We revisit the puzzling finding that labour market performance appears to deteriorate, as suggested by negative time trends in empirical matching functions. We investigate whether these trends simply arise from omitted variable bias. Concretely, we consider the omission of job seekers beyond the...

We construct a new Markov-switching unobserved components framework for the analysis of hysteresis effects. Our model unifies the ingredients of trend-cycle decomposition, identification of spillovers between the components and asymmetry over the business cycle. Employing the model for Germany...

This paper aims at explaining the dynamics of labor markets in Spain, especially the high persistence of unemployment and the Beveridge curve. We build a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium matching model, which assumes failures in the matching between vacancies and unemployed. We calibrate...

This paper studies equilibrium unemployment in a two-region economy where homogeneous workers and jobs are free to move and the housing market clears. Because of the Internet, searching for a job in another region without first migrating there is nowadays much simpler than in the past....

Verbindungen zwischen ähnlichen Subjekten sind ein häufig beobachtetes Phänomen. Damit solche Sortierungen in einem Suchmodell auftreten, müssen oft jedoch überraschend starke Bedingungen erfüllt sein. Diese Studie zeigt, dass ein um Signale erweitertes Suchmodell sogar vollkommene...

This paper develops a large-scale application to improve the labour market matching process with model- and algorithm-based statistical methods. We use comprehensive administrative data on employment biographies covering individual and job-related information of workers in Germany. We estimate...

In this paper, we investigate what causes the aggregate exit rate out of unemployment estimated in Wallonia (Belgium) to decline over duration and to vary over calendar time. For that purpose, we specify a mixed proportional hazard (MPH) model where the mixing distribution depends on seasons and...

We explain the positive correlation between union power and tax progressivity from a normative point of view by integrating labour market frictions and union power in an optimal taxation framework. We find that unions and redistributive taxation are complementary in the sense that they both...

The objective of this paper is to model explicitly the possibility to form temporary matching in a model of two-sided search. The agents (workers and employers) differ by their human quality endowment. In a search equilibrium agents form subintervals and are only matched to agents within their...

In this paper, we invesitgate whether the diverging evolution of unemployment in the two main regions of Belgium, Flanders and Wallonia, is driven by different evolutions in their average unemployment duration and/or their unemployment incidence. To that purpose, we proceed in two stages. In the...