Search Theory and the Housing Market

This dissertation contains three essays that study markets with search friction for labor and houses. The first essay focuses on the standard search and matching model of the labor market and explores the quantitative impact on welfare of different assumptions about bargaining power. The second essay presents a simple model that analyzes the dynamics of house prices, rents and vacancies in the housing market. Based on the theoretical work in the second essay, the third chapter provides an equilibrium framework to study recent empirical observations in the U.S. housing market.