Standard macroeconomic models underpredict the volatility of unemployment fluctuations. A common solution is to assume wages are rigid. We explore whether this explanation is consistent with the data. We show that the wage of newly hired workers, unlike the aggregate wage, is volatile and...

Employers who use temporary agency staff in contrast to regular staff are not affected by employment protection regulations when terminating a job. Therefore, services provided by temporary work agencies may be seen as a substitute for regular employment. In this paper, we analyze the effects of...

A matching model with labor/leisure choice and bargaining frictions is used to explain (i) differences in GDP per hour and GDP per capita, (ii) differences in employment and hours worked (per capita and per worker), (iii) differences in the proportion of part-time work across countries. The...

Employers who use temporary agency staff in contrast to regular staff are not affected by employment protection regulations when terminating a job. Therefore, services provided by temporary work agencies may be seen as a substitute for regular employment. In this paper, we analyze the effects of...

I analyze the effect of search frictions on inflation dynamics, in a New Keynesian model where firms make both pricing and vacancy posting decisions. I find that search frictions create real rigidities in price setting. This mechanism flattens the New Keynesian Phillips curve, relative both to...

The divergence of unemployment rates between the U.S. and Europe coincided with a substantial acceleration in capital-embodied technical change in the late 70’s. Furthermore, evidence suggests that European economies have been lagging behind the U.S. in the adoption and usage of new...

This paper argues that existing matching models with unemployment as an active search and nonparticipation as an inactive search predict counterfactual results: the unemployment rate is at most two times as volatile as the employmentpopulation ratio; only 20 percent of the actual volatility of...