We empirically establish that one-third of job transitions leads to wage losses. Using a quantitative on-the-job search model, we find that 60 percent of them are movements down the job ladder. Accounting for them, our baseline calibration matches the large residual wage inequality in US data while attributing only 13.7 percent of overall wage inequality to the presence of search frictions in the labor market. We can trace the difference between ours and previous much higher estimates to our explicit modeling of nonvalue improving job-to-job transitions. (JEL J24, J31, J64)

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Worker churn, that is, worker flows in excess of job flows, is procyclical in the German labor market. To understand this procyclicality, we study the plant-level connection of churn and employment growth, using the new Administrative Wage and Labor Market Flow Panel from 1975 to 2014, and find that churn rises in the absolute value of employment growth. Analyzing this V-shaped churn-employment growth nexus by worker skill, age, and tenure, we establish that churn is unlikely to result from plant reorganization but rather from the correction of labor market mismatches. Using a simple dynamic labor demand framework, we argue that the crosssectional evidence on churn can be interpreted as manifestations of idiosyncratically stochastic separation shocks in conjunction with a time-to-hire friction. These shocks become larger and more predictable during booms leading to procyclical churn, which, as we show, (1) increases almost uniformly across the employment growth distribution, and (2) stems almost exclusively from job-to-job transitions. Procyclical churn, thus, reflects a more active reshuffling of workers towards individually better matches in booms.

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This paper studies the savings and employment effects of the asset means‐test in US income support programs using a structural life‐cycle model with productivity, disability, and unemployment risk. An asset means‐test incentivizes low‐income households to hold few financial assets making them vulnerable to predictable and unpredictable income changes. Moreover, it incentivizes relatively productive households that happen to have few financial assets to leave the labor force. However, it allows for relative generous transfers to households in most need. Moreover, it counteracts relatively productive households leaving the labor force after the age of 50. In terms of the welfare of an unborn household, the asset means‐test that optimally trades off these effects is $150,000, and abolishing it is close to optimal.