This paper estimates the macroeconomic effect of labor market programs on labor force participation. Labor market programs could counteract business-cycle variation in the participation rate that is due to the discouraged-worker effect, and they could prevent labor force outflow. An equation that determines the participation rate is estimated with GMM, using panel data (1986-1998) for Sweden’s ...

Mexico has engaged in many trade agreements that have left unaffected internal competition, being one of the most trade-opened countries in the world is also one of the most restrictive regarding product market competition. For developing countries, this is a field to study that still need to be undertaken. This paper relates informality in the Mexican labor markets outcomes with market competi...

Persistence and the German Unemployment Problem: Empirical Evidence on German Labor Market Flows Using a retrospective monthly calendarium of individuals’ major economic activities, this paper characterizes the monthly employment and unemployment rates and the monthly transition intensities between the states of employment, unemployment, and out-of-thelabor-force for the German labor market bet...

What can one infer about labor market °ows from matched employer-employee panel data? The purpose of this paper is to sketch possible answers to this question. A general but simple labor market equilibrium model of hire and separation °ows is developed in the paper. The model embodies the hypothesis that worker productivity di®ers across employers and that worker and employer °ows re°ect respon...

We develop a simple model of labor market participation, human capital degradation, and re-training. We focus on how non-participation, as a distinct state from unemployment and employment, is determined by the welfare system in interaction with labor market conditions and personal characteristics. We provide a tractable framework to analyze how the decisions to exit the labor force and to miti...

We show that labor search frictions are an important determinant of the cross-section of equity returns. In the data, sorting firms by loadings on labor market tightness, the key statistic of search models, generates a spread in future returns of 6% annually. We propose a partial equilibrium labor market model in which heterogeneous firms make optimal employment decisions under labor search fri...

The Relevance of Post-Match LTC: Why Has the Spanish Labor Market Become as Volatile as the US One? We present a Search and Matching model with heterogeneous workers (entrants and incumbents) that replicates the stylized facts characterizing the US and the Spanish labor markets. Under this benchmark, we find the Post-Match Labor Turnover Costs (PMLTC) to be the centerpiece to explain why the Sp...

The transitional process in China is marked by prominent roles of state institutions, which are a key determinant of the opportunity and reward structure in the newly developing labor market. Migrant labor and the occupational and sectoral changes in the urban economy have further shaped the evolution of the labor market in Chinese cities. In this paper, I argue that labor-market returns are no...