Assessing the quantitative relevance of match quality and search frictions for house price dispersion is key to understanding house price formation and the importance of uninsurable housing wealth shocks. In this paper, we use a unique auction-level data set from Norway, combined with a...

This paper provides descriptive evidence for a housing Phillips curve in Norway, suggesting a negative relationship between the ratio of inventory-to-sales and subsequent house price growth in the market for existing homes. We show that the negative relationship between inventory-to-sales and...

We study the dividend payouts of U.S. banks during the 2008 financial crisis. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we shows that banks with higher share of short-term liabilities to total liabilities, which were thus more exposed to the rollover crisis that took place in 2008,...

In many regulated industries labour uions are strong and there is clear empirical evidence of labour rent-sharing. We study optimal regulation in a model in which wages are determined endogenously by wage bargaining at the firm level. Compared to the case in which wages do not depend on the...

All OECD countries have either legally mandated severance pay or compensations imposed by industry-level bargaining in case of employer initiated job separations. According to the extensive literature on Employment Protection Legislation such transfers are either ineffective or highly...

In an important paper, Aghion and Bolton (1987) argue that a buyer and a seller may agree on high liquidation damages in order to extract rents from future suppliers. As this may distort future trade, it may be socially wasteful. We argue that Aghion and Bolton's' analysis is incomplete in some...

We examine the origins and outcome of entrepreneurship on the basis of exceptionally comprehensive Norwegian matched worker-firm-owner data. In contrast to most existing studies, our notion of entrepreneurship not only comprises self-employment, but also employment in partly self-owned limited...

Partner selection is a vital feature of human behavior with important consequences for individuals, families, and society. Hypergamy occurs when a husband’s earning capacity systematically exceeds that of his wife. We provide a theoretical framework that rationalizes hypergamy even in the...

In an optimizing model of epidemics several externalities arise when agents shield to avoid infection. Optimizing behaviour delays herd immunity but also reduces overall infections to approximately the minimum consistent with herd immunity. For reasonable parameter values, and with no vaccine,...

We analyse the deadweight losses of tax-induced labor misallocation in an equilibrium model of the labour market where workers search to climb a job ladder and firms post vacancies. Workers differ in abilities. Jobs differ in productivities and amenities. A planner uses affine tax functions to...