This chapter gives an overview of the male labour supply literature, focusing on what that literature implies for the design of the tax-transfer system. According to conventional wisdom, male labour supply is rather insensitive to tax rates. This, in turn, implies that the welfare losses from...

This short paper shows the interdependence of taxation and monitoring policy in a search and matching model of equilibrium unemployment with an underground sector. More precisely, from a social welfare standpoint, two options are available to the policy maker: s/he may either substitute a...

In this paper, we assess the effects of the Italian labour market reforms which began in 2001 and which led to widespread deployment of temporary work contracts. Using a hitherto unexploited administrative dataset of work histories for the period 2003-2010, we estimate transition probabilities...

Unemployment durations are determined by a number of factors. According to mainstream economics theory, unemployment durations are shorter in a more flexible labour market. In this paper, we hypothesize that workers who had a temporary contract before the spell of unemployment will experience...

Since 2003 the German Public Employment Service has been experimenting with the contracting out of various services. One of the new labour market programmes is Personnel Service Agencies, which provide client firms with jobseekers on a temporary assignment basis and are responsible for...

This paper examines a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model containing exible prices, search frictions and nominal wage contracts. It is assumed that the nominal hourly wage rate and the hours of work are jointly determined, so-called efficient bargaining, for each period. The...

The present paper develops a three sector Harris-Todaro (1970) type general equilibrium model of unemployment by incorporating endogenous skill formation. Two types of labour are considered: skilled labour and un-skilled labour. We examine the effects of the inflows of foreign capital on the...

We propose a search equilibrium model in which homogenous firms post wages along with a vacancy to attract job-seekers, while homogenous unemployed workers invest in costly search. The key innovation relies on the organization of the search market and the search behavior of the job-seekers. The...

This study provides an analysis of the determinants of female part-time employment in 18 European countries. The distinction between short and long part-time allowed us to highlight some differences. Female part-timers are often married mothers and hold less secure jobs within the public sector....

Monitoring the job-search activities of unemployed workers is a common government intervention. Typically, a caseworker reviews the unemployed worker's employment contacts at some frequency, and applies sanctions if certain requirements are not met. I model monitoring in the optimal unemployment...