This paper argues that moderate unemployment insurance not only reduces the uncertainty faced by risk-averse workers but also improves efficiency and raises output. We develop a model in which the decentralized equilibrium is inefficient without unemployment insurance, because the labor market...

This paper offers an alternative theory for the increase in unemployment and wage inequality experienced in the U.S. over the past two decades. In my model firms decide the composition of jobs and then match with skilled and unskilled workers.

This paper analyzes technology choices and unemployment in search equilibrium. In contrast to standard search models, the presence of technology choices makes the decentralized equilibrium inefficient; there is too little investment in skills, too little job creation and there can be multiple...

This paper offers a model of the interaction between composition of jobs and labor market regulation. Ex post rent-sharing due to search frictions implies that "good" jobs which have higher creation costs must pay higher wages. This wage differential distorts the composition of jobs, and in the...

A central determinant of the political economy of capital-labor relations is tha appropriability of specific quasi-rents. This paper is concerned with the general-equilibrium interaction of appropriability and characteristics of technology - nam ely, the embodiment of technology in capital and...

Over the past three decades, a large amount of research has attempted to identify the determinants of the natural rate of unemployment. It is this body of work we assess in this paper.