This paper evaluates the ability of autoregressive models, professional forecasters, and models that incorporate unemployment flows to forecast the unemployment rate. We pay particular attention to flows-based approaches - the more reduced-form approach of Barnichon and Nekarda (2012) and the...

This paper proposes an empirical method for estimating a long-run trend for the unemployment rate that is grounded in the modern theory of unemployment. I write down an unobserved components model and identify the cyclical and trend components of the underlying unemployment flows, which in turn...

A labor matching model with nominal rigidities can match short-run movements in labor's share with some success. However, it cannot explain much of the behavior of employment, vacancies, and job flows in postwar US data without resorting to additional shocks beyond monetary policy and...

This paper is concerned with the business cycle dynamics in search-and-matching models of the labor market when agents are ex post heterogeneous. We focus on wealth heterogeneity that comes as a result of imperfect opportunities to insure against idiosyncratic risk. We show that this...

This paper assesses whether labor market frictions, in the form of searching and matching, can help explain movements in the labor wedge - the gap between the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) and the marginal productivity of labor in a perfectly competitive business cycle model. Results...

We develop a theoretical model with labor market frictions, incomplete financial markets and with households which have two members. Households face unemployment risks but their members adjust their labor supplies to insure against unemployment. We use the model to explain the cyclical...

Fifteen years after German reunification, the facts about slow regional convergence have born out the prediction of Barro (1991), except that migration out of East Germany has not slowed down. I document that in particular the 18-29 year old are leaving East Germany, and that the emigration has...

The introduction of firm size into labor search models raises the question how wages are set when average and marginal product differ. We develop and analyze an alternative to the existing bargaining framework: Firms compete for labor by publicly posting long- term contracts. In such a...

The introduction of firm size into labor search models raises the question how wages are set when average and marginal product differ. We develop and analyze an alternative to the existing bargaining framework: Firms compete for labor by publicly posting long-term contracts. In such a...