Research
Work in progress
Asymmetric Shock Propagation in Segmented Labour Markets (JMP)
This paper studies how asymmetric productivity shocks propagate through the broader economy. When a single market is hit, transmission to adjacent markets operates through five channels: firms raise recruiting intensity locally, workers redirect applications toward the shocked market, origin markets gain tightness relief as their pool thins, firms in adjacent markets adjust their own recruiting in response, and workers expand total search effort throughout the network. None of these channels activate under a homogeneous shock. I build and estimate a general equilibrium model of multi-market job search with endogenous effort on both sides of the market and a bilateral skill transferability matrix that serves as the economy’s propagation kernel: workers in occupations with narrow transferability are trapped when their home market deteriorates, while those with broad transferability spread adjustment across many adjacent markets. The model is estimated on online job board and administrative data, and used to decompose shock propagation into its constituent channels and evaluate the distributional consequences of asymmetric shocks.
How does providing labour-market information to employers at the job-posting stage change job postings and hiring outcomes? Experimental evidence from French employers.
(with Sebastian Butschek, Roland Rathelot, Andreas Steinmayr, Marina Schwab)
Many firms report difficulties in filling vacancies. This project investigates whether this may be due to posted wages being too low relative to what the supply side expects, and whether recruiters are misinformed about the prevailing wage distribution. In collaboration with a major French job board, we evaluate the results of a randomised experiment that provides recruiters with information on local labour market wages at the job-posting stage. The intervention relies on an interactive tool, developed by the job board, which displays a vacancy’s posted wage position within the distribution of posted wages in the same local labour market. The results of this experiment will shed light on the extent to which recruiter misinformation about the wage distribution distorts both vacancy postings and the job-matching process.
Wishing to Work More? Preferences, Constraints, and Hours Worked
(with Naomi Cohen and Nicolas Ghio)
Using data from the French Labor Force Survey, we show that 21.2% of workers experience an hours gap, meaning they work fewer hours than they would prefer at their current wage. This stands in sharp contrast to recent evidence from Germany, where most workers report being overworked. In France, hours gaps are concentrated among low-income part-time workers and remain stable over time. We argue that cross-country differences in labor market institutions — including minimum wage policies, working-time regulations, and unemployment insurance — are central to shaping both realized hours and the distribution of hours gaps. While hours gaps appear inefficient in standard labor supply models, they may reflect constrained-efficient outcomes in the presence of frictions. Understanding the mechanisms that generate hours gaps is crucial for evaluating the welfare effects of hours- based policy interventions.