This paper considers the effects of wage taxes, employment subsidies and unemployment benefits in a simple model of equilibrium search. Unemployment is determined by the equality of job matchings and job separations, job vacancies are determined by a zero-profit condition and wages by a Nash bargain between the meeting firm and worker. I show that marginal wage taxes influence the firm's and worker's equilibrium sharing rule, whereas employment subsidies and unemployment benefits influence only the surplus shared. Hence, tax-financed subsidies reduce wages and raise employment and vacancies, whereas tax-financed unemployment benefits raise wages and reduce employment and vacancies.

We consider the relation between wages and productivity by means of a model based on the following assumptions. Workers live for 2 periods, firms live forever, senior workers differ nontrivially from junior, seniority enhances workers' expected second-period earnings, both firms and workers recognize the prospect of promotion and the senior-junior wage differential at the time of hiring, and firms have monopsony power in hiring junior workers. We show that senior wages are equal to the senior marginal product, but junior wages are set below the junior marginal product by an amount that depends on the elasticity of the firm's labor supply.