Unemployment Cycles

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Eeckhout, Jan; Lindenlaub, Ilse
• 署名单位: Pompeu Fabra University; University of London; University College London; Yale University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20180105
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 175-234
• 关键词: wage dispersion; search; cyclicality; BEHAVIOR; workers

摘要

The labor market by itself can create cyclical outcomes, even in the absence of exogenous shocks. We propose a theory in which the search behavior of the employed has profound aggregate implications for the unemployed. There is a strategic complementarity between active on-the-job search and vacancy posting by firms, which leads to multiple equilibria: in the presence of sorting, active on-the-job search improves the quality of the pool of searchers. This encourages vacancy posting, which in turn makes costly on-the-job search more attractive-a self-fulfilling equilibrium. The model provides a rationale for the Jobless Recovery, the outward shift of the Beveridge curve during the boom and for pro-cyclical frictional wage dispersion. Central to the model's mechanism is the fact that the employed crowd out the unemployed when on-the-job search picks up during recovery. We also illustrate this mechanism in a stylized calibration exercise.