During the 1990s, temporary agency work has increased rapidly in most OECD countries. We augment the equilibrium unemployment model developed by Pissarides and Mortensen with temporary work agencies. Our model implies that technological improvements for placements and de-regulation of the sector...

Enrolment rates to higher education reveal quite large variation over time which cannot be explained by productivity shocks alone. We develop a human capital investment model in an overlapping generations framework that features endogenous fluctuations in the demand for education. Agents are...

In this paper it is shown that more generous early retirement provisions as well as lower employment lead to lower steady state pension rates if governments weigh the welfare of the older persons relatively strongly. A relatively stronger weight on the welfare of the young reverses the results....

I develop an agent-based computational economics (ACE) model with which I evaluate the aggregate impact of labor market policies. The findings are that governmentfinanced training measures increase the outflow rate from unemployment to employment. Although the overall effect is positive this...

I develop an agent-based computational economics (ACE) model with which I evaluate the aggregate impact of labor market policies. The findings are that government-financed training measures increase the outflow rate from unemployment to employment. Although the overall effect is positive this...

It is widely debated whether a monetary union has to be accompanied by a fiscal transfer scheme to accommodate asymmetric shocks. We build a model of a monetary union with a central bank and two heterogeneous countries that are linked by a fiscal transfer scheme with repercussions on monetary...

Pension schemes that redistribute money to the elderly have seen a remarkable surge in developing countries. To explain this phenomenon we build a political economy model of a Beveridgean pay-as-you-go social security system which incorporates family transfers driven by costs of non-compliance...

Discrimination of women in the labor market requires appropriate policy interventions. Affirmative action policies typically advocate the introduction of an employment quota uniformly applied to all firms. In a heterogeneous labor market such a policy may yield avoidable welfare losses. We...

What are the incentives for governments to coordinate their policies internationally when there is model disagreement and uncertainty? We build a model where countries disagree on policy targets and how policies affect the economies, and show that uncertainty not only determines the type of...

Empirical studies show that female workers are under-represented in highest hierarchical positions of companies, which is known as the glass-ceiling effect. In this study we investigate the relationship between social networks and the glass-ceiling effect. Specifically, we develop an equilibrium...