We study the consequences of a working time reduction (WTR hereafter) in a growth model with efficiency wages and an essential natural resource (natural capital). Considering that technical progress cannot reduce the resource content of final production to zero, we show that the effects of a WTR...

We study the consequences of a working time reduction (WTR hereafter) in an exogenous growth model with unemployment (due to efficiency wage considerations) and a renewable natural resource. The resource is an essential input whose marginal productivity is bounded by physical laws. In the...

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory ? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They admitted that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions : Their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are...

We investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of low-wage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases...

This search-matching model is well suited for an equilibrium evaluation of labor market policies. When those policies are targeted on some groups, the usual juxtaposition of labor markets is however a shortcoming. There is a need for a setting where workers’ productivity depends on employment...

This paper studies the role of labor market institutions on unemployment and on the cyclical properties of job flows. We construct an intertemporal general equilibrium model with search unemployment and endogenous job turnover, and examine the consequences of introducing an unemployment benefit,...

This papers revisits the normative properties of search-matching economies when workers have concave utility functions. A general equilibrium framework is developed where agents are homogeneous and wages are bargained over. Assuming lump-sum taxation of profits, the optimal allocation of...