New evidence, old puzzles: Technology shocks and labor market dynamics

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Balleer, Almut
• 署名单位: RWTH Aachen University; Stockholm University
• 刊物名称: QUANTITATIVE ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1759-7323
• DOI: 10.3982/QE35
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 363-392
• 关键词: Labor market dynamics; technology shocks; structural VAR; search and matching; business cycle

摘要

Can the standard search-and-matching labor market model replicate the business cycle fluctuations of the job finding rate and the unemployment rate? In the model, these fluctuations are driven by movements in productivity. This paper investigates the sources of productivity fluctuations that are commonly interpreted as technology shocks. I estimate different types of technology shocks from structural vector autoregressions and reassess the empirical performance of the standard model based on second moments that are conditional on technology and nontechnology (preference) shocks. Most prominently, the model is able to replicate the conditional volatilities of job finding and unemployment. However, it fails to replicate the correlation of productivity with unemployment and job finding that is conditional on both technology and nontechnology shocks.