Results

CEP discussion paper

What happens in Paris, does not stay in Paris: trade fairs and search and matching frictions

Search and matching frictions keep firms from forming international trade links. Trade fairs are a common, often subsidized remedy, yet causal evidence is scarce. We study Hungarian firms at the 1900 Paris World Exhibiti...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Counting the costs: a quantitative assessment of Brexit?s effect on UK regional economies

This paper examines the implications of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) using a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model. Unlike previous studies that primarily projected potential impacts of Brexit base...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Fighting climate change: international attitudes toward climate policies

This paper explores global perceptions and understanding of climate change and policies, examining factors that influence support for climate action and the impact of different types of information. We conduct large-scal...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Employer screening and optimal unemployment insurance

Field experiments show that employers are less likely to consider long-term unemployed job-seekers for interviews. We study the implications for optimal unemployment insurance (UI). Based on a structural model of job sea...Read more...

Journal article

German Economic Review:

The immobile incumbent problem in a model of short-term wage-posting

This paper takes the canonical Burdett-Mortensen model of wage-posting and relaxes the assumption that wages are set once-for-all, instead assuming they can only be committed one period at a time. It derives a closed-for...Read more...

External report

International Trade: Issue 2

Over the last four decades, many developing countries initiated reforms that have lowered barriers to trade. Yet despite these reforms, developing countries still remain far less open than developed ones, both because of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring quality of life under spatial frictions

Using a quantitative spatial model as a data-generating process, we explore how spatial frictions affect the measurement of quality of life. We find that under a canonical parameterization, mobility frictions - generated...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

Better educated workers accept many more long-distance job offers, and relocate quicker following local shocks. I attribute this to a fundamental feature of their labor market experience, unrelated to geography: large re...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Reservation wages and the wage flexibility puzzle

Using micro data for the UK and Germany, we provide novel evidence on the cyclical properties of reservation wages and estimate that wages and reservation wages are characterised by moderate and very similar degrees of c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job displacement, remarriage and marital sorting

We investigate how job displacement affects whom men marry and study implications for marriage market matching theory. Leveraging quasi-experimental variation from Danish establishment closures, we show that job displace...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Financial Studies :

Estimating general equilibrium spillovers of large-scale shocks

Large-scale shocks directly affect some firms and households and indirectly affect others through general equilibrium spillovers. In this paper, I describe how researchers can directly estimate spillovers using quasi-exp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Who's got the power? Wage determination and its resilience in the Great Recession

Whereas wage inequality has risen markedly in most OECD countries in recent decades, it has fallen in several Southern European economies. To shed light on this phenomenon, we embed sectoral bargaining, which is common i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

The urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Optimal minimum wages

We develop a quantitative spatial model with heterogeneous firms and a monopsonistic labour market to derive minimum wages that maximize employment or welfare. Quantifying the model for German micro regions, we find that...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Education and geographical mobility: the role of the job surplus

Better-educated workers form many more long-distance job matches, and they move more quickly following local employment shocks. I argue this is a consequence of larger dispersion in wage offers, independent of geography....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The urban wage premium in imperfect labour markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Industrial Organization:

Flex cars and competition in fuel retail markets

We study how the diffusion of flex (bi-fuel) cars affected competition on ethanol and gasoline retail markets. We propose a model of price competition in which the two fuels become closer substitutes as flex cars penetra...Read more...

Journal article

Urban Studies:

Does the law of one price hold for hedonic prices?

Hedonic prices of locational attributes in urban land markets are determined by a process of spatial arbitrage that is similar to that which underpins the law of one price. If hedonic prices deviate from their spatial eq...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

The persistence of local joblessness

Differences in employment-population ratios across US commuting zones have persisted for many decades. We claim these disparities represent real gaps in economic opportunity for individuals of fixed characteristics. Thes...Read more...

CentrePiece article

How 'local' are local labour markets?

If we want to create jobs in disadvantaged local areas, the idea of `local? needs to be revisited. Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo explain the problem of thinking of geographical space as non-overlapping single labou...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Supplier search and re-matching in global sourcing: theory and evidence from China

In this paper, we consider a dynamic search-and-matching problem of a firm with its intermediate input supplier. In our model, a headquarter currently matched with a supplier, has an interest to find and collaborate with...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Reference-dependent job search: evidence from Hungary

We propose a model of job search with reference-dependent preferences, with loss aversion relative to recent income (the reference point). In this model, newly unemployed individuals search hard since consumption is belo...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The benefits of forced experimentation: striking evidence from the London underground network

We present evidence that a significant fraction of commuters on the London Underground do not travel on their optimal route. We show that a strike on the Underground, which forced many commuters to experiment with new ro...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Matching Firms and Workers in a Field Experiment in Ethiopia

Do matching frictions affect youth employment in developing countries? We organise job fairs in Addis Ababa, to match firms with a representative sample of young, educated job-seekers. We create very few jobs: one for ap...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

How local are labor markets? Evidence from a spatial job search model

This paper models the optimal search strategies of the unemployed across space to characterize local labor markets. Our methodology allows for linkages between numerous areas, while preserving tractability. We estimate t...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Is modern technology responsible for jobless recoveries?

