Empirical studies of labor markets show that social contacts are an important source of job-related information [Ioannides and Loury (2004)]. At the same time, wage differences among workers may be explained only in part by differences in individual background characteristics. Such findings...

This paper studies optimal taxation schemes for education in a search-matching model where the labor market is divided between a high-skill and a low-skill sector. Two public policy targets - maximizing the global employment level and optimizing the social surplus - are studied according to...

Wages are only mildly cyclical, implying that shocks to labour demand have a larger short-run impact on unemployment rather than wages, at odds with the quantitative predictions of the canonical search model – even if wages are only occasionally renegotiated. We argue that one source of the...

Estimates on the effect of job contact method - i.e., informal versus formal search - on wage offers vary considerably across studies, with some of them finding a positive correlation between getting help from informal connections and obtaining high-paying jobs, while others finding a negative...

We examine the direct impact of idiosyncratic match quality on entry wages and job mobility using unique data on worker talents matched to job-indicators and individual wages. Tenured workers are clustered in jobs with high job-specific returns to their types of talents. We therefore measure...

We analyse the deadweight losses of tax-induced labor misallocation in an equilibrium model of the labour market where workers search to climb a job ladder and firms post vacancies. Workers differ in abilities. Jobs differ in productivities and amenities. A planner uses affine tax functions to...

An empirical analysis of labor market transitions for spouses in couples is implemented. Object of study are transitions between the states of nonparticipation, unemployed search, and employment. Motivated by a model of household search, the emphasis is on spousal variables and interactions....

We investigate how negatively reciprocal traits of unemployed individuals interact with "sticks" policies imposing constraints on individual job search effort in the context of the German welfare system. For this we merge survey data of long-term unemployed individuals, containing indicators of...

This paper studies how firms' screening behavior and crowding out among applicants affect the optimal design of unemployment policies. In our model, firms face a pool of applicants and observe unemployment duration and a signal about productivity. Firms screen the applicants with the highest...

We analyze the causal effect of commuting on wages, using a large sample of German job changers. Information on their home and workplace addresses in combination with road navigation software allows us to calculate exact door-to-door commuting distances with an unprecedented degree of precision....