We develop a dynamic model of transitions in and out of employment. A worker finds a job at an optimal stopping time, when a Brownian motion with drift hits a barrier. This implies that the duration of each worker's jobless spells has an inverse Gaussian distribution. We allow for arbitrary...

This paper argues that a broad class of search models cannot generate the observed business-cycle-frequency fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies in response to shocks of a plausible magnitude. In the U.S., the vacancy-unemployment ratio is 20 times as volatile as average labor...

We set up a model with on-the-job search in which firms infrequently post vacancies for which workers occasionally apply. The model nests the standard job ladder and stock-flow models as special cases, while remaining analytically tractable and easy to estimate from standard panel data sets. The...

This paper argues that a broad class of search models cannot generate the observed business-cycle-frequency fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies in response to shocks of a plausible magnitude. In the U.S., the vacancy-unemployment ratio is 20 times as volatile as average labor...

We set up a model with on-the-job search in which firms infrequently post vacancies for which workers occasionally apply. The model nests the standard job ladder and stock-flow models as special cases while remaining analytically tractable and easy to estimate from standard panel data sets....