Comparing labor markets of the United States and Germany over the period 1980 − 2004 uncovers three stylized differences: (1) transition rates from unemployment to employment (UE) were lower by a factor of 5 and inflow rates from employment to unemployment (EU) were lower by a factor of 4 in...

Extensive literature demonstrates that workers with high tenure suffer large and persistent earnings losses when they are displaced. We study the reasons behind these losses in a tractable search model that includes a lifecycle dimension, endogenous job mobility, and worker- and...

shocks.

An extensive empirical literature has documented that workers with high tenure suffer large and persistent earnings losses when they get displaced. We study the reasons behind these losses in a tractable search model with a life-cycle dimension, endogenous job mobility, worker- and...

We prove existence, monotonicity and differentiability of firm profits and provide first-order conditions that characterize the properties of the optimal contract. We demonstrate how the shape of the contract depends on the persistence and variance of the productivity process, on worker and firm...

This paper shows that the standard Mortensen-Pissarides framework embedded in a RBC macroeconomic model with risk averse agents, capital and a labor-leisure choice has the ability to match all moments of the ac- tual US-unemployment rate and other labor market variables within tight bounds when...

We examine the optimal labor market-policy mix over the business cycle. In a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort we first show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation. This can be achieved by a...

The authors examine the optimal labor market-policy mix over the business cycle. In a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort they first show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation. This can be...

This paper studies the cost of business cycles within a real business cycle model with search and matching frictions in the labor market. We endogenously link both the cyclical fluctuations and the mean level of unemployment to the aggregate business cycle risk. The key result of the paper is...