This paper constructs a tractable general equilibrium model of search with risk aversion. An increase in risk aversion reduces wages, unemployment, and investment. Unemployment insurance has the opposite effect: insured workers seek high-wage jobs with high unemployment risk. An economy with...

This paper constructs a tractable general equilibrium model of search with risk-aversion. An increase in risk-aversion reduces wages, unemployment, and investment. Unemployment insurance (UI) has the reverse effect due to market generated moral hazard: insured workers seek high wage jobs with...

This paper constructs a tractable general equilibrium model of search with risk-aversion. An increase in risk-aversion reduces wages, unemployment, and investment. Unemployment insurance (UI) has the reverse effect due to market generated moral hazard: insured workers seek high wage jobs with...

This paper explains why firms with identical opportunities may use different technologies and offer different wages. Our key assumption is that workers must engage in costly search in order to gather information about jobs (Stigler, 1961). In equilibrium, some firms adopt high fixed cost, high...

A natural holdup problem arises in a market with search frictions: firms have to make a range of investments before finding their employees and larger investments translate into higher wages. In particular, when wages are determined by ex post bargaining, the equilibrium is always inefficient:...