Short-time work - a wage subsidy conditional on hour reductions - has become an important tool of labor market policy in many European countries. As the scope of these policies expanded, concerns about side effects due to adverse selection increased. We develop a model of job retention policies...

The paper examines how asymmetric information affects the supply of entrepreneurs and the level of unemployment. The model first analyzes the case where banks, when providing credit, are unable to observe entrepreneurs' risk of failure. We find that credit rationing may increase the number of...

We examine how three sources of asymmetric information affect the supply of entrepreneurs and unemployment. In the first case, banks cannot observe entrepreneurs' risk of failure, so they ration credit. This increases the number of entrepreneurs and the level of unemployment. In the second case,...