We quantify the effects of hiring subsidies using the model of Mortensen and Pissarides (2003). The job creation effect can be large in a weak labor market. However, in the long-run, subsidies raise the wage and equilibrium unemployment.

I develop a model where workers decide how hard to look for a job via formal and informal search channels. The intensity of formal search determines an individual’s arrival rate of offers. The strength of investment in informal search translates into a job contact network in which job offers...

Using data on 68 developing countries from 1979 to 2008 and controlling for a wide array of factors, this paper finds that a rise in the real interest rate increases the unemployment rate and decreases the employment rate. The magnitude of these effects is small. The results are robust to...

Using data on 74 countries and a large number of controls, this paper finds that a higher degree of ethnic fractionalization is correlated with a higher unemployment rate. This is probably mainly because fractionalization reduces labor market efficiency.

The labor market in Germany is more sclerotic and volatile than in the US. We show theoretically that sclerosis and large volatilities are two sides of the same coin. Both may be driven by large hiring costs and low quit rates.

We examine the effect of a federally-funded local infrastructure spending program on local unemployment rates. To address the likely funding endogeneity problem, we exploit variation in spending due to pork-barreling, and find that higher government expenditure on roads substantially reduces...

Using a panel of 17 countries for 1978–2009, we find that tax-driven consolidations increase unemployment by 0.25 percentage points. Labour market flexibility mitigates this: a one-point rise in the flexibility index reduces youth (long-term) unemployment by 0.6–0.7 (1.8–2.2) percentage...

A novel procedure is applied to test for switches between hysteresis and the natural rate theory over more than a century of UK and USA unemployment data. For both the countries we see a period conforming to hysteresis starting in the early 1920s for the UK and 1930 for USA.