Aggregate labor market essays in models with heterogeneous agents

Aggregate labor market essays in models with heterogeneous agents PDF Author: Eric Richard Young
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Aggregate labor market essays in models with heterogeneous agents

Aggregate labor market essays in models with heterogeneous agents PDF Author: Eric Richard Young
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Aggregate Labor Market Issues in Models with Heterogeneous Agents

Aggregate Labor Market Issues in Models with Heterogeneous Agents PDF Author: Eric R. Young
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Essays on Agent Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics

Essays on Agent Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics PDF Author: Jose Luis Luna Alpizar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781339834788
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Heterogeneous agents models have become the norm in modern macroeconomics as the limitations of the representative-agent paradigm and the importance of studying household heterogeneity grow in recognition. Agent heterogeneity may not only be important to accurately capture the description of an aggregate equilibrium. Also, the representative agent assumption may hide many distributional effects and therefore could change the answer to many normative questions usually given by representative agent models.This dissertation contains three chapters exemplifying ways in which the consideration of heterogeneous agents in the modelling of macroeconomic phenomena has important repercussions for the predictions of the model and its normative implications. Chapters 1 and 2 show the importance of accounting for worker heterogeneity in the analysis of labor markets. Chapter 1 presents a search and matching model of unemployment with heterogeneous workers which's main features, are ex-ante worker heterogeneity and undirected search. These features enable the model to replicate the empirical correlations between labor market outcomes and proxy variables for worker productivity. The model displays job rationing, which makes it useful to understand the high levels of unemployment observed in deep recessions. It also constitutes a versatile tool for the analysis of several labor-market aspects in which worker heterogeneity could play an important role, such as the impact of employment policies that are believed to have asymmetric effects across the labor force.Chapter 2 provides an example of such applications by analyzing the effects of increments of a minimum wage. It explores theoretically and empirically the notion that minimum wages affect low-skill workers asymmetrically due to productivity differences. Using the model presented in chapter 1, with the incorporation of endogenous search intensity to account for the effects that minimum wages could have on worker participation, I show that a rising minimum wage lowers the employment and labor force participation of low-productivity workers by pricing them out of the market, while it increases the employment, participation, and wages of more productive workers that remain hirable. Chapter 2 also contains an empirical analysis that investigates and ultimately validates the model's predictions of changes in the minimum wage. Within the labor market for low-education (high school or lower) workers, increments in the minimum wage have diametrically opposed effects: they reduce the employment and labor force participation of teenagers with less than high school education, while increasing the employment and labor force participation of mature workers with high school educational attainment. A calibrated version of the model targeting the low-education labor market shows that, despite its opposite effects across the labor force, an increase in the minimum wage negatively impacts aggregate employment, labor force participation, and social welfare.Chapter 3 investigates the existence of complex dynamics in the behavior of exchange rates due heterogeneity in the expectations of their future value. A simple model of exchange rate dynamics featuring traders with heterogeneous expectations is introduced. The model is based on the asset pricing model in Brock and Hommes (1998) and features the BNN dynamic presented in Brown et al. (1950), a dynamic with desirable properties absent in other dynamics used in the literature. The chapter shows that even this simple model can easily generate complex and even chaotic dynamics in the exchange rate because of the interaction of traders with different beliefs. An important implication is that long-term exchange rate prediction is, in theory, difficult.

Essays on Labor Market with Heterogeneous Workers

Essays on Labor Market with Heterogeneous Workers PDF Author: Eunsun Gil
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The essays in my dissertation examine how economic downturn and job composition affect heterogeneous workers in the labor market. In Chapter 1, I assert that slow recovery in aggregate employment compared to aggregate output in the United States consist of jobless growth in manufacturing and information industries. I observe the industrial transition of unemployed workers to demonstrate labor reallocation triggered by a decline of middle-wage jobs. I simulate the jobless growth and vertical reallocation in general equilibrium model with sorting and optimal submarket choices. In Chapter 2, I quantify recession effect on annual labor income for heterogeneous workers. I find that low-wage workers earn less annually mostly because of lower working hours through unemployment, whereas high-wage workers lose their annual earnings primarily due to lower hourly rates of job-to-job transition. I explain decreasing layoff risk (extensive margin) and increasing wage-cut risk (intensive margin) to previous wage rate in an on-the-job search model with real business cycles. In Chapter 3, I reassess transitional dynamics of unemployment and vacancy rate in a homogeneous agents search model, by allowing sunk entry costs and discrete productivity process. The entry costs allow a positive outside option for a vacant firm so that an outside firm and vacant firm make different labor market participation and hiring choices. When economy transit between two steady-state equilibria, the vacancy rate is no more a jump variable, and an outward (inward) shift is expected before reaching a low (high) productivity equilibrium.

