This paper studies a labor market search-matching model with multi-worker firms to investigate how firms utilize the extensive and intensive margins over the business cycle. The earnings function derived from the Stole-Zwiebel bargaining acts as an adjustment cost function for employment and...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyze the impacts of credit and technology shocks on business cycle dynamics, where firms rely on banks and households for capital financing. Firms are identical ex ante but differ ex post due to different realizations of firm specific technology...

Building a model with three imperfect markets – goods, labor and credit – representing a product's life-cycle, we find that goods market frictions drastically change the qualitative and quantitative dynamics of labor market variables. The calibrated model leads to a significant reduction in...

Although there is evidence that apprenticeship training can ease the transition of youth into the labour market and thereby reduce youth unemployment, many policy makers fear that firms will cut their apprenticeship expenditures during economic crises, thus exacerbating the problem of youth...

We develop a formula for the optimal size of a joint savings association between individuals who share the same financial goal and who can save towards that goal at the same rate. Our motivating example and the core of our analysis is a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA). We measure...

We explore whether a protective role for savings against future financial hardship exists using household level panel data. We jointly model the incidence and extent of financial problems, as well as the likelihood of having secured debt and the amount of monthly secured debt repayments,...

We use the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a rather unique dataset with a long time dimension of panel information on consumption, income and wealth, to structurally estimate a buffer-stock saving model. We exploit the information contained in the joint dynamics of income,...

In a nationally-representative sample, we predict retirement savings using survey-based elicitations of exponential-growth bias (EGB) and present bias (PB). We find that EGB, the tendency to neglect compounding, and PB, the tendency to value the present over the future, are highly significant...

In January 2006, the Dutch government implemented a pension reform that substantially reduced the public pension wealth of workers born in 1950 or later. At the same time, a tax-facilitated savings plan was introduced that substantially reduced the saving costs of all workers, irrespective of...

This paper examines how traditional marriage market institutions affect households' financial decisions. We study how bride-to-groom marriage payments, i.e., dowries, influence saving behavior in rural India. Exploiting variation in firstborn gender and heterogeneity in dowry amounts across...