Wage rigidity and destabilizing spirals

This paper investigates the impact of real wage rigidity on the (de)stabilizing role of demand feedback. I show that destabilizing supply–demand feedback driven by countercyclical precautionary savings demand against uninsured unemployment risk is fundamentally a matter of rigid real wage adjustments over business cycles. Given the estimated wage rigidity consistent with aggregate labor market dynamics in the United States, the quantitative results suggest that the unemployment risk channel has a minor impact on aggregate volatility.     

The Balassa-Samuelson model with job separations

We incorporate sectoral job separation rates in a small open economy model to examine the Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) effect. Unequal separation rates give rise to compensating wage differentials. We simulate the model for Japan and replicate a feature of its economy that the nontradeables sector has higher wages and a higher separation rate compared to the tradeables sector. With productivity growth in the tradeables sector, labour moves from the tradeables sector to the nontradeables sector if tradeables and nontradeables are complements in consumption. The B-S effect is dampened. With a higher separation rate in the nontradeables sector, higher wages in the nontradeables sector amplifies this labour movement. Nevertheless, unemployment always falls due to a positive income effect. In contrast, the effect of productivity growth in the nontradeables sector is to lower the real exchange rate and raise unemployment.     

Human capital heterogeneity of the unemployed and jobless recoveries

The jobless recovery enigma remains largely unsolved. As a special case of broader unemployment, the term “jobless recovery” describes an economic recovery where output recovers—and even expands—yet employment growth remains anemic. While the effects of these prolonged recoveries are significant—from increased crime to a lifetime reduction in wages—they are not well understood. Building on the insights of labor market matching models that incorporate heterogeneity among workers, this paper sheds light on jobless recoveries, developing a first-of-its-kind index of human capital heterogeneity for the unemployed, and testing that index using of a Structural Vector Autoregression. I demonstrate that the extent to which unemployed human capital is heterogeneous and specific, rather than homogeneous and general, plays a key and under-appreciated role in the labor market; increases in human capital heterogeneity can account for between one-quarter to three-quarters of the joblessness of the past three recoveries in the pre-COVID era.     

政府失业目标调整与就业质量——来自微观企业层面的证据

本文探讨地方政府失业目标调整对企业就业质量的影响。以2870份市级政府工作报告中计划失业率测量政府失业目标,以企业冗员反向测量就业质量,研究发现:更宽松的失业目标调整会降低冗员,提升就业质量;这种调整影响存在非对称性,企业对失业目标的上调更为敏感,会显著降低企业冗员,但下调影响并不显著,这说明调整影响更多来自政府导向下的企业主动行为。本文也发现失业目标调整的影响在民企、补贴较少的公司和市场化程度高的地区更强。最后,本文发现更宽松的失业目标调整会提高企业全要素生产率和公司价值。本文结论表明,在失业目标管理中,除考虑就业率之外,还应关注就业质量,通过引导企业创造新的更合适的就业岗位来实现“更高质量和更充分就业”目标。