To finance unemployment insurance, states raise payroll tax rates on employers who engage in layoffs. Tax rates are, therefore, highest for firms after downturns, potentially hampering labor-market recovery. Using full-population, administrative records from Florida, I estimate the effect of...

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...

We show that, contrary to widespread belief, low-pay workers do not generally prefer that the minimum wage rate be increased until the labor demand is unitary elastic. Rather, there exists a critical value of elasticity of labor demand so that increases in the minimum wage rate make low-pay...

We develop a standard search-matching model in which mobility costs are so high that it is too costly for workers to relocate when a change in their employment status occurs. We show that, in equilibrium, wages increase with distance to jobs and commuting costs because firms need to compensate...

Firms select not only how many, but also which workers to hire. Yet, in standard search models of the labor market, all workers have the same probability of being hired. We argue that selective hiring crucially affects welfare analysis. Our model is isomorphic to a search model under random...

"Contrary to widespread belief, we show that low-pay workers might not generally prefer that the minimum wage rate be increased to a level where the labor demand is unitary elastic. Rather, there exists a critical value of elasticity of labor demand such that increases in the minimum wage rate...

State and federal policymakers grappling with the aftermath of the Great Recession sought ways to spur job creation, in many cases adopting hiring credits to encourage employers to create new jobs. However, there is virtually no evidence on the effects of these kinds of counter-recessionary...

Massification of tertiary education, growing share of student workers on labour market and consequently increased competition for low-skilled jobs gave rise to the theory of crowding out of the less educated workers. This paper contributes to better understanding of temporary...

We use longitudinal individual wage and employment data in France and the United States to investigate the effect of changes in the real minimum wage rate on an individual's employment status. We focus on workers employed at wages close enough to the minimum in a reference year as to be illegal...

It is widely believed that globalization increases the volatility of employment and decreases the bargaining power of workers. One mechanism explaining this relationship is given by the long-standing Hicks-Marshall laws of derived demand: with international trade increasing competition and...