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...

This paper characterizes optimal non-linear income taxation in an economy with a continuum of unobservable productivity levels and endogenous involuntary unemployment due to frictions in the labor markets. Redistributive taxation distorts labor demand and wages. Compared to the laissez-faire,...

We build a model of endogenous destruction with credit and labor market imperfections, represented by a matching process between financiers and entrepreneurs on one hand, and entrepreneurs and workers on the other hand. Business creation, credit opening and job destruction represent three active...

The main claim of this paper is that in a world of equal entitlements to work rights the justification for a basic income is stronger, and that its level should be higher. the higher the level of unemployment or job scarcity. Point of departure is an economy with job scarcity. A fair way to deal...