Cyclical growth in a Goodwin–Kalecki–Marx model

This paper presents a disequilibrium macrodynamic model that incorporates certain elements from Goodwin (the dynamics of the rate of employment and income distribution), Kalecki (an investment function independent of savings, and mark-up pricing in oligopolistic goods markets), and Marx (the reserve-army and reserve-army-creation effects). The model has a system of differential equations for the rate of utilization, profit share, and rate of employment. We show that there exist limit cycles that depend on the sizes of the reserve-army effect and reserve-army-creation effect. This implies that there exists a situation in which the economy experiences endogenous and perpetual growth cycles. Moreover, we show that if the stable long-run equilibrium corresponds to the profit-led growth regime, an increase in the bargaining power of workers increases the rate of unemployment; conversely, if the equilibrium corresponds to the wage-led growth-regime, an increase in the bargaining power of workers decreases the rate of unemployment.     

Conflict,growth, distribution,and employment: a long-run Kaleckian model

This paper presents a Kaleckian growth model in which (i) the rate of capacity utilization, the profit share, and the rate of employment are adjusted in the medium run, and (ii) the normal rate of capacity utilization and the expected rate of capital accumulation are adjusted in the long run. The long-run equilibrium is a continuum of equilibria and is characterized by hysteresis in that the long-run position of the economy depends on where it starts. An increase in the bargaining power of workers lowers the rate of unemployment in both the medium-run and the long-run equilibrium.     

Economic growth,structural change,and search unemployment

Economic growth is driven by structural change. Structural change does not come without a cost. The most evident social cost of structural change is high and persistent unemployment. This paper develops a model with an endogenously expanding service sector, where the constant flow of workers in and out of employment leads to structural unemployment. The main finding is that the level of unemployment is different between the initial period and the long-run equilibrium growth path, and that along the transition path, the level of unemployment will overshoot its equilibrium level, which can explain the long-run pattern of unemployment in most industrialized countries.      

Labor market dynamics in urban China and the role of the state sector

This paper studies the effect of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) on the dynamics of the Chinese urban labor market. Using longitudinally matched monthly panel data, we document very low labor force dynamics in the state sector, which leads to a high long-term unemployment rate. We develop and estimate an equilibrium search and matching model with three differences between the state and non-state sectors: labor productivity, labor adjustment cost, and workers’ bargaining power. Counterfactual analysis shows that, among the three channels, reducing the bargaining power of state sector workers is most effective in reducing unemployment duration and unemployment rate.     

Globalization and labor market outcomes: Wage bargaining, search frictions, and firm heterogeneity

We introduce search unemployment into Melitz's trade model. Firms' monopoly power on product markets leads to strategic wage bargaining. Solving for the symmetric equilibrium we show that the selection effect of trade influences labor market outcomes. Trade liberalization lowers unemployment and raises real wages as long as it improves average productivity. We show that this condition is likely to be met by a reduction in variable trade costs or by entry of new trading countries. Calibrating the model shows that the long-run impact of trade openness on the rate of unemployment is negative and quantitatively significant.     

A Schumpeterian model of equilibrium unemployment and labor turnover

This paper constructs a general equilibrium model of equilibrium unemployment by combining an endogenous growth model with a variant of equilibrium search theory. The analysis offers two explanations for the causes of widening wage gap between skilled and less-skilled labor, and rising unemployment rate among the less skilled: technological change in the form of an increase in the size of innovations or skilled labor saving technological change in R&D activity. In addition, the model identifies two distinct effects of faster technological progress on the aggregate unemployment rate. First, it increases the rate of labor turnover and therefore increases the aggregate unemployment rate – the creative destruction effect. Second, it creates R&D jobs, which offer workers complete job security, and consequently reduces the aggregate unemployment rate – the resource reallocation effect.     

Wage bargaining and turnover costs with heterogenous labor and perfect history screening

We study effects of mobility costs in a model of (Nash) wage bargaining between workers and firms, with instantaneous matching, heterogeneous workers, identical firms and free firm entry, and where firms can screen workers perfectly according to their previous work history but not their actual productivity. We derive the employment level and the minimum worker quality standard, in the market solution, and in the efficient solution established by a social planner. When workers have positive bargaining power, there is always some inefficient unemployment among desired workers in the market solution. The lowest hiring standard chosen by firms is higher than the planner's standard when firing costs are high relative to hiring costs, but may be lower in the opposite case. We show that any higher established hiring standard corresponds to a market equilibrium. The model explains a tendency for a high initial unemployment rate to remain high, particularly for low-skilled workers.     

