This paper quantifies the extent to which the U.S. manufacturing labor market is characterized by employer market power and how such market power has changed over time. We find that the vast majority of U.S. manufacturing plants operate in a monopsonistic environment and, at least since the...

This paper tackles some issues in personnel economics using the career profiles of British naval officers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We ask how promotions, payouts, positions, and peers affect worker retention. Random variation in task assignments and job promotions allows us...

This working paper directs to an historical puzzle, the rapid upward mobility of the east-European Jews who came to the United States between 1880 and 1920. Theoretically important issues are inherent in the explanations for Jewish upward mobility, and in any case, this particular historical...

Those who view Europe as having insufficient geographic mobility often draw a comparison to the United States, where mobility is higher. But the disparity in mobility is not an innate characteristic differentiating European and U.S. labor markets. Rather, mobility rates have fluctuated over time...

This paper studies long-run differences in intergenerational occupational mobility between Black and White Americans. Combining data from linked historical censuses and contemporary large-scale surveys, we provide a comprehensive set of mobility measures based on Markov chains that trace the...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model where workers can engage in search while on the job. We show that on-the-job search is a key component in explaining labor market dynamics in models of equilibrium unemployment. The model predicts fluctuations of unemployment, vacancies, and labor...

We show how on-the-job search and the propagation of shocks to the economy are intricately linked. Rising search by employed workers in a boom amplifies the incentives of firms to post vacancies. In turn, more vacancies induce more on-the-job search. By keeping job creation costs low for firms,...

Equilibrium search theory suggests that the wage distribution in a cross section of workers is closely related to labor market transitions and associated wage changes. Accordingly, job?to?job transitions are central in explaining the wage distribution. This paper uses the IAB employment...

Using a linked employer-employee dataset and taking the perspective of individuals rather than firms, this paper analyzes some effects of joining start-ups. We show that entrants in new firms differ from those joining incumbent firms, and we use a matching approach to compare a group of...

Using two data sets derived from German administrative data, including a linked employer-employee data set, we investigate the cyclicality of worker and job °ows. The analysis stresses the importance of two-sided labour market heterogeneity in this context, taking into account both observed and...