Search Results
Showing results 1 to 4 of approximately 4.
(refine search)
Report
The Great Resignation and Optimal Unemployment Insurance
How generous should social insurance be when quits account for a large share of transitions into non-employment? We address this question using a multi-sector directed search model extended to incorporate endogenous quits both to other jobs and to non-employment. Workers quit too often in the competitive equilibrium, and private markets co-ordinate on excessively high “efficiency” wages. Quantitatively, we find that unemployment insurance is optimally much less generous in an economy with quits than in one without. An extended Baily-Chetty formula is derived to illustrate the source of ...
Working Paper
Why Rent When You Can Buy?
Using a model with bilateral trades, we explain why agents prefer to rent the goods they can afford to buy. Absent bilateral trading frictions, renting has no role even with uncertainty about future valuations. With pairwise meetings, agents prefer to sell (or buy) durable goods whenever they have little doubt on the future value of the good. As uncertainty grows, renting becomes more prevalent. Pairwise matching alone is sufficient to explain why agents prefer to rent, and there is no need to introduce random matching, information asymmetries, or other market frictions.
Working Paper
A Theory of Non-Coasean Labor Markets
We develop a theory of labor markets in a monetary economy with four realistic features: search frictions, worker productivity shocks, wage rigidity, and two-sided lack of commitment. Due to the non-Coasean nature of labor contracts, inefficient job separations occur in the form of endogenous quits and layoffs that are unilaterally initiated whenever a worker’s wage-to-productivity ratio moves outside an inaction region. We derive sufficient statistics for the aggregate labor market response to a monetary shock based on the distribution of workers’ wage-to-productivity ratios. These ...
Working Paper
Sovereign Debt and Credit Default Swaps
ow do credit default swaps (CDS) affect sovereign debt markets? The answer depends crucially on trading frictions, risk-sharing, arbitrage violations, and spillovers from secondary to primary markets. We propose a sovereign default model where investors trade bonds and CDS over the counter via directed search. CDS affect bond prices through several channels. First, CDS act as a synthetic bond. Second, CDS reduce bond-investing risks, allowing exposure to be unwound. Third, CDS availability increases trading profitability, which induces entry and reduces trading costs. Last, these direct ...