"Much of the policy discussion of labor market institutions has been at the margin, with proposals to tighten unemployment benefits, reduce employment protection, and so on. There has been little discussion however of what the ultimate goal and architecture should be. The paper focuses on...

The authors use a simple model to study the optimal design of unemployment insurance and employment protection. Workers are risk averse and face the possibility of unemployment. Firms are risk neutral and face random shocks to productivity. Workers can participate in a shadow economy, or...

This paper examines whether search and matching frictions in labor markets can account for cross-country differences in business cycle properties. The particular interest is the joint effect of two institutional variables, employment protection and the replacement income of unemployed workers. I...