Human Capital and Unions in the Theory of Unemployment

失业理论中的人力资本和工会

• 批准号: 0962354
• 负责人: Robert Shimer
• 金额: $ 40.65万
• 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: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-03-15 至 2016-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0962354&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Human; Capital; Unions; Theory; Unemployment

The objective of this research is to better understand the determinants and consequences of unemployment. We will explore how shocks to industries and occupations affect the wages and unemployment rates of workers with different skills levels. In particular, we will explore the implications of the fact that individuals typically accumulate skills which are most applicable to the industries and occupations where they have worked. For unlucky workers, technological progress, adverse shifts in demand, and competition from international trade may reduce the demand for these skills. Moreover, older workers are less geographically mobile than younger workers. It follows that the skills of experienced workers are supplied inelastically and so adverse shocks will quickly lower these workers' wages. At some point, a worker may become unemployed rather than continue to work at a wage far below his historical level. In contrast, younger workers who have not accumulated specific skills and who are less tied to a geographic area are more likely to move. The risk of unemployment for skilled workers is exacerbated by labor unions, which may sustain high wages by creating a fringe of long-term unemployment among workers who are not allocated jobs. Unemployment falls as workers move from the depressed to the expanding sectors of the economy, but this adjustment process may be very slow. Accumulating skills valuable in the expanding sectors can take many years, and earning seniority in the union of the expanding sector may also be a very slow process. Therefore older workers in a currently depressed sector may be willing to wait a long time for labor market conditions to improve in their existing occupation or industry, possibly retiring before they ever return to work. This lack of reallocation of skilled workers creates the prospect of years of low wages and high unemployment rates for such workers. The final goal of this project is to explore how policies can ameliorate the adverse consequences of these shocks while encouraging workers to move towards expanding sectors of the economy when appropriate.Intellectual Merit: The PI and Co-PI propose a novel theory of unemployment. Building on techniques developed elsewhere in the economics literature, they will use analytically tractable models to examine the interaction between idiosyncratic shocks and the worker's specific human capital and seniority in the labor union. There has been relatively little work on the type of model that this project will investigate, in part because such models were previously viewed as intractable. Recent research by the PI and Co-PI has made progress on this issue. The techniques the PI and Co-PI plan to develop will also be useful for studying other economic environments where real options are important, such as the migration decision for low skilled workers, irreversible investment decisions, as well as some aspects of the housing market.Broader Impacts: The lifetime incomes of most individuals are primarily determined by labor market outcomes: how capable the individuals are of accumulating human capital and how the price of that human capital fluctuates over time are important determinants of those outcomes. In addition, for a worker who is a member of a labor union, the demand for the services provided by that union and the mechanism by which the union assigns jobs to its members significantly affects her labor market outcomes. Although union membership has declined in importance in the U.S. for several decades, recent developments suggest that unionization rates have bottomed out and are now increasing. Thus the findings of this study should be relevant for policymakers and researchers studying labor markets in particular, and macroeconomics more generally. The techniques developed here are useful in other fields in economics that study real options, including investment and finance.

这项研究的目的是更好地了解失业的决定因素和后果。 我们将探讨行业和职业的冲击如何影响不同技能水平工人的工资和失业率。 特别是，我们将探讨个人通常积累最适用于他们工作过的行业和职业的技能这一事实的影响。 对于不幸的工人来说，技术进步、需求的不利变化以及来自国际贸易的竞争可能会减少对这些技能的需求。 此外，老年工人在地域上的移动的比年轻工人少。 因此，有经验的工人的技能是无弹性地提供的，因此不利的冲击将迅速降低这些工人的工资。 在某个时候，工人可能会失业，而不是继续以远低于其历史水平的工资工作。 相比之下，没有积累特定技能、与地理区域联系较少的年轻工人更有可能流动。 技术工人的失业风险因工会而加剧，工会可能会通过在未分配工作的工人中制造长期失业的边缘来维持高工资。随着工人从萧条的经济部门转移到扩张的经济部门，失业率福尔斯下降，但这一调整过程可能非常缓慢。 在不断扩大的部门中积累宝贵的技能可能需要许多年，在不断扩大的部门中获得资历也可能是一个非常缓慢的过程。 因此，在目前不景气的行业中，年长的工人可能愿意等待很长时间，等待劳动力市场条件在他们现有的职业或行业中得到改善，可能在他们重返工作岗位之前退休。 缺乏对熟练工人的重新分配，造成了这些工人多年低工资和高失业率的前景。 本项目的最终目标是探索政策如何能够减轻这些冲击的不利后果，同时鼓励工人在适当的时候转向扩大经济部门。智力成果：PI和Co-PI提出了一种新的失业理论。基于经济学文献中其他地方开发的技术，他们将使用易于分析的模型来研究特质冲击与工人的特定人力资本和工会资历之间的相互作用。 关于本项目将研究的模型类型的工作相对较少，部分原因是这些模型以前被认为是棘手的。 PI和Co-PI最近的研究在这个问题上取得了进展。 PI和Co-PI计划开发的技术也将有助于研究其他真实的选择很重要的经济环境，例如低技能工人的移民决定，不可逆转的投资决定，以及住房市场的某些方面。更广泛的影响：大多数人的终身收入主要由劳动力市场的结果决定：个人积累人力资本的能力如何以及人力资本的价格如何随时间波动，是这些结果的重要决定因素。 此外，对于工会成员的工人来说，对工会提供的服务的需求以及工会向其成员分配工作的机制会显著影响其劳动力市场的结果。虽然几十年来工会成员在美国的重要性有所下降，但最近的事态发展表明，工会化率已经触底，现在正在上升。 因此，这项研究的结果应该与研究劳动力市场的政策制定者和研究人员有关，尤其是宏观经济学。这里开发的技术在经济学的其他领域也很有用，这些领域研究真实的选择，包括投资和金融。