We test the predictions of an equilibrium search model about the effects of an increase in the maximum duration of unemployment benefits. We use the 1999 unemployment insurance reform of Portugal, a quasi-natural experiment. The reform increased the maximum duration of benefits for three groups...

Poor countries have low rates of wage employment and high rates of self-employment. This paper shows that they also have high rates of unemployment relative to wage employment, and that self-employment is particularly high where the unemployment-wage employment ratio is high. I interpret high...

In times of economic crisis, many employers in liberal labor markets reduce their employees' working hours, which leads to an increase in the incidence of involuntary part-time work. We analyze the effectiveness of working time regulation in preventing such an increase during downswings. For...

This paper extends a general equilibrium model of unemployment and working hours and evaluates the model on a 5 percent working time reduction for shift workers in Sweden. Panel data from firms' payroll records are used to examine the relationship between standard hours, actual hours and hourly...

This paper is concerned with the study of the labor market performance of immigrants. The unemployment rate is used as an indicator and natives as the reference group for the analysis. The analysis proceeds in two steps. In a first step, probit regressions on the unemployment probabilities are...

A model of the labour market under firing restrictions and endogenous quits is constructed. It is shown that in the spirit of Blanchard and Summers (1988), the model can generate multiple equilibria, with a low-quits/high-unemployment equilibrium coexisting with a high-quits/low-unemployment...

The paper analyses complementarities among a variety of labour market policies. It shows: (a) that a wide range of labour market institutions (e.g. unemployment benefits, job security legislation and payroll taxes) have complementary effects on unemployment; and thus (b) that policies aimed at...

This paper measures the job-search responses to the COVID-19 pandemic using realtime data on vacancy postings and ad views on Sweden's largest online job board. First, the labour demand shock in Sweden is as large as in the US, and affects industries and occupations heterogeneously. Second, the...

This paper studies whether labor market mismatch played an important role for labor market dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. We apply the framework of S¸ahin et al. (2014) to the US and the UK to measure misallocation between job seekers and vacancies across sectors until the third quarter...

This paper measures the job-search responses to the COVID-19 pandemic using realtime data on vacancy postings and job ad views on Sweden’s largest online job board. First, new vacancy postings drop by 40%, similar to the US. Second, job seekers respond by searching less intensively, to the...