The Cyclical Behavior of Labor Markets

劳动力市场的周期性行为

• 批准号: 0351352
• 负责人: Robert Shimer
• 金额: $ 19.32万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2007-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0351352&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cyclical; Behavior; Labor; Markets

ABSTRACTPROPOSAL NO: 0351352INSTITUTION: University of ChicagoNSF PROGRAM: ECONOMICSPI: Shimer, Robert JTITLE: 0351352This research seeks to improve our understanding of fundamental questions at the intersection of macro and labor economics---why aggregate shocks primarily affect employment rather than wages. Search models break that question into two: (i) why do so many workers lose their job during a recession rather than take a wage cut? (ii) why don 't firms create more new job openings during recessions in anticipation of unemployed workers be willing to work at a low wage? This research focuses on the latter question, which has received relatively little attention in recent years.This research first documents the low level of vacancy creation, and consequenthigh unemployment duration, during and immediately after a recession. Research confirms that high unemployment duration has become relatively more important than high unemployment incidence during recent recessions. A robust phenomenon that needs an explanation is that unemployment duration has increased and the vacancy-unemployment ratio has fallen in every recession since World War II. Current economic theory, such as labor market search and matching models, are incapable of explaining this phenomenon. This research will develop alternative theories that can explain why vacancy creation falls so much and wages fall so little during a recession. Preliminary research has uncovered four fruitful avenues for further work that will be pursued both theoretically and empirically in this research. First, if the matching function exhibits sufficient substitutability between unemployment and vacancies, strong procyclicality of vacancies may be an optimal response of the economy to fluctuations in labor productivity. Alternatively, if unemployment and vacancies are complements, fluctuations are suboptimal and potentially very costly at business cycle frequencies. Second, if recessions are periods with low average productivity but also a high degree of worker uncertainty about actual productivity at the firm level, workers may optimally refuse to accept wage cuts despite high levels of aggregate unemployment. Third, on-the-job search may amplify and propagate shocks by changing the composition of the searching population at business cycle frequencies. Finally, time variation in the matching of heterogeneous workers to heterogeneous jobs may significantly increase exogenous shocks or induce endogenous business cycle fluctuations. This research could yield new insights into matching models that are applicable in other areas as well as lead to new mathematical tools that will be useful in economics generally. The results of this research will also help in labor market policy evaluation.

摘要提案编号：0351352 机构：芝加哥大学 NSF 项目：经济 SPI：Shimer，罗伯特 JTITLE：0351352 这项研究旨在提高我们对宏观经济学和劳动经济学交叉点的基本问题的理解——为什么总体冲击主要影响就业而不是工资。搜索模型将这个问题分为两个：（i）为什么这么多工人在经济衰退期间失业而不是接受减薪？ (ii) 为什么公司在经济衰退期间不创造更多新的就业机会，因为预期失业工人愿意以低工资工作？本研究重点关注近年来相对较少受到关注的后一个问题。本研究首先记录了经济衰退期间和刚结束后的低水平职位空缺以及随之而来的高失业持续时间。 研究证实，在最近的经济衰退期间，高失业率持续时间变得比高失业率更为重要。一个需要解释的强劲现象是，自二战以来的每一次经济衰退中，失业持续时间都会增加，空缺失业率都会下降。 当前的经济理论，例如劳动力市场搜索和匹配模型，无法解释这一现象。这项研究将开发替代理论，解释为什么经济衰退期间职位空缺创造量下降如此之多而工资下降如此之少。初步研究发现了进一步工作的四个富有成果的途径，这些途径将在本研究中从理论上和实证上进行。首先，如果匹配函数在失业和职位空缺之间表现出足够的替代性，那么职位空缺的强顺周期性可能是经济对劳动生产率波动的最优反应。 或者，如果失业和职位空缺是互补的，那么波动就不是最理想的，并且在商业周期频率下可能会付出非常高昂的代价。其次，如果经济衰退时期平均生产率较低，但工人对企业层面的实际生产率高度不确定，那么尽管总体失业率很高，工人最好还是拒绝接受减薪。第三，在职搜索可能会通过改变经济周期频率的搜索人群的构成来放大和传播冲击。最后，异质工人与异质工作匹配的时间变化可能会显着增加外生冲击或引发内生经济周期波动。这项研究可以为适用于其他领域的匹配模型提供新的见解，并带来在经济学中普遍有用的新数学工具。这项研究的结果也将有助于劳动力市场政策评估。