In this paper, we document that households’ consumption expenditures depend on their expected earnings - even after controlling for realized earnings and wealth. To explain this evidence, we develop and structurally estimate a standard-incomplete markets model in which rational households...

This paper presents a theory explaining the labor market matching process through microeconomic incentives. There are heterogeneous variations in the characteristics of workers and jobs, and firms face adjustment costs in responding to these variations. Matches and separations are described...

The generosity of the Unemployment Insurance system (UI) plays a central role for the job search behavior of unemployed individuals. Standard search theory predicts that an increase in UI benefit generosity, either in terms of benefit duration or entitlement, has a negative impact on the job...

Standard job search theory assumes that unemployed individuals have perfect information about the effect of their search effort on the job offer arrival rate. In this paper, we present an alternative model which assumes instead that each individual has a subjective belief about the impact of his...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between social networks and the job search behavior of unemployed individuals. It is believed that networks convey useful information in the job search process such that individuals with larger networks should experience a higher productivity of informal...

This paper shows that the matching function and the Beveridge curve in the United States exhibit strong nonlinearities over the business cycle. These patterns can be replicated by enhancing a search and matching model with idiosyncratic productivity shocks for new contacts. Large negative...

This paper shows analytically and numerically that there are two ways of generating an observationally equivalent comovement between matches, unemployment, and vacancies in dynamic labor market models: either by assuming a standard Cobb-Douglas contact function or by combining a degenerate...

Unemployment insurance agencies may combat moral hazard by punishing refusals to apply to assigned vacancies. However, the possibility to report sick creates an additional moral hazard, since during sickness spells, minimum requirements on search behavior do not apply. This reduces the ex ante...

In some countries including Germany unemployed workers can increase their income during job search by taking up "marginal employment" up to a threshold without any deduction from their benefits. Marginal employment can be considered as a wage subsidy as it lowers labour costs for firms owing to...

This paper analyzes the impact of job creation schemes (JCS) on job search outcomes in the context of the turbulent East German labor market in the aftermath of the German reunification. High job destruction characterized the economic environment. JCS were heavily used in order to cushion this...