This paper develops a life-cycle approach to equilibrium unemployment. Workers only differ respectively to their distance from deterministic retirement. A non age-directed search equilibrium is then typically featured by increasing (decreasing) firing (hiring) rates with age and a hump-shaped...

In a recent work (Hairault et al., 2006), we claim that the short distance to retirement constitutes one of the main economic mechanisms behind the low employment rate of older workers. As a result, delaying the retirement age could boost employment at the end of the working life. Our view has...

Endogenous cycles cannot emerge in one-sector monetary overlapping generations models when there is intertemporal substitutability, even if returns to scale are increasing. In this article, we show that the conclusions are different when there are two sectors. Considering a two-sector monetary...

At the end of working life, as well as reducing unemployment benefits, the unemployment-insurance agency could apply pension tax instead of wage tax. First, the pension tax provides greater incentives as the value of re-employment is tax-free. Second, the short job duration before retirement...

Since the last recession, it is usually argued that older workers are less affected by the economic downturn because their unemployment rate rose less than the one of prime-age workers. This view is a myth: older workers are more sensitive to the business cycle. We document volatilities of...

Gali et al. (2007) have recently shown in a quantitative way that inefficient fluctuations in the allocation of resources do not generate sizable welfare costs. In this note, we show that their evaluation underestimates the welfare costs of inefficient fluctuations and propose a biased estimate...

At the end of working life, as well as reducing unemployment benefits, the unemployment-insurance agency could apply pension tax instead of wage tax. First, the pension tax provides greater incentives as the value of re-employment is tax-free. Second, the short job duration before retirement...

This paper studies the optimal unemployment insurance for older workers in a repeated principal–agent model, where the search intensity of risk-averse workers (the agents) is not observed by the risk-neutral insurance agency (the principal). When unemployment benefits are the only available...