This paper investigates whether job offers arrive more frequently for those in employment than for those in unemployment. To this end, we take advantage of a unique Australian data set which contains information on both accepted and rejected job offers. Our estimation strategy takes account of...

Old elites can block changes, but not all do. Why is it that stronger elites may allow more changes than weaker elites? Why do economies with larger stocks of natural resources not grow faster than economies poorer in natural resources? We argue that old elites hold some power to extract rents...

We propose an endogenous growth model that incorporates the importance of business contacts and informal contacts. In our model, sold output increases with the stock of business contacts. The modelling of contact creation is based on matching theory. The cost of creating contacts decreases with...

In a non-stationary job search model we allow unemployed workers to have a permanent option to leave the labor force. Transitions into non-participation occur when reservation wages drop below the utility of being nonparticipant. Taking account of these transitions allows the identification of...

Contacts and the way they are organized in different economic systemsmatter for the economy. In this paper we introduce the notion of Relational Capital to model contacts. Contacts are an input into sold output in our macro model based on matching theory (Pissarides, 1990). We argue that the...

This paper attempts to look inside the black box of social capital by developing micro-models of the value of contacts, leading to production functions that depend on the number of contacts. We identify 4 sources of the value of contacts: economies of scale, comparative advantage, skill spreads,...

We use recent matched employer-employee data to directly investigate if white workers have a taste for racial discrimination in Britain. Based on a new structural model with individual and firm heterogeneity, we develop and test two predictions. Firstly, white employees with a taste for...