Comparing labor markets of the United States and Germany over the period 1980 − 2004 uncovers three stylized differences: (1) transition rates from unemployment to employment (UE) were lower by a factor of 5 and inflow rates from employment to unemployment (EU) were lower by a factor of 4 in...

In this paper, we prove the existence of a recursive competitive equilibrium (RCE) for an Aiyagari style economy with permanent income shocks and perpetual youth structure. We show that there exist equilibria where borrowing constraints are never binding. This allows us to establish a...

We use data from the Survey of Consumer Finance and Survey of Income Program Participation to show that young households with children are under-insured against the risk that an adult member of the household dies. We develop a tractable macroeconomic model with human capital risk, age-dependent...

An extensive empirical literature has documented that workers with high tenure suffer large and persistent earnings losses when they get displaced. We study the reasons behind these losses in a tractable search model with a life-cycle dimension, endogenous job mobility, worker- and...

This paper studies the effect of habit formation on optimal capital taxes in a dynamic Mirrleesian model. We make three distinct contributions. First, we decompose intertemporal wedges (implicit capital taxes) for general time-nonseparable preferences into a wealth effect, a complementarity...

A series of empirical studies has documented that job search behavior depends on the financial situation of the unemployed. Starting from this observation, we ask how unemployment insurance policy should take the individual financial situation into account. We use a quantitative model with a...

Extensive literature demonstrates that workers with high tenure suffer large and persistent earnings losses when they are displaced. We study the reasons behind these losses in a tractable search model that includes a lifecycle dimension, endogenous job mobility, and worker- and...

The use of real-time cash data allows us to make accurate intra-annual forecasts of an economy’s fiscal position, and to issue early warning signals for the need to correct fiscal imbalances. This paper shows how those signals can be used to design the necessary fiscal corrections, and...

We study asset-tested unemployment insurance in an incomplete markets model with moral hazard during job search. Optimal asset testing is weak and yields negligible welfare gains. The optimal replacement rate of an unemployed worker with zero liquidity is 9 percentage points higher than that of...