This paper studies the cyclical dynamics of Mortensen and Pissarides' (1994) model of job creation and destruction when workers' effort is not perfectly observable, as in Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984). An occasionally-binding no-shirking constraint truncates the real wage distribution from below,...

Our new paper takes the same model to European data. First, we apply the methodology of Shimer ("Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment", mimeo, 2005) to calculate time series for hiring and separation probabilities in a set of European countries that have data on short-term and long-term...

This paper considers a dynamic matching model with imperfectly observable worker effort. In equilibrium, the wage distribution is truncated from below by a no-shirking condition. This downward wage rigidity induces the same type of inefficient churning and "contractual fragility" as in Ramey and...

This paper studies the cyclical dynamics of Mortensen and Pissarides' (1994) model of job creation and destruction when workers' effort is not perfectly observable, as in Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984). An occasionally-binding no-shirking constraint truncates the real wage distribution from below,...

Several recent papers (Shimer 2003a, 2003b; Costain and Reiter 2003; Hall 2003) have shown that general equilibrium labor market models have a hard time generating the degree of cyclical volatility in unemployment and vacancies that is observed in the data. These papers have suggested that rigid wages...

Fluctuations of representative agent economies are not very costly. So if business cycles matter, it must be because agents face uninsured idiosyncratic risk which is somehow worsened by aggregate fluctuation. Idiosyncratic risk could be counteracted either through aggregate stabilization or...