The Discrete Dynamics of Labor Demand

本项目涉及劳动力需求模型的估计，其中包括固定和二次变量调整成本。该模型将根据七家耐用品工厂的现有月度数据、航空公司的现有数据以及快餐店的新月度数据进行估算。目的是检验耐用品工厂的固定调整成本是否也反映了其他地方的调整，并推断它们是否反映了以下因素造成的成本：1)工人之间安排的中断；2)具有块状资本的工人群体的互补性；3)隐性劳动合同，在需求低迷时通过裁员来实现就业最大化。此外，将构建一个模拟一般均衡模型来检查税收和补贴的动态影响，注意到工资税率在离散需求动态下的微小变化的发生率。在劳动力需求离散调整的情况下，考察边际就业补贴和标准就业补贴的相对影响。本研究的目的是考察就业如何受到工资和产品需求变化的影响。虽然对这一普遍问题进行了大量的研究，但没有人在单个植物的水平上使用数据进行检查。因此，到目前为止，还不可能推断出决定就业如何对产出和工资变化作出反应的成本的真实结构。这是令人遗憾的，因为了解这些成本的性质将使我们能够推断可能影响调整成本的政策的可能影响，例如提前通知裁员和工厂关闭，强制列出职位空缺等。这项研究很重要，因为它应该提高我们更好地推断此类政策潜在后果的能力。

This project involves the estimation of a labor demand model which includes both fixed and quadratic variable adjustment costs. The model will be estimated with existing, monthly data for seven durable goods plants and existing data for airline firms and with new, monthly data for fast-food outlets. The goals are to examine whether the fixed adjustment costs that appear to characterize the durable-goods plants describe adjustment elsewhere and to infer whether they reflect costs stemming from: 1) Disruption of arrangements among workers; 2) Complementarity of groups of workers with lumpy capital; and 3) Implicit labor contracts that specify maximum employment with layoffs when demand is low. In addition, a simulation general equilibrium model will be constructed to examine the dynamic effects of taxes and subsidies, noting the incidence of small changes in payroll tax rates, given discrete demand dynamics. The relative impacts of marginal and standard employment subsidies will also be examined when labor demand adjusts discretely. &&The purpose of this research is to examine the how employment is affected by changes in wages and product demand. While there has been a large amount of research on this general issue, no one has examined this using data at the level of the individual plant. As result it has not been possible, up to this point, to infer the true structure of the costs that determine how employment reacts to changes in output and wages. This is regrettable because knowing the nature of these costs would allow us to infer the probable impacts of policies that could affect adjustment costs such as advanced notice of layoffs and plant closings, mandatory listing of job vacancies, and others. This research is important because it should increase our ability to better infer the potential consequences of such policies.