Using administrative data from Germany, this paper analyzes the relation between wages and past and current labor market conditions. Specifically, it explores whether the data is more consistent with implicit contract models (Beaudry/DiNardo, 1991) or a matching model with on-the-job search and...

Standard macroeconomic models underpredict the volatility of unemployment fluctuations. A common solution is to assume wages are rigid. We explore whether this explanation is consistent with the data. We show that the wage of newly hired workers, unlike the aggregate wage, is volatile and...

Transition patterns from school to work differ considerably across OECD countries. Some countries exhibit high youth unemployment rates, which can be considered an indicator of the difficulty facing young people trying to integrate into the labor market. At the same time, education is a...

Transition patterns from school to work differ considerably across OECD countries. Some countries exhibit high youth unemployment rates, which can be considered an indicator of the difficulty facing young people trying to integrate into the labor market. At the same time, education is a...

Standard search and matching models of equilibrium unemployment, once properly calibrated, can generate only a small amount of frictional wage dispersion, i.e., wage differentials among ex-ante similar workers induced purely by search frictions. We derive this result for a specific measure of...

In this Technical Appendix to Hornstein, Krusell, and Violante (2006) (HKV, 2006, hereafter) we provide a detailed characterization of the search model with (1) wage shocks during employment and (2) on-the-job search outlined in Sections 6 and 7 of that paper, and we derive all of the results...

Shimer (2005) and Hall (2005) have documented the failure of standard labor market search models to match business cycle fluctuations in employment and unemployment. They argue that it is likely that wages are not adjusted as regularly as suggested by the model, which would explain why...

I describe insights into wage dynamics and downward wage rigidity obtained from more than two hundred interviews with business people, labor leaders, and various labor market intermediaries and made in the early 1990s in the Northeast of the United States. I explain the morale explanation for...

This paper develops an equilibrium job search model in which the employed worker privately accumulates human capital and continually searches for a better paying job. Firms encourage production and discourage turnover by rewarding with bonus payments and long service allowances, respectively,...

I study a labor market in which identical workers search on- and off-the-job and heterogeneous firms employ using either posted wages or wage contracts contingent on outside options. Firm level costs for contingent contracts generate a separating equilibrium in which less productive firms post...