The visible hand : labor market institutions, and housing taxation[La main visible : institutions du marché du travail, et taxation du logement]

In this thesis, I analyze the role of institutions in two markets: labor and housing. In chapter 1 (joint with Elisa Guglielminetti), 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. When permanent contracts are expected to last longer, firms offer temporary contracts to low-productivity matches and permanent contracts to highly productive ones. 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. I further perform a policy analysis, showing that reforms liberalizing fixed-term contracts encourage their use, have non-linear effects on aggregate employment, but reduce long-term unemployment. In chapter 2, I investigate the effect of a liberalization of fixed-term contracts, finding a negative effect on new open-ended hires. This result validates the simulations in the first chapter, and confirms the role of match quality as sorting mechanism between contracts of different lengths and protection levels. Chapter 3 (joint with Robert Gary-Bobo), studies the distribution of housing in an overlapping generation model. Finding its equilibrium inefficient, I devise a system of proportional taxes to restore optimality.