Essays on Heterogeneity in Labor Markets

Essays on Heterogeneity in Labor Markets PDF Author: Gonul Sengul
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employability
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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My dissertation focuses on the heterogeneity in labor markets. The first chapter proposes an explanation for the unemployment rate difference between skill groups. Low skill workers (workers without a four year college degree) have a higher unemployment rate. The reason for that " ... is mainly because they (low skill workers) are more likely to become unemployed, not because they remain unemployed longer, once unemployed" (Layard, Nickell, Jackman, 1991, p. 44). This chapter proposes an explanation for the difference in job separation probabilities between these skill groups: high skill workers have lower job separation probabilities as they are selected more effectively during the hiring process. I use a labor search model with match specific quality to quantify the explanatory power of this hypothesis on differences in job separation probabilities and unemployment rates across skill groups. The second chapter analyzes the effects of one channel of interaction (job competition) between skill groups on their labor market outcomes. Do skilled workers prefer unskilled jobs to being unemployed? If so, skilled workers compete with unskilled workers for those jobs. Job competition generates interaction between the labor market outcomes of these groups. I use a heterogeneous agents model with skilled and unskilled workers in which the only interaction across groups is the job competition. Direct effects of job competition are reducing skilled unemployment rate (since they have a bigger market) and increasing the unskilled unemployment rate (since they face greater competition). However number of vacancies respond to job competition in equilibrium. For instance, unskilled firms have incentives to open more vacancies since filling a vacancy is easier if there is job competition. Thus how unskilled unemployment and wages are affected by job competition depends on which effect dominates. The results for reasonable parameter values show that job competition does reduce the average unemployment rate. It reduces the skilled unemployment rate more, generating an increase in unemployment rate inequality. However, the employment rate at skilled jobs is unaffected. The third chapter focuses on skill biased technological change. Skill biased technological change is one of the explanations for the asymmetry between labor market outcomes of skill groups over the last few decades. However, during this time period there were also skill neutral shocks that could contribute to these outcomes. The third chapter analyzes the effects of skill biased and neutral shocks on overall labor market variables. I use a model in which skilled and unskilled outputs are intermediate goods, and final good sector receives all the shocks. A numerical exercise shows that both skilled and unskilled unemployment rates respond to shocks in the same direction. The response of unemployment rate to skill neutral shocks is bigger than the response to skill biased shocks for both skill groups. However, the unskilled unemployment changes more than the skilled unemployment rate as a response to skill neutral shocks. Thus, skill neutral shocks reduce the unemployment rate gap between skill groups.

Essays on Labor Market with Heterogeneous Workers

Essays on Labor Market with Heterogeneous Workers PDF Author: Eunsun Gil
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The essays in my dissertation examine how economic downturn and job composition affect heterogeneous workers in the labor market. In Chapter 1, I assert that slow recovery in aggregate employment compared to aggregate output in the United States consist of jobless growth in manufacturing and information industries. I observe the industrial transition of unemployed workers to demonstrate labor reallocation triggered by a decline of middle-wage jobs. I simulate the jobless growth and vertical reallocation in general equilibrium model with sorting and optimal submarket choices. In Chapter 2, I quantify recession effect on annual labor income for heterogeneous workers. I find that low-wage workers earn less annually mostly because of lower working hours through unemployment, whereas high-wage workers lose their annual earnings primarily due to lower hourly rates of job-to-job transition. I explain decreasing layoff risk (extensive margin) and increasing wage-cut risk (intensive margin) to previous wage rate in an on-the-job search model with real business cycles. In Chapter 3, I reassess transitional dynamics of unemployment and vacancy rate in a homogeneous agents search model, by allowing sunk entry costs and discrete productivity process. The entry costs allow a positive outside option for a vacant firm so that an outside firm and vacant firm make different labor market participation and hiring choices. When economy transit between two steady-state equilibria, the vacancy rate is no more a jump variable, and an outward (inward) shift is expected before reaching a low (high) productivity equilibrium.

