Search frictions impede the labor market. Despite this indisputable fact, it is a priori unclear how job search costs affect search duration and unemployment: lower search costs make it easier to find a job, reducing search duration and unemployment, but may also increase the reservation wage,...

This paper's objective is to design a laboratory experiment to explore the effect of ambiguity on a subject's search behavior in a finite-horizon sequential search model. In so doing, we employ a new approach to observe the potential trend of reservation points that is usually unobserved. We...

Although home-ownership has been shown to restrict geographic labor mobility and to affect job search behavior of unemployed, there is no evidence so far on how it affects their future re-employment outcomes. We use two waves of detailed German survey data of newly unemployed individuals to...

This paper analyzes how subjective expectations about wage opportunities influence the job search decision. We match data on subjective wage expectations with administrative employment records. The data reveal that unemployed individuals over-estimate their future net re-employment wage by 10%...

We study the accuracy of job seekers' wage expectations by comparing subjective beliefs to objective benchmarks using linked administrative and survey data. Our findings show that especially job seekers with low objective earnings potential and those predicted to face a penalty compared to their...

This paper investigates the reservation wages of unemployed persons on the basis of a job-search model with non-static reservation wages using panel data from Germany from 1987 to 1998. The results suggest that reservation wages are relatively high in Germany compared to other countries....

This paper analyzes how subjective expectations about wage opportunities influence the job search decision. We match data on subjective wage expectations with administrative employment records. The data reveal that unemployed individuals over-estimate their future net re-employment wage by 10%...