Unemployment and Labor Markets

本项目的目的是开发和实证检验一个“等待失业”模型，该模型旨在解释跨技能群体周期性失业的发生率，以及特定技能工人工作质量周期性变化的程度。该理论模型为阿瑟·奥肯（Arthur Okun）首次观察到的经济周期中工人向上和向下流动的现象提供了微观经济基础。该模型中对失业的处理与霍特林自然资源开采模型中对未开采的可耗尽资源的处理非常相似。该模型将用来自全国纵向调查的面板数据进行测试。该项目将对工资和“工作质量”的周期性变化程度提供新的估计，这些周期性变化是针对失业或进入劳动力市场的工人的。该理论预测，正是这些新的求职者，而不是整个劳动力，将在工作机会上经历显著的周期性变化。这个项目解决了一个重要的批评，这个批评针对的是假设非自愿失业的模型。即使在最严重的经济衰退中，大量的新工作岗位也在不断地被创造和填补。假设雇主更喜欢用最优秀的工人来填补新的工作岗位，那么在经济衰退期间，高技能的人可以很容易地挤掉低技能的工人来填补空缺。非自愿失业的简单模型错误地暗示，周期性失业的发生率将完全落在劳动力中技能最低的成员身上。这一系列研究的关键见解是，一个高质量的工人如果在经济衰退时期从事一份“低质量”（低工资）的工作，将会受到这个决定的长期影响。研究人员在之前的国家科学基金资助下进行的初步工作表明，这一假设是现实的，该理论产生了许多关于劳动力市场行为的可检验的预测。本课题对该理论进行了拓展，并进行了实证检验。

The purpose of this project is to develop and to test empirically a model of "wait unemployment" which is designed to explain both the incidence of cyclical unemployment across skill groups and also the extent of cyclical variation in job quality for workers of given skill. The theoretical model provides a microeconomic foundation for the phenomenon of upward and downward mobility of workers over the business cycle first observed by Arthur Okun. The treatment of unemployment in the model closely parallels the treatment of unextracted exhaustible resources in Hotelling's model of natural resource extraction. The model will be tested with panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey. The project will provide new estimates of the extent of cyclical variability in wages and "job quality" for workers either leaving unemployment or else entering the labor force. The theory predicts that it is these new job seekers, rather than the entire workforce, which will experience significant cyclical variation in job opportunities. This project addresses an important critique that has been levelled against models assuming involuntary unemployment. Even in the deepest recessions, substantial numbers of new jobs are constantly being created and filled. Assuming that employers prefer to fill new jobs with the highest quality workers available, highly skilled individuals can easily bump less skilled workers for the job openings which appear in recessions. Simple models with involuntary unemployment imply incorrectly that the incidence of cyclical unemployment will fall entirely on the least skilled members of the labor force. The key insight pursued in this line of research is that a high quality worker who takes a "poor quality" (low paying) job, perhaps in a recession, will suffer long term consequences from this decision. Preliminary work by the investigators under their previous NSF grant demonstrates that this assumption is realistic and the theory yields many testable predictions regarding the behavior of the labor market. This project extends the theory and tests it empirically.