TY - JOUR A1 - Snower, Dennis A1 - Brown, Alessio A1 - Merkl, Christian T1 - Globalization and the Welfare State JF - Journal of Economic Literature Y1 - 2009 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.47.1.136 VL - 47 SP - 136 EP - 158 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brown, Alessio A1 - Merkl, Christian A1 - Snower, Dennis T1 - In Incentive Theory of Matching JF - Macroeconomic Dynamics N2 - This paper presents a theory explaining the labor market matching process through microeconomic incentives. There are heterogeneous variations in the characteristics of workers and jobs,and firms face adjustment costs in responding to these variations. Matches and separations are described through firms' job offer and firing decisions and workers' job acceptance and quit decisions. This approach obviates the need for a matching function. On this theoretical basis, we argue that the matching function is vulnerable to the Lucas critique. Our calibrated model for the U.S. economy can account for important empirical regularities that the conventional matching model cannot. KW - matching, incentives, adjustment costs, unemployment, employment, quits, firing, job offers, job acceptance Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1365100513000527 VL - 19 IS - 3 SP - 643 EP - 668 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brown, Alessio A1 - Merkl, Christian A1 - Snower, Dennis T1 - The Minimum Wage from a Two-Sided Perspective JF - Economics Letters N2 - This paper sheds new light on the effects of the minimum wage on employment from a two-sided theoretical perspective, in which firms’ job offer and workers’ job acceptance decisions are disentangled. Minimum wages reduce job offer incentives and increase job acceptance incentives. We show that sufficiently low minimum wages may do no harm to employment, since their job-offer disincentives are countervailed by their job-acceptance incentives. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2014.06.020 VL - 124 IS - 3 SP - 389 EP - 391 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brown, Alessio A1 - Orszag, J. Michael A1 - Snower, Dennis T1 - Unemployment Accounts and Employment Incentives JF - European Journal of Political Economy N2 - We explore the far-reaching implications of replacing current unemployment benefit (UB) systems by an unemployment accounts (UAs) system. Under the UAs system, employed people are required to make ongoing contributions to their UAs and the balances in these accounts are available to them during periods of unemployment. The government is able to undertake balanced-budget interpersonal redistributions among the UAs. At the end of their working lives, people could transfer the remaining balances on their UAs into their pensions. We present an analytical framework to analyse the incentive effects of UAs and calibrate our model for the high high-unemployment countries of Europe. Our results suggest that this policy reform would significantly change people's employment incentives and could achieve reductions in unemployment without reducing the level of support to the unemployed. KW - Unemployment benefits, Unemployment accounts, Redistribution, Employment, Unemployment Y1 - 2008 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2008.06.006 VL - 24 IS - 3 SP - 587 EP - 604 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brown, Alessio J. G. A1 - Kohlbrecher, Britta A1 - Merkl, Christian A1 - Snower, Dennis T1 - The effects of productivity and benefits on unemployment: Breaking the link JF - Economic Modelling N2 - In the standard macroeconomic search and matching model of the labor market, there is a tight link between the quantitative effects of (i) aggregate productivity shocks on unemployment and (ii) unemployment benefits on unemployment. This tight link is at odds with the empirical literature. We show that a two-sided model of labor market search where the household and firm decisions are decomposed into job offers, job acceptances, firing, and quits can break this link. In such a model, unemployment benefits affect households' behavior directly, without having to run via the bargained wage. A calibration of the model based on U.S. JOLTS data generates both a solid amplification of productivity shocks and a moderate effect of benefits on unemployment. Our analysis shows the importance of investigating the effects of policies on the households' work incentives and the firms' employment incentives within the search process. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2020.02.037 ER -