Since the early 1990s, recoveries from recessions in the US have been plagued by weak employment growth. We investigate whether a similar problem afflicts other developed economies, and whether technology is a culprit. W...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The costs and benefits of leaving the EU: trade effects

This paper estimates the welfare effects of Brexit, focusing on trade and fiscal transfers. We use a standard quantitative general equilibrium trade model with many countries and sectors and trade in intermediates, as in...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Relational contracts and supplier turnover in the global economy

Headquarters and their specialized component suppliers have a vital interest in establishing long-term collaborations. When formal contracts are not enforceable, such efficiency-enhancing cooperations can be established ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Bargain hunters: calculating the benefits of consumer search

To what extent can shoppers convert the time they spend looking for particular products into monetary savings? The authors use electronic tags to study the behaviour of 12,000 consumers in a large supermarket in Northern...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Location, Search Costs and Youth Unemployment: Experimental Evidence from Transport Subsidies in Addis Ababa

Do high search costs affect the labour market outcomes of job seekers living far away from jobs? I randomly assign transport subsidies to unemployed youth in urban Ethiopia. Treated respondents increase job search intens...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Reservation wages and the wage flexibility puzzle

Wages are only mildly cyclical, implying that shocks to labour demand have a larger short-run impact on unemployment rather than wages, at odds with the quantitative predictions of the canonical search model ? even if wa...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The upside of London Tube strikes

In February 2014, strikes by staff on London's underground network enabled a sizeable fraction of commuters to find better routes, according to research by Shaun Larcom, Ferdinand Rauch and Tim Willems. Many commuters w...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Relational contracts and supplier turnover in the global economy

Headquarters and their specialized component suppliers have a vital interest in establishing long-term collaborations. When formal contracts are not enforceable, such efficiency enhancing cooperations can be established ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The benefits of forced experimentation: striking evidence from the London Underground network

We estimate that a significant fraction of commuters on the London underground do not travel their optimal route. Consequently, a tube strike (which forced many commuters to experiment with new routes) taught commuters a...Read more...

CEP election analysis

The Economic Performance of UK Cities: Can Urban and Regional Policy Make a Difference to the North-South Divide

There are large variations in economic performance across UK cities and on some measures, they have widened since the global financial crisis. All main parties promise action to reduce them, but there is little differenc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Why are higher skilled workers more mobile geographically? The role of the job surplus

The skill gap in geographical mobility is entirely driven by workers who report moving for a new job. A natural explanation lies in the large expected surplus accruing to skilled job matches. Just as large surpluses ease...Read more...

Journal article

The World Bank Economic Review:

The political economy of trade policy: gone for good? Subsidies with export share requirements in China: 2002-13

This paper presents a simple model of subsidies with export share requirements (ESR) in a heterogeneous firm environment. A two-country general equilibrium version of the model with a single 100% ESR is calibrated using ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Financial constraints in search equilibrium: Mortensen and Pissarides meet Holmstrom and Tirole

The Great Recession has indicated that firms' leverage and access to finance are important for hiring and firing decisions. It is now empirically established that bank lending is correlated to employment losses when cred...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employee stock purchase plans - gift or incentive? Evidence from a multinational corporation

Many large listed firms offer workers the opportunity to buy shares in the firm at discounted rates through employee stock purchase plans (ESPP). The discounted rate creates a gift exchange, where the firm hopes that wor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Consumer search: evidence from path-tracking data

We estimate the effect of consumer search on the price of the purchased product in a physical store environment. We implement the analysis using a unique data set obtained from radio frequency identification tags, which ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Tackling long-term unemployment

Barbara Petrongolo surveys the research evidence on the effectiveness of the 'sticks' and 'carrots' of active labour market policies....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Flex cars and competition in ethanol and gasoline retail markets

In Brazil, gasoline and ethanol coexist as automotive fuels and are becoming closer substitutes as flex cars become more widely adopted. We employ this source of variation in a large panel of weekly prices at the station...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Steady-State Equilibrium in a Model of Short-Term Wage-Posting

This paper takes the canonical Burdett-Mortensen model of wage- posting and relaxes the assumption that wages are set once-for-all, instead assuming they can only be committed one period at a time. It derives a closed-fo...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

External Benefits of Brownfield Redevelopment: An Applied Urban General Equilbirum Analysis

Does brownfield redevelopment warrant government support? We explore several external benefits in an urban general equilibrium framework. Preferences are modelled such that demand for housing units in the city is downwar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Local Are Labour Markets? Evidence from a Spatial Job Search Model

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...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Unequal Britain: how real are regional disparities?

Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation rev...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Youth unemployment

The rise in joblessness among young people began long before the recession - Barbara Petrongolo and John Van Reenen consider potential explanations....Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Real Earnings Disparities in Britain

This report estimates housing-cost-earnings differentials across labour market areas in Britain. We show that quality-adjusted housing costs rise on average, one for one with the skill-adjusted earnings of the average wo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

There Will Be Money

A common belief among monetary theorists is that monetary equilibria are tenuous due to the intrinsic uselessness of fiat money (Wallace (1978)). In this article we argue that the tenuousness of monetary equilibria vanis...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Imperfect Competition in the Labour Market

It is increasingly recognized that labour markets are pervasively imperfectly competitive, that there are rents to the employment relationship for both worker and employer. This chapter considers why it is sensible to th...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The long-term effects of job search requirements: evidence from the UK JSA reform

This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Recovering the Sunk Costs of R&D: the Moulds Industry Case

Sunk costs for R&D are an important determinant of the level of innovation in the economy. In this paper I recover them using a Markov equilibrium framework. The contribution is twofold. First, a model of industry dynami...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Hot and Cold Seasons in the Housing Market

Every year during the second and thirdquarters (the ?hot season?) housing markets in the UK and the US experience systematic above-trend increases in both prices and transactions. During the fourth and first quarters (th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Market Reforms, Job Instability, and the Flexibility of the Employment Relationship

We endogenize separation in a search model of the labor market and allow for bargaining over the continuation of employment relationships following productivity shocks to take place under asymmetric information. In such ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Are the Long-Term Effects of UI? Evidence from the UK JSA Reform

This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Creative Destruction with On-the-Job Search

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...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Incentives in Competitive Search Equilibrium

This paper analyses the interaction between internal agency problems within firms and external search frictions when workers have private information. We show that the allocation of resources is determined by a modified ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Shimer Puzzle and the Correct Identification of Productivity Shocks

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 productivi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Search Frictions, Real Rigidities and Inflation Dynamics

The standard New Keynesian model suffers from the so-called .macro-micro pricing conflict: in order to match the dynamics of inflation implied by macroeconomic data, the model needs to assume an average duration of price...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Productivity, Aggregate Demand and Unemployment Fluctuations

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the cyclical behavior of US unemployment that poses a challenge to standard search and matching models. The correlation between cyclical unemployment and the cyclical compone...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Beveridge Curve

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 ma...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labor Search and Matching in Macroeconomics

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 v...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Search and Matching Frictions and Optimal Monetary Policy

I analyze optimal monetary policy in an economy with search and matching frictions in the labor market and staggered nominal wage and price contracts. In this framework, as opposed to the standard New Keynesian model, pr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Presence of Informal Labour Markets

Recessions and policy interventions in labour markets in developing countries are characterized not only by changes in the unemployment rate, but also by changes in the proportion of formal or protected jobs. This reallo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

You Can't Always Get What You Want: the Impact of the Jobseeker's Allowance

In 1996 the UK made major changes to its welfare system for the support of the unemployed with the introduction of the Jobseeker?s Allowance. This tightened the work search requirements needed for eligibility for benefit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating the Performance of the Search and Matching Model

Does the search and matching model fit aggregate U.S. labor market data? While the model has become an important tool of macroeconomic analysis, recent literature pointed to some failures in accounting for the data. This...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Evaluating the employment impact of a mandatory job search program

This paper exploits area-based piloting and age-related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program-the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. A central focus is on substitution/displacement ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Scale Effects in Markets with Search

Reduced-form tests of scale effects in markets with search, run when aggregate matching functions are estimated, may miss important scale effects at the micro level, because of the reactions of job searchers. A semi-stru...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Company Start-Up Costs and Employment

I study the role of company start-up costs for employment performance. The model is search equilibrium with a new concept for firms. Agents have an innate managerial ability and make a career choice to become either mana...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Looking Into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function

We survey the microfoundations, empirical evidence and estimation issues underlying the aggregate matching function. Several microeconomic matching mechanisms have been suggested in the literature with some successes but...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Labour Supply, Search and Taxes

Classical labour supply theory is one of the most sophisticated parts of labour economics. Yet, there is no compelling theoretical reason to believe in an outcome on a classical labour supply curve and it is unclear whet...Read more...