Why do more educated workers experience lower unemployment rates and lower employment volatility? A closer look at the data reveals that these workers have similar job finding rates, but much lower and less volatile separation rates than their less educated peers. We argue that on-the-job...

Why do more educated workers experience lower unemployment rates and lower employment volatility? A closer look at the data reveals that these workers have similar job finding rates, but much lower and less volatile separation rates than their less educated peers. We argue that on-the-job...

This paper extends the literature on the earnings losses of displaced workers to provide a more comprehensive picture of the earnings and employment outcomes for workers who separate. First, we compare workers who separate from distressed employers (presumably displaced workers) and those who...

We confront two seemingly-contradictory observations about the US labor market: the rate at which workers change employers has declined since the 1980s, yet there is a commonly expressed view that long-term employment relationships are more difficult to attain. We reconcile these observations by...

We use administrative data linking workers and firms to study employer-to-employer flows. After discussing how to identify such flows in quarterly data, we investigate their basic empirical patterns. We find that the pace of employer-to-employer flows is high, representing about 4 percent of...

We examine racial disparities in key labor market outcomes for men and women over the past four decades, with a special emphasis on their evolution over the business cycle. Blacks have substantially higher and more cyclical unemployment rates than whites, and observable characteristics can...

This paper argues that, for a given overall level of labour income taxation, a more progressive tax schedule reduces the unemployment rate and increases the employment rate. From a theoretical point of view, higher progressivity induces a wage-moderation effect and increases overall employment...

To study the impacts of reductions in employer’s social security contributions, we construct an intertemporal general equilibrium model with different types of workers (and wages), search unemployment and endogenous job destruction rates. Our model reproduces the empirical evidence that the...

We propose a measure for the importance of aggregate shocks for fluctuations in job flows at the firm level. Using data for the Portuguese economy, we find that large and old firms exhibit higher relative sensitivity to aggregate shocks and have a disproportional influence over the dynamics of...

This paper develops new estimates of flows into and out of unemployment that allow for unobserved heterogeneity across workers as well as direct effects of unemployment duration on unemployment-exit probabilities. Unlike any previous paper in this literature, we develop a complete dynamic...