Decomposing wages into worker and firm wage components, we find that firm-fixed components are sizeable parts of workers' wages. If workers can only imperfectly observe the extent of firm-fixed components in their wages, they might be misled about the overall wage distribution. Such...

Using variation across geographic regions, a number of studies from the U.S. and other developed countries have found more deaths in economic upturns and less deaths in economic downturns. We use data from regions in Norway for 1977–2008 and find the same pro-cyclical patterns. Using...

This paper explores a link between exchange rate and unemployment at the aggregate level. We find that 1% increase in the US unemployment rate transmits, on average, 0.53% increase in Hong Kong unemployment under the linked exchange rate system.

The labor market in Germany is more sclerotic and volatile than in the US. We show theoretically that sclerosis and large volatilities are two sides of the same coin. Both may be driven by large hiring costs and low quit rates.

The recession the United States economy entered in December of 2007 is considered to be the most severe downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. In this paper we decompose the changes in the unemployment rate by examining worker ows into and out of unemployment during the...

Using a longitudinal data of British youths, this paper explores the consequences of past parental unemployment on the current happiness and self-esteem of the children. We find that a past unemployment spell of the father has important consequences for their children and leads to them having...

This article examines persistence and nonlinearity in the US unemployment rate in the post-war period by using a regime-switching unit root test. The empirical results indicate that a regime-switching unit root test outperforms conventional unit root tests and describes unemployment behavior...

This paper studies the responses of unemployment in Germany, the United States and Britain to the Great Recession of 2008-09 by making use of Beveridge curve analysis, and in the entire OECD with other techniques. It is shown that Britain suffered from recession but no structural problems; the...