Countries that have relatively fewer workers with a secondary education have smaller firms. The shortage of skilled workers limits the growth of more productive firms. Two factors influence the availability of skilled workers: i) the education level of the workforce and ii) large public sectors...

I build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions and two sectors in order to study the labour market effects of public sector employment and wages. Public sector wages plays an important role in achieving the efficient allocation. High wages induce too...

We examine the interactions between public and private sector wages per employee in OECD countries. The growth of public sector wages and of public sector employment positively affects the growth of private sector wages. Moreover, total factor productivity, the unemployment rate and the degree...

This paper documents a number of facts about worker gross flows in the United Kingdom for the period between 1993 and 2010. Using Labour Force Survey data, I examine the size and cyclicality of the flows and transition probabilities between employment, unemployment and inactivity, from several...

We extend Hopenhayn and Nicolini's [1997] optimal unemployment contracts by including life-cycle features. We show that it is optimal to implement an age-dependant contract. Indeed, the elderly have only a few years left on the labor market prior to retirement. The short horizon of old workers...

This paper investigates the impact of exchange rate regimes on international business cycles and focuses on the consequences of membership to the European Monetary System. The volatility puzzle uncovered by Baxter and Stockman [1989, Journal of Monetary Economics 23, 377–401] after...

This paper uses a calibrated life cycle model to quantify the distributional effects of Social Security reforms. We focus only on two countries: Italy and France becaue they adopted two different strategies to cope with aging. While France marginally modified its defined pension plan. Italy...

The paper characterizes the optimal tax scheme in an open economy with structural inefficiencies on the labor market and on government size. On analytical grounds first, we show that the economy can use fiscal revaluation to exploit the terms of trade externality and to dampen the impact of an...

This paper aims at measuring the robustness of Real Business Cycle international stylized facts across exchange rate regimes. I thus investigate th e impact of the Bretton Woods System and the ERM on the business cycle regularities. Thanks to bootstrap techniques, I measure the accuracy of the...

Empirical evidence suggest that nominal shocks play a major role in explaining real exchange rate fluctuations. I thus develop a two-country monopolistic competition model with nominal impulses, adjustement costs and price discrimination. I gauge the ability of the model to solve the quantity...