We test the predictions of an equilibrium search model about the effects of an increase in the maximum duration of unemployment benefits. We use the 1999 unemployment insurance reform of Portugal, a quasi-natural experiment. The reform increased the maximum duration of benefits for three groups...

Facing the recent German debate on the minimum wage, this paper analyses theoretical effects of minimum wages on employment and wage distribution under a frictional setting. I??review new developments in search theory and discuss the influence of the minimum wage on wages and employment under...

This paper provides new interpretations of the effects of rising economic turbulence-an increase in the rate of skill depreciation upon job loss-and its interaction with labor market institutions. We have three main results, based on a life-cycle model with labor market frictions and labor force...

We propose and estimate a model of family job search and wealth accumulation with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This dataset reveals a very asymmetric labor market for household members who share that their job finding is stimulated by their partners' job...

This paper develops an equilibrium search model to explain gender asymmetry in occupational distribution. Workers' utility depends on salary and working hours, and women have a greater aversion to longer working hours than men. Simulations indicate that women crowd into shorter-hour,...

When workers send applications to vacancies they create a bipartite network. Coordination frictions arise if workers and firms only observe their own links. We show that those frictions and the wage mechanism are in general not independent. Only wage mechanisms that allow for ex post competition...

This paper develops a sufficient-statistic formula for the unemployment gap-the difference between the actual unemployment rate and the efficient unemployment rate. While lowering unemployment puts more people into work, it forces firms to post more vacancies and to devote more resources to...

We present a generalization of the standard random-search model of unemployment in which firms hire multiple workers and in which the hiring process is time-consuming as well as costly. We follow Stole and Zwiebel (1996a,b) and assume that wages are determined by continuous bargaining between...

The Shapiro-Stiglitz model plays an important role in the employment theory. Woodford pointed out the theoretic limitation of the linear worker's utility function in that model. He questioned the model's implication of the secular decline in the unemployment rate when such rate was in fact...