This paper explores the decomposition of equilibrium unemployment into involuntary and frictional components using a model that combines efficiency wages with search and matching frictions in the labour market. In deriving our results we generalize the celebrated Solow Condition, expressing the...

The recent labour-market performance varies greatly between the United States and continental Europe on the one hand, and between the low- and high-skilled on the other. This book starts by presenting up-to-date empirical evidence on these stylised facts and on the importance of the intensity of...

In the most widely analyzed type of efficiency wage model of involuntary unemployment, firms pay wages in excess of market clearing to give workers an incentive not to shirk. Such payments in excess of market clearing and the resultant equilibrium unemployment act as a worker discipline device....

Consider a labour market with heterogeneous workers. When recruiting workers, firms set a hiring standard and make a wage offer. A more demanding hiring standard necessitates a better wage offer in order to attract enough qualified applicants. As a result, an efficiency wage effect is obtained....

Unemployment remains a major problem for economic policy at the beginning of the millennium. Taxes and Unemployment investigates how tax policy affects labor market outcomes in industrialized countries and to what extent it can be used to combat unemployment. In particular, the wage and...