This paper discusses the specificities of the labor market for older workers. It discusses the implications of those specificities for the effect of labor market institutions on the employability of those workers. It shows that while unemployment benefits indexed backwards and hiring costs are...

In order to credibly "sell" legitimate children to their spouse, women must forego more attractive mating opportunities. This paper derives the implications of this observation for the pattern of matching in marriage markets, the dynamics of human capital accumulation, and the evolution of the...

We develop a simple model to study how relative wage rigidity affects equilibrium taxation. It is argued that relative wage rigidity, by compressing incomes within the middle class, leads to a lower degree of redistributive conflict within the politically important core of society, even though...

We study the earnings structure and the equilibrium assignment of workers when they exert intra-firm spillovers on each other. We allow for arbitrary spillovers provided output depends on some aggregate index of workers' skill. Despite the possibility of increasing returns to skills, equilibrium...

Trade liberalization is often met with sharp opposition. Recent examples include the so-called ‘Bolkestein’ directive, which allows service providers from a given EU member to temporarily work in another member country. One way to view such a reform is that it simply widens the range of...

In this paper we study the relationship between labour market institutions and monetary policy. We use a simple macroeconomic framework to show how optimal monetary policy rules depend on labour institutions (labour adjustment costs, and nominal and real wage rigidity) and social preferences...

This paper studies a model of human capital accumulation with real wage rigidity. It is shown that the arbitrage condition between hiring a skilled versus an unskilled worker may be stated as a positive relationship between their relative unemployment rates. It may be the case that this locus is...

In this paper, we present a matching model with adverse selection that explains why flows into and out of unemployment are much lower in Europe compared to North America, while employment-to-employment flows are similar in the two continents. In the model, firms use discretion in terms of whom...

This Paper studies a model of the distribution of income under bounded needs. Utility derived from any given good reaches a bliss point at a finite consumption level of that good. On the other hand, introducing new varieties always increases utility. It is assumed that each variety is owned by a...

This paper criticizes the Alesina and Ichino (2007) proposal of taxing men more than women. First, the proposal is outright sex discrimination. Second, it cannot be Pareto-improving. Third, its virtues in terms of efficiency are better obtained by gender-neutral voluntary schemes for taxing...