This paper proposes an overlapping generations multi‐sector model of the labor market for developing countries with three heterogeneities – heterogeneity within self‐employment, heterogeneity in ability, and heterogeneity in age. We revisit an iconic paradox in a class of multi‐sector...

This paper studies the impact of product and labor market regulations on informality and unemployment in a general framework where formal and informal firms are subject to the same externalities, differing only with respect to some parameter values. Both formal and informal firms have monopoly...

The paper describes and evaluates unemployment insurance savings accounts (UISAs) – a relatively new and not well-known way of providing unemployment benefits. The UISAs reduce work disincentives by allowing recipients to keep their own unused unemployment contributions, and offer the...

This paper analyzes the cyclical properties of worker flows in Brazil and Mexico, two important developing countries with large unregulated or "informal" sectors. It generates three stylized facts that are critical to the accurate modeling of the sector and which suggest the need to rethink the...

The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled-to-skilled gender wage gap and the corresponding gap in hours worked. Based on a canonical supply and demand framework,...

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

It is puzzling that people feel quite unhappy when they become unemployed, while at thesame time active labor market policies are needed to bring unemployed back to work morequickly. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigate whether there isindeed such a puzzle. First, we...

Unlike other disability systems in developed economies, the Spanish system allows partiallydisabled individuals to work while receiving disability benefits. The puzzle is, however, thatemployment rates in this group of individuals are very low. The aim of this paper is tounderstand the...

The mild response of the German labor market to the worst global recession in post-warhistory appears as an economic miracle. In response to the crisis, Germany has shown to bea strong case of internal flexibility. We argue that important factors that have contributed tothis development include...

In this paper, we use unique data from a field experiment in the Swedish labor market toinvestigate how past and contemporary unemployment affect a young worker’s probability ofbeing invited to a job interview. In contrast to studies using registry/survey data, we havecomplete control over the...