Labor Market Institutions, Wages, and Investment Labor market institutions, via their effect on the wage structure, affect the investment decisions of firms in labor markets with frictions. This observation helps explain rising wage inequality in the US, but a relatively stable wage structure in Europe in the 1980s. These different trends are the result of different investment decisions by firm...

How Do Layoff Costs Affect Employment? General equilibrium analyses of layoff costs have had mixed messages on the implications for employment. This paper brings out the economic forces at work and explains the disparate results. Specifically, we show that positive employment effects of layoff costs come through reducing labor reallocation, whereas negative effects come through reducing the pri...

Usually housing is viewed in the context of consumption resulting from other economic drivers such as income and employment. Here, we study how two key local economic measures, the gross metropolitan product (GMP) and unemployment rate, respond to shocks in home value appreciation, home sales, and new construction, respectively. Our analysis relies upon a large panel of 158 metropolitan statist...

We propose and estimate a model in which changes in the demographic composition of the labor force may affect the returns to labor market experience. We consider workers as providing two distinct productive services – physical effort, or “labor,” and services of the skill accumulated with labor market experience, or “experience.” The key element in the model is the aggregate production function...

We provide evidence on the dynamic behavior of net labor flows across US states in response to a positive technology shock. Technology shocks are identified as disturbances that increase relative state productivity in the long run for 226 state-pairs encompassing 80 percent of labor flows across US states in the period 1976 2008. The data suggest heterogeneous responses of both employment and n...

Equilibrium Unemployment and Investment Under Product and Labour Market Imperfections We study the implications of product market competition and investment for price setting, wage bargaining and thereby for equilibrium unemployment in an economy with product and labour market imperfections. We show that intensified product market competition will reduce equilibrium unemployment, whereas the ef...

Flexibility vs. Rigidity: Does Spain have the worst of both Worlds? In this paper we study the structure of labor market flows in Spain and compare them with France and the US. We characterize a number of empirical regularities and stylized facts. One striking result is that the job finding rate is slightly higher than in France, while the jon loss rate is much higher, putting Spain half-way be...

Arguably the most important development in recent decades in US factor markets is the decline in the relative wage of the unskilled. By contrast, in Europe it is undoubtedly the rise and persistence of unemployment. Technology has been identified as a key reason for the rising US wage inequality, while labor market rigidities are often cited as a key reason for European unemployment. This paper...

We present a simple theoretical framework that integrates the notion of the natural or neutral interest rate, liquidity preference theory, and the monetary policy practice by modern central banks. We claim that this theory explains the conditions under which an economy will experience an aggregate demand deficiency problem within a modern institutional setting. Contrary to the predictions of th...

The management of future financial risk on the part of managers and changes in firm finances are two of the fundamental reasons for upward and downward rigidity of wages. The proxy variable for firm financial risk is volatility, the past performance of which is among the principal indicators of wage rigidity. In firms whose current performance is on the upswing, the greater the volatility in pa...