Unemployment insurance schemes face a well-known trade-off between providing income support to those out of work and reducing their incentive to look for work. This trade-off between benefits and incentives is central to the public debate about extending benefit periods during the recent...

Studies from countries with laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation suggest that gay and lesbian employees report more incidents of harassment and are more likely to report experiencing unfair treatment in the labor market than are heterosexual employees. Gay men are found...

Measures of individual happiness, or well-being, can guide labor market policies. Individual unemployment, as well as the rate of unemployment in society, have a negative effect on happiness. In contrast, employment protection and unemployment benefits can contribute to happiness—though when...

We sketch a visionary strategy for Europe in which full employment is quickly regained by 2020, income inequality is reduced and the economies are more sustainable. We call this scenario "vibrant". It is contrasted with what would happen if present policies continue within the European Union...

Standard economic theory suggests that individuals know best how to make themselves happy. Thus, policies designed to encourage “better” behaviors will only reduce people’s happiness. Recently, however, economists have explored the role of impatience, especially difficulties with delaying...

As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, five million Russian and Russian-speaking people repatriated to Russia during 1990 - 2002. I use this natural experiment to study labor market assimilation of migrants and their effect on the employment and wages of the local population. I show...

We present a generalization of the standard random-search model of unemployment in which firms hire multiple workers and in which the hiring process is time-consuming as well as costly. We follow Stole and Zwiebel (1996a,b) and assume that wages are determined by continuous bargaining between...

Facing the recent German debate on the minimum wage, this paper analyses theoretical effects of minimum wages on employment and wage distribution under a frictional setting. I??review new developments in search theory and discuss the influence of the minimum wage on wages and employment under...

Measures of individual happiness, or well-being, can guide labor market policies. Individual unemployment, as well as the rate of unemployment in society, have a negative effect on happiness. In contrast, employment protection and un-employment benefits or a basic income can contribute to...

Measuring employment and unemployment is essential for economic policy. Internationally agreed measures (e.g. headcount employment and unemployment rates based on standard definitions) enhance comparability across time and space, but changes in real labor markets and policy agendas challenge...