We use detailed information on labor earnings and employment from Social Security records to document earnings inequality in Spain from 1988 to 2010. Male earnings inequality was strongly countercyclical: it increased around the 1993 recession, showed a substantial decrease during the 1997-2007...

This paper examines the effects of transitory skill mismatch in a matching model with heterogeneous jobs and workers. In our model, some high-educated workers may accept unskilled jobs for which they are over-qualified but are allowed to engage in on-the-job search in pursuit of a better job. We...

We compare labor market outcomes under firm-level and sector-level bargaining in a one-sector Mortensen-Pissarides economy with firm-specific productivity shocks. Our main theoretical results are twofold. First, unemployment is lower under firm-level bargaining Second, introducing efficient...

In this paper we analyze changes in the conditional distributions of male earnings in Spain during the 1980s. We use a large new database of records on individual workers and firms from the Spanish Social Security system for the period 1980-1987. The data set is an unbalanced panel subject to...

This paper addresses the issue of measuring the NAIRU in the Spanish economy. We implement some of the procedures proposed in the literature to estimate the NAIRU, describing their advantages and disadvantages. Our analysis shows that these alternative approaches provide significantly different...

Spain has had a serious structural unemployment problem for the last 20 years. This paper argues that the interaction of firing costs and job-to-job flows added to changes in unemployment benefits, could provide an explanation for equilibrium unemployment increasing, since 1984. First, we...

In many countries, Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) establishes different regulations for certain groups of workers who face more disadvantages in the labor market (young workers, women, unskilled workers, etc.) with the aim of improving their employability. Well known examples are the...

By how much do employed households reduce their consumption when the aggregate unemployment rate rises? In Spain during the Great Recession a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate was related to a strong drop in household consumption of more than 0.7% per equivalent adult. This...

Since the start of the Great Recession the unemployment rate in Spain has risen by almost 18 percentage points. The unemployment crisis is affecting all population groups, including the more highly educated; but it is even more acute for the foreign population, whose unemployment rate is close to...

Labor courts may introduce a significant wedge between “legal” firing costs and “effective” (post-trial) firing costs. Apart from procedural costs, there is uncertainty over judges’ rulings, in particular over the likelihood of a “fair” dismissal ultimately being ruled as...