Shimer (2005) demonstrated that aggregate productivity shocks in a standard matching model cause fluctuations in key labor market statistics---such as the job-finding rate, the vacancy/unemployment ratio, and the unemployment rate---that are too small by an order of magnitude. This paper shows...

Shimer (2005a) argues that the textbook equilibrium search model of unemployment explains less than 10% of the volatility in U.S. vacancies and unemployment when fluctuations are driven by productivity shocks. His paper as well as other recent work inspired by it are reviewed and extended here....

We develop a life-cycle model of the labor market in which different worker-firm matches have different quality and the assignment of the right workers to the right firms is time consuming because of search and learning frictions. The rate at which workers move between unemployment, employment...

New technology embodied in capital equipment can be adopted either through destruction of existing jobs and the creation of new ones or by renovation, updating the job's equipment. Under the assumption that the destruction of jobs generates worker layoffs, we show that higher productivity growth...

We study the effects of firing taxes on labor market outcomes. These taxes, more common in European markets, include all administrative and procedural costs incurred by the firm. As such, they are independent of the dismissed worker's skill level. We establish that, for young workers,...

We show that equilibrium matching models imply that standard estimates of the matching function elasticities are exposed to an endogeneity bias, which arises from the search behavior of agents on either side of the market. We offer an estimation method which, under certain structural assumptions...

This paper studies the consequences of creative destruction on unemployment in a frictional labor market with on-the-job search. For a benchmark calibration, a 1% increase in growth raises the unemployment rate by 1.72 percentage points in the economy without on-the-job search and by only 0.07...

Propagation in equilibrium models of search unemployment is altered when vacancy costs require some external financing on frictional credit markets. The easing of financing constraints during an expansion as firms accumulate net worth reduces the opportunity cost for resources allocated to job...

If entitlement to UI benefits must be earned with employment, generous UI is an additional benefit to working, so, by itself, it promotes job creation. If individuals are risk neutral, then there is a UI contribution scheme that eliminates any effect of UI on employment decisions. As with...

Two thirds of US unemployment volatility is due to fluctuations in workers' job finding rate. In search and matching models, aggregate productivity shocks generate such fluctuations: through firms recruiting effort, they affect the rate at which workers and firms come into contact....