Abstract This paper studies the effect of mandated severance pay in a matching model featuring wage rigidity for ongoing, but not new, matches. Mandated severance pay matters only if binding real wage rigidities imply inefficient separation under employment at will. In such a case, large enough...

In this paper we derive an explicit model of negotiations between spouses when utility is (partially) transferable only in case of separation. We show that inefficient separation may occur in equilibrium even under consensual divorce law. This provides theoretical support for the view that...

We use administrative data for Norway to estimate an incomplete-market life cycle model of retired singles and couples with a bequest motive, health-dependent utility, and uncertain longevity and health. We allow the parameters of the bequest utility to differ between households with and without...

We use administrative data for Norway to estimate an incomplete-market life-cycle model of retired singles and couples with a bequest motive, health-dependent utility, and uncertain longevity and health. We allow the parameters of the bequest utility to differ between households with and without...

The desirability, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of government welfare policies depend crucially on the income risk that households face and the actions that they can take to reduce consumption fluctuations, for instance by adjusting their saving and labor supply. Shocks to labour earnings are...

High-tenure workers who lose their jobs experience a large and prolonged fall in wages and earnings. The aim of this paper is to understand and quantify the forces behind this empirical regularity. We propose a structural model of the labor market with heterogeneous firms, on-the-job search and...

This paper extends Carroll's (2006) endogenous grid method and its combination with value function iteration by Barillas and Fernández-Villaverde (2007) to non-concave problems. The method is illustrated using a consumer problem in which consumers choose both durable and non-durable...

In this paper we ask whether policies targeting a reduction in crime rates through changes in education outcomes can be considered an effective and cost-viable alternative to interventions based on harsher punishment alone. In particular we study the effect of subsidizing high school completion....