In general, economic decisions are made in order to maximize individual well-being or, equivalently, to maximize the returns of these decisions to the individual. However, while taking their environment as given, the decision-makers often do not explicitly take into account what consequences their decisions have on the aggregate level. Many macroeconomic phenomena can be seen as unintended or unforeseen consequences, ‘returns’, to the decisions of rational individuals. This book presents several models in this spirit. The first part investigates the role of individual education decisions for long-term development and international differences in earnings inequality. The second part focuses on the consequences of individual search decisions on the labor market for the observed patterns of job creation.

The Author: Uwe Sunde was born in 1973 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. From 1993 to 1998, he studied economics at the University of Munich, and the University of Warwick, England, which he visited for one year. After receiving the diploma in economics (Diplom-Volkswirt) from the University of Munich, Uwe Sunde entered the in 1998. He spent the first year at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics (University of Bonn), before joining the doctoral program at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. In 2001, he returned to the University of Bonn, and worked on his dissertation, located as in-house research affiliate at the Institute for the Study of Labor ( ). Uwe Sunde received his doctoral degree from the University of Bonn in 2003. Since January 2003, he is research associate at .

: Individual Education Decisions – Life Expectancy Decisions – Education and Earnings Inequality – Individual Search Decisions – Disaggregate Matching – Strategic Hiring and Search – Unobserved Bilateral Search – Regional Mobility and Job Competition.