Anticipated growth and business cycles in matching models

In a business cycle model that incorporates a standard matching framework, employment increases in response to news shocks, even though the wealth effect associated with the increase in expected productivity reduces labor force participation. The reason is that the matching friction induces entrepreneurs to increase investment in new projects and vacancies early. If there is underinvestment in new projects in the competitive equilibrium, then the efficiency gains associated with an increase in employment make it possible that consumption, employment, output, as well as the investment in new and existing projects jointly increase long before the actual increase in productivity materializes. If there is no underinvestment, then investment in existing projects decreases, but total investment, consumption, employment, and output still jointly increase.     

Labor market dynamics under long-term wage contracting

Recent research seeking to explain the strong cyclicality of US unemployment emphasizes the role of wage rigidity. This paper proposes a micro-founded model of wage rigidity—an equilibrium business cycle model of job search, where risk neutral firms post optimal long-term contracts to attract risk averse workers. Equilibrium contracts feature wage smoothing, limited by the inability of parties to commit to contracts. The model is consistent with aggregate wage data if neither worker nor firm can commit, producing too rigid wages otherwise. Wage rigidity does not lead to a substantial increase in the cyclical volatility of unemployment.     

The impact of labor unions on investment-cash flow sensitivity

This paper empirically examines how labor unions affect investment-cash flow sensitivity using samples from the US covering the period of 1984–2009. We find a significant positive union effect using a q model of investment. The capital expenditures of firms are 1.71 times more sensitive to internal cash flows when unionization rates increase one standard deviation from the mean. This effect holds when we control for other proxies of financial constraints. In addition, unionized firms are associated with lower cash–cash flow sensitivity, which suggests that the higher investment-cash flow sensitivity in unionized firms is primarily driven by the incentive of these firms to reduce liquidity and enhance bargaining power against the union. We also show that the above union effects become more pronounced during labor contract negotiation years.     

The (ir)relevance of real wage rigidity in the New Keynesian model with search frictions

We develop a New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions in the labor market. We show that the model generates counterfactual labor market dynamics. In particular, it fails to generate the negative correlation between vacancies and unemployment in the data, i.e., the Beveridge curve. Introducing real wage rigidity leads to a negative correlation, and increases the magnitude of labor market flows to more realistic values. However, inflation dynamics are only weakly affected by real wage rigidity. The reason is that labor market frictions give rise to long-run employment relationships. The measure of real marginal costs that is relevant for inflation in the Phillips curve contains a present value component that varies independently of the real wage.     

Understanding European unemployment with matching and search-island models

To understand European and American unemployment during the last 60 years, we use a search-island model and four matching models with workers who have heterogeneous skills and entitlements to government benefits. When there is higher turbulence, in the sense of worse skill transition probabilities for workers who suffer involuntary layoffs, high government mandated unemployment insurance (UI) and employment protection (EP) in Europe increase unemployment rates and durations. But when there is lower turbulence, high European EP suppresses unemployment rates despite high European UI. Four matching models differ in how they assign unemployed workers to matching functions. That affects how strongly unemployment responds to increases in turbulence. Heterogeneity among unemployed workers highlights the central role of adverse labor market externalities in matching models and reveals that the cost of posting vacancies is the lynchpin of a matching model.     

Crude substitution: The cyclical dynamics of oil prices and the skill premium

At the business cycle frequency, energy prices and the skill premium display a strong, negative correlation. This fact is robust to different de-trending procedures. Identifying exogenous shocks to oil prices using the Hoover-Perez [1994. Post hoc ergo propter once more: an evaluation of ‘Does monetary policy matter?’ in the spirit of James Tobin. Journal of Monetary Econonmics 34, 47-73] dates, shows that the skill premium falls in response to such a shock. The estimation of the parameters of an aggregate technology that uses, among other inputs, energy and heterogeneous skills, demonstrates that capital-skill and capital-energy complementarity are responsible for this correlation. As energy prices rise, the use of capital decreases and the demand for unskilled labor—relative to skilled labor—increases, lowering the skill premium.     

