Empirical and theoretical implications of frictional labor markets[Les implications empiriques et théoriques des frictions sur le marché du travail]

In this thesis I take the search and matching framework as the starting point of my analysis to investigate several aspects of the labor market. In Chapter 1, I explore the consequences of uncertainty on the macroeconomy . The empirical analysis shows that uncertainty has a detrimental effect on the aggregate economy and that job creation is an important channel of transmission. The empirical findings are then rationalized through a DSGE model incorporating the DMP setup and featuring stochastic volatility. In Chapter 2, I study the time-varying characteristics of job creation in the US. The econometric setup is a Time-Varying Parameter SVAR (TVP-SVAR) with stochastic volatility. The identification strategy is based on a DSGE model with a frictional labor marketIn Chapter 3, I extend the standard framework to take into account the spatial dimension of job search. Austrian data show the existence of a trade- off between wage and commute time. They also uncover complex patterns in the dynamics of exits from unemployment. Cox-regressions further show that the level of unemployment benefits has a strong discouraging effect on job search. In Chapter 4, I use a random search model to study the sorting of new hires into open-ended and fixed-term contracts. The co-existence of these two types of contracts is explained by match heterogeneity. The match productivity is interpreted as the fit of worker's skills to task requirements. This hypothesis is supported by matched employer-employee data from a large Italian region.