Over the past several decades, the rate at which regular unemployment insurance recipients run out of benefits before they have found jobs, even in a strong labor market, has been gradually rising. For example, in 1973, 27.4 percent of UI recipients exhausted their benefits; in 2007 (with a...

We extend the standard textbook search and matching model by introducing deep habits in consumption. The cyclical fluctuations of vacancies and unemployment in our model can replicate those observed in the US data, with labour market tightness being 20 times more volatile than consumption....

We develop a framework where mismatch between vacancies and job seekers across sectors translates into higher unemployment by lowering the aggregate job-finding rate. We use this framework to measure the contribution of mismatch to the recent rise in U.S. unemployment by exploiting two sources...

Standard macroeconomic models underpredict the volatility of unemployment fluctuations. A common solution is to assume wages are rigid. We explore whether this explanation is consistent with the data. We show that the wage of newly hired workers, unlike the aggregate wage, is volatile and...

This study investigates job polarization in the United States and in France. In the data, the dynamics of employment shares for abstract, routine, and manual jobs appear very similar in the two countries. This similarity actually hides major differences in the dynamics of employment levels by...

Sweden has a long tradition of labour market policies explicitly targeting job seekers with disabilities, ranging from in-work aids to subsidized employments, aiming at strengthening their position at the labour market. To ascertain that these programs are limited to the needy they are...

Unemployment benefits, benefit duration, base period and qualifying period are constituent parameters of the unemployment insurance system in most OECD countries. From economic research we know that the amount and duration of unemployment benefits increase unemployment. To analyze the effects of...

Using a random sample of U.S. unemployment insurance (UI) applicants from 2002-09, we find that unemployment duration (as measured by the time spent waiting to apply for benefits) has a negative and nonlinear effect on reservation wages, suggesting job search is a nonstationary process...

Blank considers how the flexibility of U.S. labor markets and the regulation and redistribution policies of European labor markets may determine employers' responses to worldwide economic transformations that result in increasing wage disparity in the United States and continuing high...

This paper presents a comparison of temporary layoff behavior caused by the two most common methods of experience rating in the U.S. Unemployment Insurance system, the reserve ratio and the benefit ratio methods. Differences in layoff paths arise from different adjustment processes. Under the...