Ludo Visschers: Research

Affiliations: U. Edinburgh, U Carlos III de Madrid, IZA, CESifo

                               -- Working Papers --              -- Publications--            --Papers @ Repec--              --Curriculum Vitae--           -- MacCaLM --                       --Grants Acknowledged--


1. Working Papers

• "Unemployment and Endogenous Reallocation over the Business Cycle" (with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela)  (new version coming soon, this version 2014), revision requested, Econometrica
(Also available as CESifo working paper 4079, and (the previous version) as IZA discussion paper 7124)     
We study unemployed workers’ decisions to change occupations, and their impact on fluctuations in aggregate unemployment and its underlying duration distribution. Facing reallocation frictions between heterogeneous labor markets (linked to their occupation), workers endogenously separate from employment and endogenously reallocate between occupations. The heterogeneous-market model yields highly volatile  countercyclical unemployment, and is simultaneously consistent with procyclical reallocation, countercyclical separations, the cyclical behavior of the unemployment duration distribution, and a negatively-sloped Beveridge curve, and other outcomes (all empirical patterns are  documented in SIPP data). The resulting patterns are  constrained efficient.   
•  Self-employment, Paid employment and Unemployment over the business cycle (2014) with Matthias Kredler and Ana Millan Tapia)  (this is an older, preliminary, version from the SED) 
The impact of uncertainty about the value of the match which is known by the firm, but not by the worker, on long-term contracts, when the worker can search on-the-job
• "Market Signaling with Frictions" (link fixed, old version)


2. Publications and Accepted Papers (refereed)
■  "Competing with Asking Prices"  (w. Ben Lester and Ronald Wolthoff)  --Theoretical Economics-- May 2017,   (earlier version May 2015 ) 
We construct an environment with a few simple, realistic ingredients and demonstrate that using an asking price is optimal:  it is the pricing mechanism that maximizes competing sellers’ revenues and it implements the efficient outcome in equilibrium.
■   "The Extent and Cyclicality of Career Changes: Evidence for the U.K." (w. Carlos Carrillo-Tudela, Bart Hobijn, and Powen She) --European Economic Review--  (May 2016, vol 84, pp 18-41, sciencedirect open access provided by the ESRC)
Using quarterly labour data for the U.K. from 1993 through 2012, we document that in an economic downturn a smaller fraction of British unemployed workers change their career when starting a new job. Moreover, the proportion of total hires that involves a career change for the worker also drops in recessions. We further investigate underlying patterns, such as which workers change careers, and which are the industries and occupations from which workers originate and to which they move. We also compare the distributions of wage gains of those who change career and those who do not, and how these distributions behave cyclically.
■  "Directed Search over the Life cycle"  (with Guido Menzio and Irina Telyukova)  --Review of Economic Dynamics-- (January 2016, vol. 19, Pages 38-62) (linked version February 2015)
                            Wages and employment transitions  over the life cycle when workers lead finite lives, move job-to-job, facing (directed) search frictions, and accumulate human capital on-the-job
■  "Unemployment Risk and Wage Differentials"  (with Roberto Pinheiro), --Journal of Economic Theory-- (May 2015,  vol. 157, pp 397-424) (linked version Sept. 2014)
When workers search on-the-job, firms with high risk of sending workers back into unemployment don't pay compensating wages in equilibrium. Identical workers who become unemployed will have higher risk of flowing back into unemployment with subsequent employers as a result.
■  "
Meeting Technologies and Optimal Trading 
 
Mechanisms in Competitive Search Markets
 " (w. Ben Lester and Ronald Wolthoff) --Journal of Economic Theory--  (Jan. 2015, vol. 155, pp 1-15) ungated version
In a market in which sellers compete by posting mechanisms, we allow for a general meeting technology and show that its properties crucially affect the mechanism that sellers select in equilibrium. We derive a novel condition on meeting technologies, which we call invariance, and show that meeting fees are equal to zero if and only if this condition is satisfied.
■   "Precautionary Demand for Money in a Business Cycle Model" (w. Irina Telyukova)     --Journal of Monetary Economics--     (Nov. 2013, 60(8)) link to earlier version
We build a model with uninsurable idiosyncratic preference shocks for `liquid' consumption, i.e. consumption that can only be bought with liquid means. We measure the extent of this uncertainty, and show that it affects the behavior of aggregates over the business cycle. 
■  "Information Acquisition and the Exclusion of Evidence in Trials" (with Ben Lester and Nicola Persico)  --Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization-- (2012, vol. 28(1) pp 163-182).
Fact-finders (jurors) have a cognitive cost of processing evidence; judges exclude evidence in order to incentivize juries to focus on other, more probative evidence
■  "Labor Market Fluctuations in the Small and in the Large" (with Richard Rogerson and Randall Wright)   --International Journal of Economic Theory-- (2009, vol. 5(1), pp 125-137) NBER WP version
nonlinearities, e.g. because of declining returns to household production, cause the elasticity of unemployment with respect to productivity to be large for small fluctuations, and smaller for larger fluctuations

