A central organizing framework of the voluminous recent literature studying changes in the returns to skills and the evolution of earnings inequality is what we refer to as the canonical model, which elegantly and powerfully operationalizes the supply and demand for skills by assuming two...

We develop a tractable framework for the analysis of the relationship between contractual incompleteness, technological complementarities, and technology adoption. In our model a firm chooses its technology and investment levels in contractible activities by suppliers of intermediate inputs....

We present a tractable framework for the analysis of the relationship between contract incompleteness, technological complementarities and the division of labor. In the model economy, a firm decides the division of labor and contracts with its worker-suppliers on a subset of activities they have...

We present a generalization of the standard random-search model of unemployment in which firms hire multiple workers and in which the hiring process is time-consuming as well as costly. We follow Stole and Zwiebel (1996a,b) and assume that wages are determined by continuous bargaining between...