Separations, Sorting, and Cyclical Unemployment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mueller, Andreas I.
• 署名单位: Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; IZA Institute Labor Economics
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20121186
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 2081-2107
• 关键词: business-cycle; real wages; credit; Heterogeneity; fluctuations; duration; models; shocks; firm

摘要

This paper establishes a new fact about the compositional changes in the pool of unemployed over the US business cycle. Using micro-data from the Current Population Survey for the years 1962-2012, it documents that in recessions the pool of unemployed shifts toward workers with high wages in their previous job and that these shifts are driven by the high cyclicality of separations for high-wage workers. The paper finds that standard theories of wage setting and unemployment have difficulty in explaining these patterns and evaluates a number of alternative theories that do better in accounting for the new fact.