This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...

We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UA) system. Under the UA system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during...

This paper examines the interactions between employment and training policies. Their effectiveness in stimulating income and employment may be interdependent for various important reasons. For example, the more employment policies stimulate the employment rate, the greater the length of time...

A labor matching model with nominal rigidities can match short-run movements in labor’s share with some success. However, it cannot explain much of the behavior of employment, vacancies, and job flows in postwar US data without resorting to additional shocks beyond monetary policy and...

This paper addresses the question of why prolonged regional unemployment differentials tend to persist even after their proximate causes have been reversed (e.g., after wages in the high-unemployment regions have fallen relative to those in the low-unemployment regions). We suggest that the...

DSGE models with generalized shock processes have been a major area of research in recent years. In this paper, I show that the structural parameters governing DSGE models are not identified when the driving process behind the model follows an unrestricted VAR. This finding implies that...

This paper compares the aggregate effects of sectoral reallocation in the United States and Western Germany using a stochastic volatility model of sectoral employment growth. Reallocative shocks have no effect on the natural rate of unemployment in either country, and there is mild evidence that...

In this paper, I estimate a series of long run reallocative shocks to sectoral employment using a stochastic volatility model of sectoral employment growth for the United States from 1960 through 2011. Reallocative shocks (which primarily measure construction and technology busts) have little...

This paper documents the short run and long run behavior of the search and matching model with staggered Nash wage bargaining. It turns out that there is a strong tradeoff inherent in assuming that previously bargained sticky wages apply to new hires. If sticky wages apply to new hires, then the...

I evaluate the degree to which different wage-setting mechanisms in labor market search models can fit the aggregate facts on labor’s share. I find that staggered bargaining in nominal wages best allows the model to plausibly match the negative relationship between labor’s share and lagged...