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Directed search over the life cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Ludo Visschers

    (Carlos III)

  • Irina Telyukova

    (UCSD)

  • Guido Menzio

    (UPenn)

Abstract

How much of a worker's lifetime experience in the labor market is due to human capital accumulation versus luck? We build a life-cycle model of directed search in the labor market, in which workers move between the states of unemployment, employment and across employers because of differences in labor market experience and in idiosyncratic productivity of different rm-worker matches. We calibrate the model to age-independent facts based on the SIPP, and find that it is able to match key life-cycle facts in the labor market, including the rates of transition between labor market states by age and the average age-earnings profile. Using the model, we then decompose the life-cycle profiles of wages and transitions into human capital effects, age-related horizon effects and search effects. We find that search frictions play a very important role in the workers' life-cycle experience

Suggested Citation

  • Ludo Visschers & Irina Telyukova & Guido Menzio, 2011. "Directed search over the life cycle," 2011 Meeting Papers 1360, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed011:1360
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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