We develop a two-sector search-matching model of the labor market with imperfect mobility of workers, augmented to incorporate a housing market and a frictional goods market. Homeowners use home equity as collateral to finance idiosyncratic consumption opportunities. A financial innovation that...

This paper shows that goods-market frictions drastically change the dynamics of the labor market, bridging the gap with the data both in terms of persistence and volatility. In a DSGE model with three imperfect markets – goods, labor and credit – we find that credit- and goods-market...

An equilibrium search model with credible bargaining, when calibrated to the mean and volatility of postwar unemployment rates, is a good start to understanding the unemployment crisis in the Great Depression. Drawing from rarely used data sources, this paper compiles historical monthly time...

We build a Dynamic General Equilibrium model with search frictions for the allocation of physical capital and investigate its implications for the business cycle. While the model is in principle capable of generating substantial internal propagation to small exogenous shocks, the quantitative...

Renewed interest in macroeconomic theories of search frictions in the goods market requires a deeper understanding of the cyclical properties of the intensive margins in this market. Using the American Time Use Survey we find that average time spent searching declined in the aggregate over the...

To provide economic relief following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. CARES Act granted an extra $600 per week in unemployment insurance (UI) benefit payments from late March through July 2020. This unprecedented increase in UI generosity caused weekly benefit payments to exceed...