The massive increase in unemployment throughout the OECD since the early 1970s has led governments in many countries to introduce, or to expand, labour market policies such as training schemes, employment subsidies, public works or schemes of counselling or assistance in job search. Such...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it reviews the model of search and matching equilibrium and derives the properties of employment and unemployment equilibrium. Second, it applies the model to the study of employment fluctuations and to the explanation of differences in unemployment...

What economic mechanisms underlie the polarisation of the world economy into the ‘high wage’ industrialised countries, and the less developed ‘low wage’ countries? Should we expect the two groups to converge over time, or to diverge? What economic mechanisms come into play as LDCs...

Much of the dramatic change in skill and wage structure observed in recent years in the United States is believed to stem from the impact of new technology. This paper compares the changing skill structure of wages and employment in the United States with three other advanced developed countries...

The rise in European unemployment is often blamed on increased mismatch between labour supply and demand- either by age, skill or region. To investigate this, we first develop models to explain differences in unemployment rates - both where labour supply is given and where it responds through...

We explore the effects of taxes and subsidies on job creation, job destruction, employment, and wages in the Mortensen-Pissarides version of the search and matching equilibrium framework. Qualitative analytical results show that wage and employment subsidies increase employment, especially of...

This paper studies how differences in the size of barriers to capital accumulation can account for differences in long run economic development paths. In this model barriers affect both the beginning date and the pace of the modern economic growth. A fundamental property of the model is that...

We present evidence from a firm level experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial compensation from fixed wages to performance pay based on the average productivity of lower-tier workers. Theory suggests that managerial incentives affect both the mean and dispersion of...

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...

This study analyses recent changes in collective bargaining institutions and their implications for employer strategies in the French and German telecommunications industries, drawing on case studies and survey data from call centre workplaces. Findings demonstrate that differences in both...