In this paper, we investigate whether business cycles can imply sizable effects on average unemployment. First, using a reduced-form model of the labor market, we show that job finding rate fluctuations generate intrinsically a non-linear effect on unemployment: positive shocks reduce...

This paper studies optimal unemployment benefit levels and optimal proportional income tax rates over the business cycle. Previous research suggests that policy makers should make unemployment insurance (UI) dependent on the business cycle because the UI system can be used to smooth consumption...

The persistence of U.S. unemployment has risen with each of the last three recessions, raising the specter that future U.S. recessions might look more like the Eurosclerosis experience of the 1980s than traditional V-shaped recoveries of the past. In this paper, we revisit possible explanations...

We show in this paper that important insights into the cyclical behaviour of wages can be gained by dividing (real) average hourly earnings into their straight-time hourly wage and overtime components. Our motivation is based on the idea of employment-contingent contracts. BLS published and...

In the time domain, the observed cyclical behavior of the real wage hides a range of economic influences that give rise to cycles of differing lengths and amplitudes. This may serve to produce a distorted picture of wage cyclicality. Here, we employ frequency domain methods that allow us...

Not only the level of aggregate unemployment but also the properties of its dynamics are an important topic in macroeconomics and labor economics. Several models like e.g. matching models with endogenous job destruction explicitly predict an asymmetric pattern in the evolution of unemployment,...

Using a Cox proportional hazard model that allows for a flexible time dependence in order to incorporate business cycle effects, we analyze the determinants of reemployment probabilities of young workers in the U.S. from 1978-1989. We find considerable changes in the chances of young workers...

This paper establishes the cyclical properties of a novel measure of worker reallocation: long-distance migration rates within the US. This internal migration offers a bird's eye view of worker reallocation in the economy as long-distance migrants often change jobs or employment status, altering...

This paper provides a cross-country comparison of life-cycle and business-cycle fluctuations in the dispersion of household-level wage innovations. We draw our inference from household panel data sets for the US, the UK, and Germany. First, we find that household characteristics explain about...