This article is an idiosyncratic survey of the insider-outsider theory, describing the vision underlying the theory, and evaluating salient contributions to the literature in the light of this vision. We also indicate what appear to have been dead-ends and red herrings in past research. The...

This paper studies the changes in labor allocation across firms and industries in response to changes in technology (captured by the adoption of information and communication technologies, ICT) and import competition, due to increased exposure to trade competition from China. We use detailed...

This paper addresses the puzzle how employers that invest in general human capital can gain an information advantage with respect to the ability of their employees when training is certified by credible external institutions. We apply an established model from the employer-learning literature...

Skill-Biased Technical Change is one of the most prominent explanations for the rise in wage inequality in the United States over the last decades. However, the explanation is challenged for several reasons. In this paper, I propose an alternative type of technical change, where new technologies...

The paper studies human capital accumulation over workers' careers in an on the job search setting with heterogenous firms. In renegotiation proof employment con- tracts, more productive firms provide more training. Both general and specific training induce higher wages within jobs, and with...

I propose a new mechanism for sluggish wages based on workers' noisy information about the state of the economy. Wages do not respond immediately to a positive aggregate shock because workers do not (yet) have enough information to demand higher wages. This increases firms' incentives to post...

Workers in less-secure jobs are often paid less than identical-looking workers in more secure jobs. We show that this lack of compensating differentials for unemployment risk can arise in equilibrium when all workers are identical and firms differ only in job security (i.e. the probability that...

We present a general equilibrium model of labor market flows that features a periodic equilibrium in which turnover is high in some periods and low in others. If a firm finds itself in a periodic equilibrium, it is optimal to time compensation in the form of low wages and a large bonus delivered...

Ljungqvist and Sargent (2017) (LS) show that unemployment fluctuations can be understood in terms of a quantity they call the "fundamental surplus." However, their analysis ignores risk premia, a force that Hall (2017) shows is important in understanding unemployment fluctuations. We show how...

Technological progress and trade potentially affect wages and employment. Technological progress can make jobs obsolete and trade can increase unemployment in import competing sectors. Empirical evidence suggests that both causes are important to explain recent labour market developments in many...