In this paper we document that "frictional wage inequality" (i.e. due to pure luck in the matching process in the labor market) is large and that both the standard McCall search model and the simplest Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides matching model, reasonably calibrated, are strikingly unable to...

In this chapter we inspect economic mechanisms through which technological progress shapes the degree of inequality among workers in the labor market. A key focus is on the rise of U.S. wage inequality over the past 30 years. However, we also pay attention to how Europe did not experience...

In this Technical Appendix to Hornstein, Krusell, and Violante (2006) (HKV, 2006, hereafter) we provide a detailed characterization of the search model with (1) wage shocks during employment and (2) on-the-job search outlined in Sections 6 and 7 of that paper, and we derive all of the results...

Standard search and matching models of equilibrium unemployment, once properly calibrated, can generate only a small amount of frictional wage dispersion, i.e., wage differentials among ex-ante similar workers induced purely by search frictions. We derive this result for a specific measure of...

We examine how technological change affects wage inequality and unemployment in a cali-brated model of matching frictions in the labor market. We distinguish between two polar cases studied in the literature: a "creative destruction" economy, where new machines enter chiefly through new matches...

In this chapter we inspect economic mechanisms through which technological progress shapes the degree of inequality among workers in the labor market. A key focus is on the rise of U.S. wage inequality over the past 30 years. However, we also pay attention to how Europe did not experience...

Does capital-embodied technological change play an important role in shaping labour-market outcomes? To address this question, we develop a model with vintage capital and search-matching frictions where irreversible investment in new vintages of capital creates heterogeneity in productivity...

We propose a new measure of frictional wage dispersion: the mean-min wage ratio. For a large class of search models, we show that this measure is independent of the wage-offer distribution but depends on statistics of labor-market turnover and on preferences. Under plausible preference...

Does capital-embodied technological change play an important role in shaping labour-market outcomes? To address this question, we develop a model with vintage capital and search-matching frictions where irreversible investment in new vintages of capital creates heterogeneity in productivity...

In this chapter we inspect economic mechanisms through which technological progress shapes the degree of inequality among workers in the labor market. A key focus is on the rise of U.S. wage inequality over the past 30 years. However, we also pay attention to how Europe did not experience...