The distribution of unemployment duration in our equilibrium matching model with spell-dependent unemployment benefits displays a time-varying exit rate. Building on Semi-Markov processes, we translate these exit rates into an expression for the aggregate unemployment rate. Structural estimation...

We develop and estimate a non-stationary job search model to evaluate a scheme that monitors job search effort and sanctions insured unemployed whose effort is deemed insufficient. The model reveals that such schemes provide incentives to the unemployed to front-load search effort prior to...

This paper is the first to analyze the costs of job loss in Russia, using unique new data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the years 2003-2008, including a special supplement on displacement that was initiated by us. We employ fixed effects regression models and propensity...

This paper analyzes the costs of job loss in China, using unique new data from the Rural-to-Urban Migration in China (RUMIC) data set for the year 2009. We investigate conventional labor market outcomes upon displacement like the length of unemployment spells, hours worked and monthly earnings....

We examine the pattern and costs of worker displacement in one of the more reform-oriented transition countries, Estonia, as the transition process develops. Using Labour Force Survey data covering the period 1989-1999, we show that after the initial shock, displacement rates in Estonia have...

We examine the effects of economic transition on the pattern and costs of worker displacement in Ukraine, using the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) for the years 1992 to 2002. Displacement rates in the Ukrainian labor market average between 3.4 and 4.8 percent of employment,...

We introduce different skill groups and production functions into the Burdett-Mortensen equilibrium search model. Supermodularity in the production process leads to a positive intrafirm wage correlation between skill groups. Theory implies that increasing returns to scale can lead to a unimodal...

In this paper we investigate the recent fall in unemployment, and the rise in part-time work, labour market participation, inequality and welfare in Germany. Unemployment fell because the Hartz IV reform induced a large fraction of the long-term unemployed to deregister as jobseekers and appear...

This paper offers a first comprehensive study of the relationship between labor market institutions and policies and labor market performance in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which in the last two decades experienced radical economic and institutional transformations. Based...

To which extent does an increase in operating effectiveness of public employment agencies on the one hand and a reduction of unemployment benefits on the other reduce unemployment? Using the recent labour market reform in Germany as background we find that the role of unemployment benefit...