Two papers have recently questioned the quantitative consistency of the search and matching models. Shimer (2005) has argued that a text-book matching model is unable to explain the cyclical variation of unemployment and vacancies in the U.S. economy. Costain and Reiter (2007) have found the...

In this paper we empirically investigate a possible transmission of the European business cycle to Sub-Saharan Africa’s economies. This linkage may be of interest because the EMU is the main trading partner of African countries, and many of these countries use the euro as either the official...

We study the properties of alternative central bank targeting procedures in a general equilibrium, monetary model with labor contracts, endogenous velocity and three shocks: money demand, supply and fiscal. Money demand -velocity- shocks emerge as the main source of macroeconomic volatility....

The aim of this paper is to test to what extent a benchmark real and monetary business cycle model can account for some basic stylized facts with a particular emphasis on monetary variables. We calibrate the model on German data using the method proposed by Cooley and Prescott (1995). First we...

Real business cycle models generally neglect demand shocks. Technological productivity shocks are the primary source of economic fluctuations. The multisectoral consequences of this assumption are described in the well-known model of Long and Plosser (1983). The presented paper shows that...

Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel, this analysis suggests that the cross-sectional estimates of the returns to educational mismatch are significantly biased when unobserved heterogeneity is omitted in the wage equation. The results of the standard fixed effects model indeed...

This paper proposes an improved concept of educational mismatch that combines a statistical measure of over- and undereducation with the worker’s self-assessment of skill utilization. In that way, we account for worker heterogeneity in skills whose omission may generate biased estimates of the...

When do exports lead to rents ? And when are they shared with employees ? This paper proposes a double empirical test that deals with this question, based on a mix of rent sharing theories and Cournot Oligopoly. We find that most of the OECD exporting activities are associated with some rent...

Using two periods’ panel data from the Swiss Graduate Survey, this study examines the incidence and wage effects of overeducation. Contrary to most prior research, we account for graduate heterogeneity in perceived skills mismatch when measuring overeducation and correct for potential omitted...