The East German labor market has hardly made any progress since German reunification, despite massive migration flows and support from the West. We argue that East Germany is in trouble precisely because of the support it has received. This paper explores the phenomenon of "the caring hand that...

This paper argues that there is a nonzero inflation-unemployment tradeoff in the long-run due to frictional growth, a phenomenon that encapsulates the interplay of nominal staggering and money growth. The existence of a downward-sloping long-run Phillips curve suggests the development of a...

This paper explores the implications of the ongoing reorganization of firms for inequality in the labour market. We show how recent technological advances in physical and human capital can lead to the breakdown of occupational barriers, creating demands for new combinations of skills, and...

The paper presents a stochastic insider-outsider model that accounts for the following stylized facts: (1) unemployment rates display a high degree of serial correlation, or `persistence'; (2) the average rate of unemployment has been higher in the United States than in Europe over the 1950s and...

We present a theory of involuntary unemployment which explains why the unemployed workers ("outsiders") are unable or unwilling to find jobs even though they are prepared to work for less than the prevailing wages of incumbent workers ("insiders"). The outsiders do not underbid the insiders...

This paper views movements in unemployment as the result of the interaction between: (a) lags in labour market decisions; and (b) labour market shocks with temporary and permanent components. Two features of unemployment dynamics are examined: (i) `unemployment persistence', arising when...

This paper provides strategic foundations for the insight that the bargaining power of employees depends on the firm’s labour turnover costs. The analysis shows how these costs determine the firm’s degree of substitutability between two sets of wage negotiations: (i) those the firm conducts...

This paper integrate microfoundations of wage staggering into a simple dynamic general equilibrium model with rational expectations. In this context we show that a permanent increase in money growth leads to a permanent increase in the rate of inflation and a permanent reduction in the level of...

This paper explores the implications of giving unemployed people -- particularly the long-term unemployed -- the opportunity to use part of their unemployment benefits to provide employment vouchers to the firms that hire them. The vouchers would depend positively on unemployment duration and...