We investigate the importance of employer preferences in explaining Sticky Floors, the pattern that women are, compared to men, less likely to start to climb the job ladder. To this end we perform a randomised field experiment in the Belgian labour market and test whether hiring discrimination...

Our paper investigates the relative effects of wage subsidies and further vocational training on the subsequent employment prospects of previously unemployed program participants. First, we outline a theoretical approach based on a firm's hiring decision. For the relative effectiveness of both...

Many countries have policies aimed at creating jobs in depressed areas with high unemployment rates. In standard spatial equilibrium models with perfectly competitive labor and land markets, local job creation efforts are distortionary. We develop a stylized model of frictional local labor...

The paper explores the consequences of macroeconomic policy for labor market outcomes in the presence of frictions. It shows how policy may be useful in overriding frictions, as well as how it might generate adverse outcomes. The analysis looks at the main tools of macroeconomic policy and...

Many OECD countries invest heavily in labour-market programs to prolong careers. Although active labour-market programs designed for this purpose have frequently been evaluated, less is known about the employment impact of more passive regimes that make labour-market participation later in life...

This paper builds a macroeconomic model of equilibrium unemployment in which firms persistently face difficulties in selling their production and this affects their decisions to create jobs. Due to search-frictions on the product market, equilibrium unemployment is a U-shaped function of the...

This paper presents and tests a model that may partially explain why the demand for labor adapts to the availability of labor. In particular, I postulate that the cost of hiring declines with increases in the amount of labor available. The cost of hiring would decrease with a growth in available...

The potentially adverse labor market effects of severance pay mandates are a continuing source of policy concern. In a seminal study, Lazear (1990) found that contract avoidance of severance pay firing costs was theoretically simple - a bonding scheme would do - but that empirically the labor...