In The Netherlands, the average exit rate out of welfare is dramatically low. Most welfare recipients have to comply with guidelines on job search effort that are imposed by the welfare agency. If they do not, then a sanction in the form of a temporarily benefit reduction can be imposed. This...

In this paper we present and estimate a synthesis of previous equilibrium search models: allowing for continuous distributions of workers opportunity costs of employment, as well as firms' productivities. The model allows for on-the-job search, and we assume that job offer arrival rates for...

With informational frictions on the labor market, hedonic wage regressions provide biased estimates of the willingness to pay for job attributes. We show that a recent theoretical result, which states that variation in job durations does provide good estimates in case of a basic on-the-job...

This paper analyzes the effect of unemployment insurance sanctions on the transition rate from unemployment to employment. Sanctions are punitive benefits reductions that are supposed to make recipients comply with cer­tain minimum requirements concerning search behavior. We use a unique set of...

This paper analyzes the determinants of lay-offs, job-to-job movements and total separations with a unique data set that combines information on individual firms and their workers. We are in particular interested in whether the lay-off policy of firms can explain the relatively high level of...

In the past decades several features of U.S. unemployment dynamics have been investigated empirically. The original focus of research was on the duration of unemployment. In later studies the cyclicality of incidence and duration, compositional effects and duration dependence of the exit rate...

We analyze the impact of unemployment benefits and minimum wages using an equilibrium search model which allows for dispersion of benefits and productivity levels, job-to-job transitions, and structural and frictional unemployment. The estimation method uses readily available aggregate data on...

We combine micro and macro unemployment duration data to study the effects of the business cycle on the outflow from unemployment. We allow the cycle to affect individual exit probabilities of unemployed workers as well as the composition of the total inflow into unemployment. We estimate the...

This paper studies worker displacement in the Netherlands. We discuss the relevant institutions, and we analyze the incidence and consequences of displacement. In the next stage of the project this paper will be merged with the corresponding paper on the US.