Business Volatility, Job Destruction and Unemployment

Business Volatility, Job Destruction and Unemployment PDF Author: Steven J. Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in the job destruction rate and the volatility of firm-level employment growth rates. We interpret this decline as a decrease in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks, a key parameter in search and matching models of unemployment. According to these models, a lower intensity of idiosyncratic shocks produces less job destruction, fewer workers flowing through the unemployment pool and less frictional unemployment. To evaluate the importance of this theoretical mechanism, we relate industry-level unemployment flows from 1977 to 2005 to industry-level indicators for the intensity of idiosyncratic shocks. Unlike previous research, we focus on the lower frequency relationship of job destruction and business volatility to unemployment flows. We find strong evidence that declines in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks drove big declines in the incidence and rate of unemployment. This evidence implies that the unemployment rate has become much less sensitive to cyclical movements in the job-finding rate.

Business Volatility, Job Destruction and Unemployment

Business Volatility, Job Destruction and Unemployment PDF Author: Steven J. Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in the job destruction rate and the volatility of firm-level employment growth rates. We interpret this decline as a decrease in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks, a key parameter in search and matching models of unemployment. According to these models, a lower intensity of idiosyncratic shocks produces less job destruction, fewer workers flowing through the unemployment pool and less frictional unemployment. To evaluate the importance of this theoretical mechanism, we relate industry-level unemployment flows from 1977 to 2005 to industry-level indicators for the intensity of idiosyncratic shocks. Unlike previous research, we focus on the lower frequency relationship of job destruction and business volatility to unemployment flows. We find strong evidence that declines in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks drove big declines in the incidence and rate of unemployment. This evidence implies that the unemployment rate has become much less sensitive to cyclical movements in the job-finding rate.

Business Volatility, Job Destruction, and Unemployment

Business Volatility, Job Destruction, and Unemployment PDF Author: Steven J. Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Unemployment inflows fell from 4 percent of employment per month in the early 1980s to 2 percent or less by the mid 1990s and thereafter. U.S. data also show a secular decline in the job destruction rate and the volatility of firm-level employment growth rates. We interpret this decline as a decrease in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks, a key parameter in search and matching models of unemployment. According to these models, a lower intensity of idiosyncratic shocks produces less job destruction, fewer workers flowing through the unemployment pool and less frictional unemployment. To evaluate the importance of this theoretical mechanism, we relate industry-level unemployment flows from 1977 to 2005 to industry-level indicators for the intensity of idiosyncratic shocks. Unlike previous research, we focus on the lower frequency relationship of job destruction and business volatility to unemployment flows. We find strong evidence that declines in the intensity of idiosyncratic labor demand shocks drove big declines in the incidence and rate of unemployment. This evidence implies that the unemployment rate has become much less sensitive to cyclical movements in the job-finding rate.

Business Volatility, Job Destruction Ans Umemployment

Business Volatility, Job Destruction Ans Umemployment PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Book Description


Economic Turbulence

Economic Turbulence PDF Author: Clair Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226076342
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Every day, in every sector of our economy, a business shuts down while another starts up, jobs are created while others are cut, and workers are hired while others are laid off. This constant flux, or turbulence, is a defining characteristic of our free market system, yet it mostly inspires angst about unemployment, loss of earnings, and the overall competitiveness of corporations. But is this endless cycle of fluctuation really so bad for America? Might something positive be going on in the economy as a result of it? In this penetrating work, three esteemed economists seek to answer these questions by exploring the real impact of volatility on American workers and businesses alike. According to the authors, while any number of events--shifts in consumer demand, changes in technology, mergers and acquisitions, or increased competition--can contribute to economic turbulence, our economy as a whole is, by and large, stronger for it, because these processes of creation and destruction make it more flexible and adaptable. The authors also acknowledge and document the adverse consequences of this turbulence on different groups of workers and firms and discuss the resulting policy challenges. Basing their argument on an up-close look into the dealings and practices of five key industries—financial services, retail food services, trucking, semiconductors, and software—the authors demonstrate the positive effects of turbulence on career paths, employee earnings, and firm performance. The first substantial attempt to disentangle and make clear the complexities of this phenomenon in the United States, Economic Turbulence will be viewed as a major achievement and the centerpiece of any discussion on the subject for years to come.

Labor, Credit, and Goods Markets

Labor, Credit, and Goods Markets PDF Author: Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262036452
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
An integrated framework to study the theoretical and quantitative properties of economies with frictions in labor, financial, and goods markets. This book offers an integrated framework to study the theoretical and quantitative properties of economies with frictions in multiple markets. Building on analyses of markets with frictions by 2010 Nobel laureates Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen, and Christopher A. Pissarides, which provided a new theoretical approach to search markets, the book applies this new paradigm to labor, finance, and goods markets. It shows, in particular, how frictions in different markets interact with each other. The book first covers the main developments in the analysis of the labor market in the presence of frictions, offering a systematic analysis of the dynamics of this environment and explaining the notion of macroeconomic volatility. Then, building on the generality and simplicity of the search analysis, the book adapts it to other markets, developing the tools and concepts to analyze friction in these markets. The book goes beyond the traditional general equilibrium analysis of markets, which is often frictionless. It begins with the standard analysis of a single market, and then sequentially integrates more markets into the analysis, progressing from labor to financial to goods markets. Along the way, the book provides a number of useful results and insights, including the existence of a direct link between search frictions and the degree of volatility in the economy.