Cagan’s paradox and money demand in hyperinflation: Revisited at daily frequency

Using daily data the Cagan money demand is estimated and accepted for the most severe portion of Serbia’s 1992–1993 hyperinflation, i.e. its last 6 months. An implication is that the public adjusted daily throughout this extreme period. Moreover, the obtained semi-elasticity estimates are by far lower than those previously found using monthly data sets. Consequently, the daily estimates reject the longstanding Cagan’s paradox, based on monthly studies, by showing that the economy has been on the correct, increasing side of the Laffer curve almost through the end of hyperinflation. This strongly supports the view that hyperinflation is triggered and driven all way through its end by the government’s hunt for non-decreasing seigniorage. Daily adjustments of public in hyperinflation can account for the difference between the results obtained at daily and monthly frequencies, calling into question the latter. Some evidence is offered that the findings of this paper may hold for other hyperinflations.     

Interaction between housing prices and household borrowing: The Finnish case

Employing time series econometrics this study shows that there has been a significant two-way interaction between housing prices and housing loan stock in Finland since the financial liberalization in the late 1980s. Before the financial deregulation the interaction was substantially weaker. Furthermore, housing appreciation has a notable positive impact on the outstanding consumption loan stock. It appears that there is no similar relationship between stock prices and credit. Understanding the two-way interaction between housing prices and credit is of importance, since the interdependence is likely to augment boom–bust cycles in the economy and increase the fragility of the financial sector.     

Excess liquidity,bank pricing rules,and monetary policy

This paper studies the implications of excess bank liquidity for the effectiveness of monetary policy in a simple model with credit market imperfections. The demand for excess reserves is determined by precautionary factors and the opportunity cost of holding cash. It is argued that excess liquidity may impart greater stickiness to the deposit rate in response to a monetary contraction and induce an easing of collateral requirements on borrowers – which in turn may translate into a lower risk premium and lower lending rates. As a result, asymmetric bank pricing behavior under excess liquidity may hamper the ability of a contractionary monetary policy to lower inflation.     

A model of money with multilateral matching

We develop a model of decentralized monetary exchange to examine the distributional effects of inflation across heterogeneous agents. The agents have private information about their productivity, preferences, or money holdings. Matching is multilateral and each seller is visited by a stochastic number of buyers. The good is allocated according to a second-price auction in money. In equilibrium, homogeneous buyers hold different amounts of money leading to price dispersion. We find the closed-form solution for the distribution of money holdings. Entry of sellers is suboptimal except at the Friedman rule. Inflation acts as a regressive tax.     

Optimal retirement with unemployment risks

This paper investigates the optimal retirement of an individual in the presence of involuntary unemployment risks and borrowing constraints in a complete market with frictions. We use an intensity model and loading factors to illustrate the involuntary unemployment risks and frictions in unemployment insurance markets. Using reasonably calibrated parameters, we observe that high involuntary unemployment intensity and loading factors could be important explanations for the empirical findings emphasized in recent studies. We also find that an individual with high leisure demand after retirement reduces consumption during retirement and increases stockholdings as retirement time approaches.     

Money, banking, and monetary policy

An important function of banks is to issue liabilities, like demand deposits, that are relatively safe and liquid. We introduce a risk of theft and a safe-keeping role for banks into modern monetary theory. This provides a general equilibrium framework for analyzing banking in historical and contemporary contexts. The model can generate the concurrent circulation of cash and bank liabilities as media of exchange, or inside and outside money. It also yields novel policy implications. For example, negative nominal interest rates are feasible, and for some parameters optimal; for other parameters, strictly positive nominal rates are optimal.     

Why did the average duration of unemployment become so much longer?

There has been a substantial increase in the average duration of unemployment relative to the unemployment rate in the U.S. over the last 30 years. We evaluate the performance of a standard job-search model in explaining this phenomenon. In particular, we examine whether the increase in within-group wage inequality and the decline in the incidence of unemployment can account for the increase in unemployment duration. The results indicate that these two changes can explain a significant part of the increase over the last 30 years, although the model fails to match the behavior of unemployment duration during 1980s.     

Evaluating the economic significance of downward nominal wage rigidity

The existence of downward nominal wage rigidity has been abundantly documented, but what are its economic implications? This paper demonstrates that, even when wages are allocative, downward wage rigidity can be consistent with weak macroeconomic effects. Firms have an incentive to compress wage increases as well as wage cuts when downward wage rigidity binds. By neglecting compression of wage increases, previous literature may have overstated the costs of downward wage rigidity to firms. Using micro-data from the US and Great Britain, I find that the evidence for the compression of wage increases when downward wage rigidity binds. Accounting for this reduces the estimated increase in aggregate wage growth due to wage rigidity to be much closer to zero. These results suggest that downward wage rigidity may not provide a strong argument against the targeting of low inflation rates.