature very different...

We analyse the distribution and the flows between different types of employment (self-employment, temporary, and permanent), unemployment, education, and other types of inactivity, with particular focus on the duration of the school-to-work transition (STWT). The aim is to assess the impact of...

We propose a general methodology to measure labour market dynamics, inspired by the search and matching framework, based on the estimate of the transition rates between labour market states. We show how to estimate instantaneous transition rates starting from discrete time observations provided...

We present new evidence on how employment growth varies across firm types (size, productivity, and wage) and over the business cycle using Danish data covering almost 30 years. We decompose net employment growth into two recruitment margins: net hirings from/to employment (poaching) and net...