Labor Markets and Business Cycles

Labor Markets and Business Cycles PDF Author: Robert Shimer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400835232
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Labor Markets and Business Cycles integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions--the cost of a job search--act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. Developing detailed search and matching models, Labor Markets and Business Cycles will be the main reference for those interested in the intersection of labor market dynamics and business cycle research.

Equilibrium Job Turnover and the Business Cycle

Equilibrium Job Turnover and the Business Cycle PDF Author: Carlos Carrillo-Tudela
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business cycles
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
This paper develops and estimates a fully microfounded equilibrium business cycle model of the US labor market with aggregate productivity shocks. Those microfoundations are consistent with evidence regarding the underlying distribution of firm growth rates across firms [by age and size] and, when aggregated, are consistent with macro-evidence regarding gross job creation and job destruction flows over the cycle. By additionally incorporating on-the-job search, we systematically characterise the stochastic relationships between aggregate job creation and job destruction flows across firms, gross hire and quit flows [churning] by workers across firms, as well as the persistence and volatility of unemployment and worker job finding rates over the cycle.

How to Solve the Lack of Volatility in the Standard MP Model

How to Solve the Lack of Volatility in the Standard MP Model PDF Author: Kathrin Tiecke
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640801032
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject Economics - Macro-economics, general, grade: 2,3, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Wirtschaftstheorie II (Makro)), course: Arbeitsmarktökonomik, language: English, abstract: The standard search and matching model (D. Mortensen and C.Pissarides,1994; Pissarides, 2000) has been recently challanged by many economists. The Mortensen-Pissarides (1994) model in general says that it takes time to match jobs and workers, which causes unemployment as an outcome of market frictions. The volatility of unemployment fluctuations in the model is not corresponding to the baseline calibration that R. Shimer (2005) has found for the US data. Many authors modified the model in order to solve this lack of volatility. First I introduce the Mortensen-Pissarides model to refer in the second part to the models parameters. Next, I present solutions found by Hall (2005) who solves the model via rigid wage setting and Hagedorn and Manovskii(2005) who provide a small surplus calibration to overcome the lack in volatility of the labor market variables. According to the so called "Shimer Puzzle" I will present shortly the findings of Gartner, Merkl and Rothe (2009), who calibrate the key labor market variables over the business cycle for the West-German labor market. Further I introduce Morensen and Nagypál (2007) publications on an amneded version of the model and a model with endogenous separations.

Producer Dynamics

Producer Dynamics PDF Author: Timothy Dunne
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226172570
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 623

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Book Description
The Census Bureau has recently begun releasing official statistics that measure the movements of firms in and out of business and workers in and out of jobs. The economic analyses in Producer Dynamics exploit this newly available data on establishments, firms, and workers, to address issues in industrial organization, labor, growth, macroeconomics, and international trade. This innovative volume brings together a group of renowned economists to probe topics such as firm dynamics across countries; patterns of employment dynamics; firm dynamics in nonmanufacturing industries such as retail, health services, and agriculture; employer-employee turnover from matched worker/firm data sets; and turnover in international markets. Producer Dynamics will serve as an invaluable reference to economists and policy makers seeking to understand the links between firms and workers, and the sources of economic dynamics, in the age of globalization.

Optimal Unemployment Insurance

Optimal Unemployment Insurance PDF Author: Andreas Pollak
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161493041
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Designing a good unemployment insurance scheme is a delicate matter. In a system with no or little insurance, households may be subject to a high income risk, whereas excessively generous unemployment insurance systems are known to lead to high unemployment rates and are costly both from a fiscal perspective and for society as a whole. Andreas Pollak investigates what an optimal unemployment insurance system would look like, i.e. a system that constitutes the best possible compromise between income security and incentives to work. Using theoretical economic models and complex numerical simulations, he studies the effects of benefit levels and payment durations on unemployment and welfare. As the models allow for considerable heterogeneity of households, including a history-dependent labor productivity, it is possible to analyze how certain policies affect individuals in a specific age, wealth or skill group. The most important aspect of an unemployment insurance system turns out to be the benefits paid to the long-term unemployed. If this parameter is chosen too high, a large number of households may get caught in a long spell of unemployment with little chance of finding work again. Based on the predictions in these models, the so-called "Hartz IV" labor market reform recently adopted in Germany should have highly favorable effects on the unemployment rates and welfare in the long run.