Informal contacts are extensively used by both firms and workers to find jobs and fill vacancies. The common wisdom in the economic literature is that jobs created through this channel are of better quality and pay higher wages than jobs created through formal methods. This paper explores the...

There is an enormous literature on gender gaps in pay and labour market participation but virtually no literature on gender gaps in unemployment rates. Although there are some countries in which there is essentially no gender gap in unemployment, there are others in which the female unemployment...

This paper shows that state control of some industries may have contributed to the increase in European unemployment from the 1970s to the early 1990s. We develop a simple model with both publicly-run and privately-run enterprises and show that when economic turbulence increases, higher...

This paper considers a real business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and labor supply which is elastic along the extensive (participation) margin. Previous authors have found that such models generate counterfactually procyclical unemployment and a positively-sloped...

In 1996 the UK made major changes to its welfare system for the support of the unemployed with the introduction of the Jobseeker’s Allowance. This tightened the work search requirements needed for eligibility for benefit. It resulted in large flows out of claimant status, but, this paper...

Recessions and policy interventions in labour markets in developing countries are characterized not only by changes in the unemployment rate, but also by changes in the proportion of formal or protected jobs. This reallocation between formal and informal jobs is large and occurs mainly because...

We provide empirical evidence on the nature of spatial externalities in a matching model for the UK. We use a monthly panel of outflows, unemployment and vacancy stocks data from the registers at Jobcentres in the UK; these are mapped on to travel-to-work areas. We find evidence of significant...

I examine the dynamic evolutions of unemployment, hours of work and the service share since the war in the United States and Europe. The theoretical model brings together all three and emphasizes technological growth. Computations show that the very low unemployment in Europe in the 1960s was...

This paper investigates whether people’s ability to withstand and adapt to one of the most important economic shocks – job loss – is determined early on in childhood. Using nationally representative longitudinal data that tracks almost 3,000 children into adulthood, we show that the...

We develop an equilibrium directed search model of the labor market where workers can simultaneously apply for multiple jobs. Our main theoretical contribution is to integrate the portfolio choice problem faced by workers into an equilibrium framework. All equilibria of our model exhibit wage...