The picture of U.S. labor market dynamics is opaque. Empirical studies have yielded contradictory findings and debates have emerged regarding their implications. This paper aims at clarifying the picture, which is important for the understanding of the operation of the labor market, for the...

We analyse optimal saving of risk-averse households when labour income stochastically jumps between two states. The generalized Keynes-Ramsey rule includes a precautionary savings term. A phase diagram analysis illustrates consumption and wealth dynamics within and between states. There is an...

The labor search and matching model plays a growing role in macroeconomic analysis. This paper provides a critical, selective survey of the literature. Four fundamental questions are explored: how are unemployment, job vacancies, and employment determined as equilibrium phenomena? What...

This paper is about the labour market consequences of creative destruction with on-the-job search. We consider a matching model in an economy with embodied technological progress and show that its dynamics are profoundly affected by allowing on-the-job search. We obtain that the elasticity of...

This paper is intended to make a contribution to the empirical literature explaining the rise ofunemployment since the 1970s in western economies by means of interactions betweenshocks and institutions. The contribution is twofold. First, the impact of a general feature ofdeveloped economies...

This paper tests whether aggregate matching is consistent with unemployment being mainly due to search frictions or due to job queues. Using U.K. data and correcting for temporal aggregation bias, estimates of the random matching function are consistent with previous work in this field, but...

The Beveridge curve depicts a negative relationship between unemployed workers and job vacancies, a robust finding across countries. The position of the economy on the curve gives an idea as to the state of the labour market. The modern underlying theory is the search and matching model, with...

This paper studies the effects of firing taxes on the job destruction rate, when probationperiod - or temporary contract - policies are implemented in an otherwise exogenous jobseparation search model. It is shown that contrary to conventional wisdom, firing taxescan amplify the job turnover...

This paper uses data on very small UK geographies to investigate the effective size of local labour markets. Our approach treats geographic space as continuous, as opposed to a collection of nonoverlapping administrative units, thus avoiding problems of mismeasurement of local labour markets...

Shimer (2005a) claims that the Mortensen-Pissarides search model of unemployment lacks an ampiflication mechanism because it cannot generate the observed business cycle fluctuations in unemployment given labor productivity shocks of plausible magnitude. This paper argues that part of the problem...