NBER Publications by Andreas Hornstein

Standard search and matching models of equilibrium unemployment, once properly calibrated, can generate only a small amount of frictional wage dispersion, i.e., wage differentials among ex-ante similar workers induced purely by search frictions. We derive this result for a specific measure of wage dispersion -- the ratio between the average wage and the lowest (reservation) wage paid. We show that in a large class of search and matching models this statistic (the "mean-min ratio") can be obtained in closed form as a function of observable variables (i.e., the interest rate, the value of leisure, and statistics of labor market turnover). Various independent data sources suggest that actual residual wage dispersion (i.e., inequality among observationally similar workers) exceeds the model's ...