This research has been supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain ( Juan de la Cierva Fellowship and project Grant ECO2010-20614), the Bank of Spain's Programa de Investigacion de Excelencia, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), award references ES/LOO9633/1 and ES/N00776X/1.

3. Publications (non-refereed) 
■  "Career Changes Decline During Recessions", FRBSF Economic Letter, 2014-09 (joint with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and Bart Hobijn)   
■  "Majority of Hires Never Report Looking For a Job" FRBSF Economic Letter, 2015-10 (with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela, Bart Hobijn and Patryk Perkowski)    
 
4. Other papers
5. WORK IN DIFFERENT STAGES OF PROGRESS 
(in the broadest sense of the word, with provisional titles, work in * has been presented already or otherwise has had some public exposure )
  • Directed Search over the business cycle and the life cycle* 
  • Occupational Reallocation, Employment and Earnings over the Business Cycle (joint with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and David Wiczer)*
    •
  • Occupational Reallocation in Canada with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and Fraser Summerfield*
  • Statistical Gender Discrimination in an equilibrium search model*  (with David Cuberes, Marc Teignier, Sevi Rodriguez-Mora)
  • Project on Job, Employment and Occupation Flows over the business cycle (with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and Bart Hobijn)
  • Project with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and Salvatore Lo Bello
  • Unemployment and Reallocation in Europe (with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela, Arantxa Crespo and Juan J. Dolado)
  • Cool Liquidity (with Sevi Rodriguez-Mora)
  • untitled project (with Raul Santaeulalia-i-Llopis, WuStL)


Grants Acknowledged:
ESRC Research Grant “Transparency in Procurement, the Design and Use of Information in Trading” (co-I, 2016-2019)
María de Maeztu grant (reference: MDM 2014-0431) 2015-2019, through the Institute of Economics, U. Carlos III de Madrid
MadEco-CM grant (reference: S2015/HUM-3444) 2016-2019, through the Institute of Economics, U. Carlos III de Madrid
Chancellor's Fellowship, The University of Edinburgh (2013-2019)
Juan de la Cierva Fellowship, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain (PI, 2011-2013)
Conference Co-organization:
MacCaLM Workshop 19-20 June 2017                             
Barcelona Summer Forum 2017 - Economic Growth and Fluctuations (funded by Barcelona GSE, MOVE, MacCaLM, Excelencia Severo Ochoa, Fundacion Ramon Araces, Ministerio Economia y Competitividad Spain)
 
Research Groups/Networks:
www.maccalm.org                                                       ---- Credit and Labour Market Foundations of the Macroeconomy (Research Project)
http://www.institutoeconomia.uc3m.es                     ---- UC3M  Institute of Economics (IE)
http://sam.univ-lemans.fr/                                          ---- Search and Matching Europe Research Group 
www.iza.org                                                                  ---- IZA Institute of Labor Economics
www.cesifo.org                                                             ----CESifo research network


OTHER LINKS:
www.madrideconomics.org                                        ----Seminar schedule for UC3M, CEMFI, Bank of Spain and FEDEA in one place


                AFFILIATIONS:
University of Edinburgh -- Professor (Personal Chair of Economics), Chancellor's Fellow
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid -- Research Affiliate
IZA -- Research Fellow
CESifo -- Network Affiliate
                CONTACT INFO:                                    
Email: ludovisschers...at... gmail...com, ludo-dot-visschers...at...ed...ac...uk

Mail addresses:
School of Economics                                                                                                                    
The University of Edinburgh                                              
30 Buccleuch  Place, EH8 9JT, Edinburgh                        
United Kingdom                                                                 




(all material on this website (c) LPV and coauthors, 2010-2017 and onwards)
[picture locations from top to bottom: La Gomera (Canarias, Spain), Gulpen (Limburg, Netherlands), Oropesa (Toledo, Spain), 
AVE-ing somewhere between Madrid and Sevilla (Spain), Castell de Guadalest (Alicante,Spain), Edinburgh - Meadows (Scotland, UK), 
Edinburgh - Waverley station)]

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