Essays on unemployment and labour market policies.

Michau, Jean-Baptiste (2010) Essays on unemployment and labour market policies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

There is a considerable amount of heterogeneity in the individual success of workers on the labour market. This justifies the existence of social insurance and of redistribution programs. However, when investigating these policies, it is essential to take into account the search and informational frictions that characterize the labour market. The different chapters of this thesis all rely on dynamic macroeconomic representation of the economy in order to address labour market issues from either a positive or a normative perspective. The first chapter characterizes the optimal design of labour market institutions in a dynamic search model of the labour market. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between the different policy instruments due to the search-induced general equilibrium effects. The following chapter investigates, from a positive perspective, the impact of growth by creative destruction on the rate of unemployment when on-the-job search is allowed. Chapter 3 solves for the optimal provision of disability insurance in a dynamic context with imperfectly observable health. Chapter 4 characterizes the optimal redistributive policy with an endogenous decision to retire. Finally, the last chapter investigates, theoretically and empirically, the long-run interactions between the provision of unemployment insurance and the cultural transmission of work ethic.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Economics, Labor
Sets:	Collections > ProQuest Etheses Departments > Economics
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/2213

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