Uses theoretical models to analyse the macroeconomic implications of the dual labour market. Includes an introduction to the techniques of dynamic programming and the matching function.

The two chapters of this dissertation explore two central topics of the current policy debate.The first chapter studies the increase in markups experienced in the US starting from the 1980s. I document new facts on the evolution of markups by cohorts of firms, and I provide evidence that these patterns are linked to knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion. This chapter investigates, through the lens of a structural model, how the size of the technological gap and the speed of catching up with the frontier affect welfare. The quantitative results suggest that knowledge diffuses 38% faster in 2010 than in 1980, and the household experiences a consumption-equivalent welfare gain of 0.29% in an economy in which the quality of innovation and the intensity of knowledge diffusion is set at the 2010 values rather than the 1980 values.The second chapter investigates the impact of extensions in unemployment benefits duration on labor market sorting. The findings provide support for the hypothesis that unemployment insurance benefits increase wages by improving the employee-employer matches. The results also show bigger effects of unemployment insurance benefits extensions on match quality for those more likely to be liquidity constrained such as women, non-whites, and less-educated workers.

This book addresses collective bargaining in an intertemporal monetary macroeconomy of the aggregate supply–aggregate demand (AS–AD) type with overlapping generations of consumers and with a public sector. The results are presented in a unified framework with a commodity market that clears competitively. By analyzing the implications of three variants of collective bargaining – efficient bargaining in a uniform and a segmented labor market and “right-to-manage” wage bargaining – it identifies the quantity of money, price expectations, union power, and union size as the determinants of temporary equilibria. In the three scenarios, it characterizes and compares the temporary equilibria using both analytical and numerical techniques, with an emphasis on allocations, welfare, and efficiency. It also discusses the dynamic evolution under rational expectations and its steady states in nominal and real terms. Lastly, it demonstrates conditions for stability regarding a balanced monetary expansion of the economy.