Bargaining over productivity and wages when technical change is induced: implications for growth, distribution, and employment

I study a model of growth and income distribution in which workers and firms bargain à la Nash (Econometrica 18(2):155–162, 1950) over wages and productivity gains, taking into account the trade-offs faced by firms in choosing factor-augmenting technologies. The aggregate environment resulting from self-interested, objective function-maximizing decision rules on wages, productivity gains, savings and investment, is described by a two-dimensional dynamical system in the employment rate and output/capital ratio. The economy converges cyclically to a long-run equilibrium involving a Harrod-neutral profile of technical change, a constant rate of employment of labor, and constant input shares. The type of oscillations predicted by the model is qualitatively consistent with the available data on the United States (1963–2003), replicates the dynamics found in earlier models of growth cycles such as Goodwin (A growth cycle, in C.H. Feinstein (ed). Socialism, Capitalism and Economic Growth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1967. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967); Shah and Desai (Econ J 91:1006–1010, 1981); van der Ploeg (J Macroecon 9:1–12, 1987); Flaschel (J Econ: Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 44:63–69, 1984) and Sportelli (J Econ: Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 61(1):35–64, 1995), and can be verified numerically in simulations. Institutional change, as captured by variations in workers’ bargaining power, has a positive effect on the long-run rate of growth of output per worker but a negative effect on long-run employment. Economic policy can also affect the growth and distribution pattern through changes in the unemployment compensation, which also have a positive long-run impact on labor productivity growth but a negative long-run impact on employment. In both cases, employment can overshoot its new equilibrium value along the transitional dynamics.     

Labour Market Policies and Long-term Unemployment in a Flow Model of the Australian Labour Market

This paper develops a general equilibrium job matching model, which is used to assess the impact of active labour market policies, reductions in unemployment benefits and reductions in worker bargaining power on long-term unemployment and other key macro variables. The model is calibrated using Australian data. Simulation experiments are conducted through impulse response analysis. The simulations suggest that active labour market programs (ALMPs) targeted at the long-term unemployed have a small net impact and produce adverse spillover effects on short-term unemployment. Reducing the level of unemployment benefits relative to wages and worker bargaining power have more substantial effects on total and long-term unemployment and none of the spillover effects of ALMPs.     

Wage bargaining and induced technical change in a linear economy: Model and application to the US (1963–2003)

In a simple one-sector, two-class, fixed-proportions economy operating at full capacity, wages are set through generalized axiomatic bargaining à la Nash (1950). As for choice of technology, firms choose the direction of factor-augmenting innovations to maximize the rate of unit cost reduction (Kennedy, 1964, Funk, 2002). The aggregate environment resulting by self-interested decisions made by economic agents is described by a two-dimensional dynamical system in the employment rate and output/capital ratio. The economy converges cyclically to a long-run equilibrium involving a Harrod-neutral profile of technical change, a constant rate of employment of labor, and constant input shares. The type of oscillations predicted by the model matches qualitatively the available data on the United States (1963–2003). Institutional change, as captured by variations in workers’ bargaining power, has a positive effect on the rate of output growth but a negative effect on employment.     

Capital Expansion, Endogenous Growth and Equilibrium Unemployment

A model is developed, which captures the interactions of unemployment and economic growth in general equilibrium. The economy evolves along a correct-expectations equilibrium path exhibiting endogenous job rationing, and productivity growth is driven by installation of new capital. Under the maintained hypothesis that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour is less than unity, unemployment benefits are shown to shift up the whole path of equilibrium unemployment, leaving the economy with a higher natural rate of unemployment and lowering the long-run growth rate permanently. Investment tax credits financed by lump sum taxes on total income are capable of lowering the natural rate and raising the economy's growth rate.     

Endogenous Growth and Equilibrium Unemployment in a North–South Model

A North–South model is developed which incorporates an endogenous rate of equilibrium unemployment in the North in the context of long-run growth. It is shown how increases in the size of public debt and unemployment compensation financed by payroll taxation, all measured relative to productivity, raise the Northern natural rate of unemployment and, consequently, reduce the global rate of long-run growth. The effect of the shocks is also to drive down the rate of employment expansion in the South. A set of the fundamental determinants of the world terms of trade is obtained, which includes policy parameters.     

Energy conservation, unemployment and the direction of technical change

This paper extends the model by Smulders and de Nooij (Resour Energy Econ 25:59–79, 2003), where technical change can be biased towards labour or energy, by assuming a monopolistic union and a government which pays unemployment benefits, collects wage taxes and sells emission permits. The extended model is applied to the analysis of environmental tax reforms. A reduction in the level of energy use yields a double dividend by lowering pollution and unemployment, while temporarily inducing energy-saving technical change. It moves the economy to a new balanced growth path where unemployment is permanently lower, but long-run growth is not affected. A reduction in the growth rate of energy use induces a persistent bias in technical change towards labour and reduces long-run growth.     