Essays on the Impact of Technological Progress on the U.S. Labor Markets

Essays on the Impact of Technological Progress on the U.S. Labor Markets PDF Author: MUSA ORAK
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This dissertation studies the impact of technological progress on various aspects of the U.S. labor markets such as the recent decline in the labor's share of income, job and wage polarization, rising income and wealth inequalities and skill accumulation. Chapter 1, "Capital-Task Complementarity and the Decline of the U.S. Labor Share of Income," studies how changes in occupational composition of the labor force contributes to the recent decline of the US labor share of income. Following the job polarization literature and classifying labor by tasks performed, I estimate unitary elasticity between equipment capital and labor performing non-routine tasks. This implies that income loss of labor em- ployed in routine task occupations is the main driver of the decline of the aggregate labor share. For a given path of technological change, decline of the labor share is larger when: (i) the substitutability between equipment capital and routine tasks is stronger, and (ii) equip- ment capital has a larger weight in production. Furthermore, a dynamic general equilibrium model shows that the impact of permanent technology shocks on the labor share gets smaller as the fraction of routine task labor declines. Consistent with this, the model predicts that the labor share should stabilize at around 55% in the long-run even if technological progress continues at its current pace. The model also documents that the fall in relative equipment capital prices alone can explain 72% of the decline of the labor share for the 1967-2013 period. Finally, repeating the analysis by disaggregating labor into educational groups reveals that the theory based on capital-task interactions improves on the capital-skill complementarity theory in explaining the decline of the labor share. Chapter 2, "Impact of Information Technology on the Labor Share: Evidence from the U.S. Sectoral Data," contributes to the debate over the relationship between capital deep- ening and the aggregate labor share from a sectoral perspective. The study focuses on a specific group of equipment capital: information and communication technology (ICT) capital and exploits various sectoral heterogeneities to characterize the conditions under which the surge in ICT capital cause the labor share to fall. First, I document significant capital- task complementarity at each sector. Second, decline in ICT capital prices turns out to have a positive impact on the labor share. However, gains of labor devoted to non-routine task occupations are offset by the losses of labor employed in routine task occupations when a sector has: (i) initially high load of employment in routine task occupations, and (ii) weak absolute complementarity between ICT capital and labor working in occupations associated with non-routine tasks. Since sectors satisfying these two conditions have compromised the majority of the economy, the aggregate labor share has exhibited a downward trend so far, leading to the illusion that information technology has been driving the labor share downwards. However, there are two promising facts concerning the future: in one hand, the share of these sectors in value added is persistently falling and on the other hand, the share of routine task employment continues to fall at every sector. Thus, once the structural shifts and within sectoral adjustments are completed, the decline in the labor share should revert back. Chapter 3, "Job Polarization, Skill Accumulation and Wealth Inequality," is one of the first attempts in literature to incorporate the job polarization idea into an otherwise standard incomplete markets model with heterogeneous agents in two dimensions: skills and idiosyn- cratic productivity shocks. This set up allows us to contribute to the existing literature in two ways: (i) linking job polarization with rising wealth concentration, and (ii) modeling the continuous rise in skill supply in response to technological progress and job polarization accompanying it over time. When calibrated and solved for the years 1981 and 2011, the model shows that the decline in relative computer (ICT) capital prices alone accounts for a significant portion of the increases in employment share and relative wages of high skill occupations, as well as the increase in the supply of labor with a college or above-college degree. Consistent with the routinization hypothesis, the model also shows that advances in computer technology can account for most of the decline of the employment share and rela- tive wage of middle class over the three decades between 1981 and 2011. Furthermore, the model successfully captures the erosion of middle-class wealth, whereas wealth concentration rises substantially at the right tail and slightly at the left tail of the wealth distribution.

Essays on Heterogeneous Agents

Essays on Heterogeneous Agents PDF Author: Christian Bredemeier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Labor-market heterogeneity, aggregation, and the Lucas critique

Labor-market heterogeneity, aggregation, and the Lucas critique PDF Author: Yongsung Chang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic policy
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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This paper assesses biases in policy predictions due to the lack of invariance of "structural'' parameters in representative-agent models. We simulate data under various fiscal policy regimes from a heterogeneous-agents economy with incomplete asset markets and indivisible labor supply. Imperfect aggregation manifests itself through preference shocks in the estimated representative-agent model. Preference and technology parameter estimates are not invariant with respect to policy changes. As a result, the bias in the representative-agent model's policy predictions is large compared to the length of predictive intervals that reflect parameter uncertainty.

Essays in Macroeconomic Effects of Labor Market Heterogeneity and Impact of Public Policies on Labor Outcomes

Essays in Macroeconomic Effects of Labor Market Heterogeneity and Impact of Public Policies on Labor Outcomes PDF Author: Ammar Farooq
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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My dissertation explores the macroeconomic implications of heterogeneity in labor markets and the role of public policy in improving labor market efficiency. First, I aim to shed light on the importance of individual and firm level decisions in determining aggregate labor market outcomes such as the level of mismatch in worker skills and job requirements. Second, I analyze the role of public policy in affecting these decisions and hence, the economy wide aggregates.