We revisit the hypothesis that cyclical fluctuations in unemployment are caused by shocks to the discount rate. We use … in the EU rate. The response of the unemployment rate is minuscule. These findings are at odds with the actual behavior … large unemployment fluctuations. We show that aggregate productivity shocks generate the correct comovement between the UE …

Over the last century, unemployment, vacancy, job-finding and job-loss rates as well as the Beveridge curve have no … in which unemployment, vacancies, job-finding and job-loss rates are constant while the search technology improves over … that the quality of a firm-worker match is acceptable leading to a constant job-finding rate, unemployment, etc …

We propose a novel theory of self-fulfilling unemployment fluctuations. According to this theory, a firm hiring an …