The standard motivation for unemployment compensation is consumption smoothing and most papers in the literature have analyzed trade-offs involving consumption smoothing and moral hazard. This paper shows how such policy can increase output by enhancing the assignment of workers to jobs in the...

The labor search and matching model plays a growing role in macroeconomic analysis. This paper provides a critical, selective survey of the literature. Four fundamental questions are explored: how are unemployment, job vacancies, and employment determined as equilibrium phenomena? What...

At present the USA is - in per capita terms - the top greenhouse gas polluter among the world’s major economies. This is mirrored by the high energy intensity of all sectors of the US economy including manufacturing industries. A potential explanation for the higher energy intensity are lower...

We estimate the impacts of an energy tax – the Climate Change Levy (CCL) – on the manufacturing sector using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of trends in outcomes between plants subject to the CCL and plants that were granted an...

We estimate the impacts of an energy tax – the Climate Change Levy (CCL) – on the manufacturing sector using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of trends in outcomes between plants subject to the CCL and plants that were granted an...

A startling fact of firm level productivity analysis is the large and persistent differences in both labour productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) between firms in narrowly defined sectoral classes. The competitiveness of an industry is potentially an important factor explaining this...

What role does labor play in a firm’s market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labor is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction...

Does the search and matching model fit aggregate U.S. labor market data? While the model has become an important tool of macroeconomic analysis, recent literature pointed to some failures in accounting for the data. This paper aims to answer two questions: (i) Does the model fit the data, and,...

Work of low-skilled migrant workers from developing countries in developed economies is a growing phenomenon and a key political and economic issue. An extensive literature has found (for the most part) that these workers come from the lower part of the skill distribution. This paper revisits...

At present the USA is - in per capita terms - the top greenhouse gas polluter among the world’s major economies. This is mirrored by the high energy intensity of all sectors of the US economy including manufacturing industries. A potential explanation for the higher energy intensity is lower...