We embed human capital-based endogenous growth into a New-Keynesian model with search and matching frictions in the labor market and skill obsolescence from long-term unemployment. The model can account for key features of the Great Recession: a decline in productivity growth, the relative...

This paper estimates a series of shocks to hit the US economy during the Great Depression, using a New Keynesian model with unemployment and bargaining frictions. Shocks to long-run inflation expectations appear to account for much of the cyclical behavior of employment, while an increase in...

The conventional wisdom that inflation and unemployment are unrelated in the long-run implies the compartmentalisation of macroeconomics. While one branch of the literature models inflation dynamics and estimates the unemployment rate compatible with inflation stability, another one determines...

The paper analyzes the effects of disembodied technological progress on steady state hours worked in the workhorse New-Keynesian model, which features a neoclassical labor market, and its extension that allows for equilibrium unemployment. Both versions of the model are shown to imply a positive...

The standard search model of unemployment predicts, under plausible assumptions about household preferences, that disembodied technological progress leads to higher unemployment. This prediction is at odds with the experience of industrialized countries in the 1970s. This paper shows that...

We document three changes in postwar US macroeconomic dynamics: (i) the procyclicality of labor productivity has vanished, (ii) the relative volatility of employment has risen, and (iii) the relative (and absolute) volatility of the real wage has risen. We propose an explanation for all three...

Empirical evidence indicates that lay-off costs consist of two elements, namely firing costs and severance payments. This paper investigates business cycle and steady state effects of firing costs and severance payments and discusses the differences. We find that severance payments imply a lower...

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...

Many labor market models use both idiosyncratic productivity and a vacancy free entry condition. This paper shows that these two features combined generate an equilibrium comovement between matches on the one hand and unemployment and vacancies on the other hand, which is observationally...