Barbara Petrongolo surveys the research evidence on the effectiveness of the 'sticks' and 'carrots' of active labour market policies.

The rise in joblessness among young people began long before the recession - Barbara Petrongolo and John Van Reenen consider potential explanations.

Barbara Petrongolo outlines how his analysis of markets with search frictions has enhanced our understanding of how labour markets work and how policy-makers should respond

Wages are only mildly cyclical, implying that shocks to labour demand have a larger short-run impact on unemployment rather than wages, at odds with the quantitative predictions of the canonical search and matching model. This paper provides an alternative perspective on the wage flexibility...

The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled- to-skilled gender wage gap and the corresponding gap in hours worked. Based on a canonical supply and demand framework,...

This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related administrative hurdle. Search theory predicts that such changes should raise...