In the present paper, I develop an on-the-job search model in which workers face both frictional and structural impediments to sorting. There are two key model predictions. First, versatility enhances the worker’s ability to sort into the most productive firms since a mismatch between the job...

Using an international survey that directly assesses the cognitive skills of the adult population, I study the relation between skills and unemployment flows across 37 countries. Depending on the specifically assessed domain, I document that skills have an unconditional correlation with the...

In the present paper, I derive the law of motion for the aggregate distribution directly from the laws of motion for the individuals' states. By relying on concepts from measure theory, the derivation is concise and intuitive. I address random shocks both at the micro level and at the macro...

Making use of an international survey that directly assess the cognitive skills of the adult population, I document systematic differences in the effect of skills on job mobility across the 37 countries in the sample. While economic growth is associated with relatively higher job mobility among...

In the present paper, I integrate frictional labor markets with on-the-job search into an otherwise standard heterogeneous firm model of intra-industry trade. Most importantly, I show that the returns to workers' inter-firm mobility are higher in a trade equilibrium than in autarky. Intuitively,...

I document the comovement of the skill premium with the differential employer size wage premium between high- and low-skill workers in U.S. manufacturing during the postwar era. For the baseline specification, i.e., establishments with at least 500 employees categorized as large employers and...

Various barriers may prevent people from entering a market. Will they participate in the market despite their inexperience once the barriers fall? I exploit the socalled German reunification experiment in order to assess the impact of removed market barriers on participation rates: While East...

Making use of a survey that directly assesses the participants' cognitive skills, I study the relation between skills and job mobility in a large international comparison of 32 countries. Motivated by the canonical on-the-job search model, I measure job mobility by the ratio of the job-finding...

I study the distribution of income across the factors of production within the canonical on-the-job search framework. I show that, by weakening the competition between employers, a mean-preserving spread of the employers' productivity distribution decreases the share of the production output...

For the USA in 1987–2017, I document, at business cycle frequencies, that the employer-size wage premium of high-skill workers tends to be high (low) in times of low (high) unemployment relative to that of low-skill workers. The differential size wage premium between high-skill and low-skill...