NBER Publications by Leena Rudanko

We analyze a labor market with search and matching frictions where wage setting is controlled by a monopoly union. We take a benevolent view of the union, assuming it to care equally about employed and unemployed workers, to treat identical workers in identical jobs the same, as well as to be fully rational, taking job creation into account when making its wage demands. Under these assumptions, if the union is able to fully commit to future wages, it achieves an efficient level of long-run unemployment. In the short run, however, the union raises current wages above the efficient level, in order to appropriate surpluses from firms with existing matches. The union wage policy is thus time-inconsistent. Without commitment, and in a Markov-perfect equilibrium, not only is unemployment well ab...

Firms spend substantial resources on marketing and selling. Interpreting this as evidence of frictions in product markets, which require firms to spend resources on customer acquisition, this paper develops a search theoretic model of firm dynamics in frictional product markets. Introducing search frictions generates long-term customer relationships, rendering the customer base a state variable for firms, which is sluggish to adjust. This affects: the level and volatility of firm investment, sales, profits, value and markups, the timing of firm responses to shocks, and the relationship between investment and Tobin’s q. We document support for these predictions in firm-level data from Compustat, using cross-industry variation in selling expenses to quantify differences in the degree of fric...