Standard search models are unreliable for structural inference of the underlying sources of wage inequality because they are inconsistent with observed residual wage dispersion. We address this issue by modeling skill development and duration dependence in unemployment benefits in a random on...

This paper provides a simple model which explains the choice between permanent and temporary jobs. This model, which incorporates important features of actual employment protection legislations neglected by the economic literature so far, reproduces the main stylized facts about entries into...

This paper analyzes the consequences of the taxation of temporary jobs recently introduced in several European countries to induce firms to create more open-ended contracts and to increase the duration of jobs. The estimation of a job search and matching model on French data shows that the...

We estimate the changes in US male labor market risk over the last three decades in a model of endogenous labor supply and job mobility. Across education groups permanent shocks to productivity have become more dispersed. Moreover, heterogeneity in pay across offered jobs has increased for...

Labor market frictions are not the only possible factor responsible for high unemployment. Credit market imperfections, driven by microeconomic frictions and impacted upon by macroeconomic factors such as monetary policy, could also be to blame. This paper shows that labor and credit market...

In search of a macroeconomic theory of wage determination, the agnostic reader should be puzzled by the apparent contradiction between two influential theories. On one hand, in the standard search-matching theory with wage bargaining, hiring cost and constant returns of labor, the bargaining...

This paper provides a model of "social hysteresis" whereby long, deep recessions demotivate workers and thereby lead them to change their work ethic. In switching from a pro-work to an anti-work identity, their incentives to seek and retain work fall and consequently their employment chances...

This paper studies the effects of the introduction of unemployment compensation (UC) in countries characterized by pervasive informality. We provide a simple framework to analyze the impact of UC on the allocation of workers between formal and informal activities, as well as the allocation of...

When employers face a trade-off between growing large and paying low wages - that is, when they have monopsony power - some productive employers will decide to acquire fewer customers, forgo sales, and remain small. These decisions have adverse consequences for aggregate labor productivity....

We consider a dual labor market with a frictional formal sector and a competitive informal sector. We show that the size of the informal sector is generally too large compared to the optimal allocation of the workers. It follows that our results give a rationale to informality-reducing policies....