Household Search and the Aggregate Labour Market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mankart, Jochen; Oikonomou, Rigas
• 署名单位: Deutsche Bundesbank; Universite Catholique Louvain
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdw055
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 1735-1788
• 关键词: optimal unemployment-insurance; Life-cycle model; indivisible labor; business-cycle; moral hazard; us earnings; fluctuations; equilibrium; consumption; INEQUALITY

摘要

We develop a theoretical model with labour market frictions, incomplete financial markets, and with households which have two members. Households face unemployment risks, but their members adjust their labour supplies to insure against unemployment. We use the model to explain the cyclical properties of aggregate employment and participation. As in the U.S. data, the model predicts that the participation rate (the fraction of individuals that want jobs) is not strongly correlated with aggregate economic activity. This property is in sharp contrast to the strongly procyclical participation predicted by both neoclassical models and models with search frictions, when we assume bachelor households or households with infinitely many members (complete markets). In the two-member household model and in the data, primary earners are always in the labour force, secondary earners have a mildly countercyclical participation rate, and a mildly procyclical employment rate. Their behaviour insures the household against unemployment risks.