Studies on Cyclical Behavior in the Labor Market
Title | Studies on Cyclical Behavior in the Labor Market PDF eBook |
Author | Jang Hwan Park |
Publisher | |
Pages | 282 |
Release | 1984 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The Cyclical Behavior of Industrial Labor Markets
Title | The Cyclical Behavior of Industrial Labor Markets PDF eBook |
Author | Ben Bernanke |
Publisher | |
Pages | 90 |
Release | 1984 |
Genre | Business cycles |
ISBN |
This paper studies the cyclical behavior of a number of industrial labor markets of the pre-war (1923-1939) and post-war (1954-1982) eras. In the spirit of Burns and Mitchell we do not test a specific structural model of the labor market but instead concentrate on describing the qualitative features of the (monthly, industry-level) data.The two principal questions we ask are: First, how is labor input (as measured by the number of workers, the hours of work, and the intensity of utilization) varied over the cycle ? Second, what is the cyclical behaviorof labor compensation (as measured by real wages, product wages, and real weekly earnings) ? We study these questions in both the frequency domain and the time domain. Many of our findings simply reinforce, or perhaps refine, existing perceptions of cyclical labor market behavior. However, we do find some interesting differences between the pre-war and the post-war periods in ther elative use of layoffs and short hours in downturns, and in the cyclical behavior of the real wage.
Labor Markets and Business Cycles
Title | Labor Markets and Business Cycles PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Shimer |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 189 |
Release | 2010-04-12 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 1400835232 |
Labor Markets and Business Cycles integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions--the cost of a job search--act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. Developing detailed search and matching models, Labor Markets and Business Cycles will be the main reference for those interested in the intersection of labor market dynamics and business cycle research.
Empirical Studies of Cyclical Labor Market Fluctuations in the Postwar United States
Title | Empirical Studies of Cyclical Labor Market Fluctuations in the Postwar United States PDF eBook |
Author | John S. Earle |
Publisher | |
Pages | 324 |
Release | 1988 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market
Title | The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market PDF eBook |
Author | Domenico Ferraro |
Publisher | |
Pages | 47 |
Release | 2016 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The U.S. employment rate fluctuates asymmetrically over the business cycle: it contracts deeply and sharply during recessions, but it recovers slowly and gradually during expansions. By contrast, output features nearly symmetric fluctuations. I explain these facts using a search-and-matching model with worker heterogeneity in skills. The model identifies endogenous job separation and cyclical fluctuations in the composition of the unemployment pool as key driving forces of the asymmetric cyclical behavior of the U.S. labor market and output.
The Cyclical Behavior of Job Creation and Job Destruction
Title | The Cyclical Behavior of Job Creation and Job Destruction PDF eBook |
Author | Jeremy Greenwood |
Publisher | London, Ont. : Department of Economics, University of Western Ontario |
Pages | 42 |
Release | 1994 |
Genre | Business cycles |
ISBN |
The Labor Market and Business Cycle Theories
Title | The Labor Market and Business Cycle Theories PDF eBook |
Author | Piero Ferri |
Publisher | Springer Science & Business Media |
Pages | 200 |
Release | 1989 |
Genre | Business cycles |
ISBN |
This book is primarily a critical survey of small-case, theoretical macro models that attempts to analyze the cyclical behavior of modern economies. The authors emphasize the role of the labor market, which is treated very differently in such models. They show how the development of business cycle models owes almost as much to the development of analytic methods as to the economic events that make analysis necessary; this leads to the examination of the changing nature of the mathematical tools that have been used by business cycle theorists. They give examples of how these newer tools can deal with nonlinear models that are capable of generating a richer variety of dynamic outcomes than was possible with linear models. The treatment of these topics does not require a strong background in mathematics and the authors' goal is to call attention to the new methods and provide examples of the results that are possible with them rather than to teach those methods in detail. In addition to the survey material, they describe a regime switching model of their own that is capable of generating cyclical behavior. This model is greatly influenced by its labor market component, in which a nonlinearity is introduced through the device of switching between linear behavioral equations. The model is analyzed analytically and with simulation experiments.