Trade, Wages and Unemployment in the Presence of Hiring and Firing Costs

This paper offers a new explanation of the recent Australian wage inequality and unemployment experience. Building on a standard international trade model, it is argued that trade affects wage inequality and unemployment through changes in the bargaining power of different groups of workers in the presence of hiring and firing costs. This allows previously puzzling aspects of the trends to be explained, including the inconsistency of the existing Stolper-Samuelson trade explanation with rising relative skilled wages at the same time as rising skilled labour intensity of production. Considering differences in labour market institutions, in particular hiring and firing costs and minimum wages, allows differences between the experiences of Australia, the USA and Europe to be explained.     

A Search Model of Unemployment and Inflation*

This paper introduces money into the standard labor‐matching model. A double‐coincidence problem makes money necessary as a medium of exchange. In the long run, a rise in the growth rate of money leads to higher inflation and higher unemployment, such that the long‐run Phillips curve is not vertical. The optimal monetary growth rate decreases with greater worker bargaining power, the level of unemployment benefits, and the payroll tax rate.     

BIASED TECHNOLOGICAL SHOCKS, RELATIVE WAGE RIGIDITIES AND LOW-SKILLED UNEMPLOYMENT

The contrast between the evolution over the last decades of the European Union (EU) and the US unemployment rates, especially for the low-skilled, is well known. A consensus view is that these different outcomes can be explained by the interactions between common shocks and specific institutional setups. In this paper, we emphasize the interactions between technological changes and wages rigidities. We construct a fully calibrated general equilibrium model with two types of jobs and two types of workers, and with search unemployment. Our simulations show that with wage rigidities, technological changes suffice to generate a continuous rise in the low-skilled unemployment rate and an almost unchanged high-skilled unemployment rate. Without wage rigidities, the unemployment rates remain unchanged but the wage dispersion widens.     

Capacity Utilization,Foreign Portfolio Investment and International Debts and Deficits

This paper develops a long-run equilibrium growth model, in the tradition of Keynes, Kalecki and Steindl, involving international capital flows between a debtor and a creditor country, and in which capacity utilization is variable. This latter assumption implies that the shares of savings by capitalists and workers will vary with capacity utilization. Profit rates will also vary with capacity utilization rates, so that the establishment of a common warranted rate of growth requires that the rates of profit in the creditor and the debtor countries must vary inversely. The long-run equilibrium shares of ownership of the two stocks of capital must therefore vary as the utilization rates vary. Taking the international interest rate as given, steady growth in each country at near full employment is shown to be accommodated, to some extent, through variations in the degree of capacity utilization. Even if income distribution remains unchanged, the variability of capacity utilization allows the existence of a range of growth rates consistent with the long-run equilibrium conditions of the model.     

Bargaining power, effective demand and technical progress: a Kaleckian model of growth

Following the Kaleckian tradition, this paper presents a demand-ledgrowth model in which the distribution of income is fully endogenised.This is done by introducing claims on income by workers andfirms. The bargaining power of these two groups affects, throughdistribution, the patterns of accumulation and inflation. Inturn, the bargaining power of workers is affected by the rateof change of employment. The paper discusses the model's static and dynamic implications,including the effects of exogenous and induced technical progress.The model confirms all the typical Kaleckian results, includingthe fact that increases in real wages may lead to acceleratingaccumulation as well as inflation. It also produces a new result:it is possible that an increase in the rate of change of labourproductivity may not lead to an increase in the rate of changeof employment.     

International Financial Liberalization, Corruption, and Economic Growth

This paper examines the effects of capital account liberalization on the long-run growth of a developing economy. A general-equilibrium, endogenous growth model is constructed in which corruption forms an integral part of the governance system of the country. By undermining the profitability of innovations, corruption lowers the rate of return to capital and reduces the rate of technological change. The impact of international financial liberalization on long-run growth in this model can be either positive or negative. A drop in growth is obtained when the level of corruption is high enough to cause domestic rates of return to capital before liberalization to drop below those in the rest of the world. In this case, liberalization generates capital outflows, which act as a constraining force on innovation, reducing the rate of technological change and lowering output growth. On the other hand, if the level of corruption is sufficiently low, the capital account liberalization will serve as a boost to the country's technical change and growth.     

On-the-job search and strategic bargaining

This paper studies wage bargaining in a simple economy in which both employed and unemployed workers search for better jobs. The axiomatic Nash bargaining solution and standard strategic bargaining solutions are inapplicable because the set of feasible payoffs is nonconvex. I instead develop a strategic model of wage bargaining between a single worker and firm that is applicable to such an environment. I show that if workers and firms are homogeneous, there are market equilibria with a continuous wage distribution in which identical firms bargain to different wages, each of which is a subgame perfect equilibrium of the bargaining game. If firms are heterogeneous, I characterize market equilibria in which more productive firms pay higher wages. I compare the quantitative predictions of this model with Burdett and Mortensen's [1998. Wage differentials, employer size and unemployment. International Economic Review 39, 257-273.] wage posting model and argue that the bargaining model is theoretically more appealing along important dimensions.