Search Frictions,Financial Frictions,and Labor Market Fluctuations in Emerging Markets

This article examines the role of the extensive and intensive margins of labor input in the context of a business cycle model with a financial friction. We document significant variation in the hours worked per worker for many emerging-market economies using manufacturing data. Both employment and hours worked per worker are positively correlated with each other and with output. We show that a search-theoretic context in a small open-economy model requires a small wealth effect to explain these regularities at the expense of a smaller wage response. On the other hand, introducing a financial friction in the form of a working capital requirement can explain the observed movements of labor market variables such as employment and hours worked per worker, as well as other distinguishable business cycle characteristics of emerging economies. These include highly volatile and cyclical real wages, labor share, and consumption.     

Emerging Market Business Cycles: The Role of Labor Market Frictions

Emerging economies are characterized by higher variability of consumption and real wages relative to output and a strongly countercyclical current account. A small open economy model with search‐matching frictions and countercyclical interest rate shocks can account for these regularities. Search‐matching frictions affect permanent income, and increase future employment uncertainty, heightening workers' incentives to save and generating a greater response of consumption and the current account. The greater consumption response feeds into larger fluctuations in workers' willingness to work, while interest rate shocks lead to variations in firms' willingness to hire; both of these outcomes contribute to highly variable wages.     

我国非正规就业的发展研究

非正规就业在现实经济中已经大量存在,在缓解就业压力方面发挥了较大作用。随着市场化、非国有化、开放型经济的迅速建立,我国就业模式的非正规化严重滞后,这是造成我国失业率不断上升的重要原因。积极促进非正规就业的发展将成为符合我国基本国情的就业模式转变的基本方向;非正规就业将在今后10~15年间,成为我国就业的主要模式。     

Can a Shorter Workweek Induce Higher Employment? Mandatory Reductions in the Workweek and Employment Subsidies

This paper presents a unified model of the impact on employment of a mandatory reduction in work hours in combination with an employment subsidy to reduce quasi-fixed costs of employment, while attempting to maintain worker's take-home pay or welfare level. Achieving the dual policy objectives of enhancing employment and maintaining worker income is not necessarily feasible. Nevertheless, a reduction in the legal workweek may induce a degree of downward wage flexibility, while an employment subsidy to firms accommodates downward wage rigidity. It may be possible, therefore, to increase employment with a policy that combines a reduction in the workweek with an employment subsidy. In general, however, the long run employment outcome is ambiguous, and a decline in output cannot be ruled out. More direct policy measures whose impact can be assessed with greater certainty—in particular, removing structural rigidities in the labor market—should be given priority to decrease long term unemployment.     

中国城镇失业保险的供求矛盾及对策研究

失业保险是指个人在失去工作或等待就业期间能从政府或社会得到保证基本生活需要的物质帮助。我国的失业保险制度从无到有逐渐发展壮大到今天,虽然已初步形成体系,但伴随着我国失业人口的与日俱增,现行的失业保险供给远远满足不了实际需求,在政府资金缺口的约束下,这一供求矛盾还将继续存在甚至有扩大的趋势。将失业保险制度的创新与促进就业的政策措施相结合,对于解决城镇失业保险的供求矛盾,实现标本兼治有着重要的意义。     

经济增长视角下的中国劳动力数量与结构变化

我国劳动年龄人口（15-59岁）已经在2012年呈现负增长,劳动力（20-59岁）数量也将从2016年开始下降,2022年开始,我国劳动力数量则会快速下降。目前劳动供给紧平衡,农村向城镇转移劳动力速度放缓,工资快速上涨,求人倍率连续三年大于1。伴随我国劳动力数量下降,劳动市场将供小于求,影响我国经济增长。文章建议,一方面要提高劳动参与率,降低经济对劳动力数量的依赖,另一方面要提高劳动效率,采取有效措施促进农村就业人口向城镇转移,减少结构性就业矛盾。     

Expectation-driven cycles in the housing market: Evidence from survey data

Using a vector-autoregression (VAR) model and data from the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, we provide evidence on the importance of news and consumers’ beliefs for housing-market dynamics and aggregate fluctuations. We document that innovations to News on Business Conditions generate hump-shaped responses in house prices and other macroeconomic variables. We also show that innovations to Expectations of Rising House Prices are particularly important in explaining the path of macroeconomic variables during housing booms. To disentangle the effects of News on Business Conditions from other sources of expectation-driven cycles, we estimate a VAR where the News variable is ordered first. Innovations to News on Business Conditions generate Expectations of Rising House Prices. However, during housing booms, innovations to Expectations of Rising House Prices unrelated to News on Business Conditions account for a large part of macroeconomic fluctuations. Shocks to News and Expectations account together for more than half of the forecast error variance of house prices, and other macroeconomic variables, during periods of booms in house prices.     

Aggregate implications of indivisible labor, incomplete markets, and labor market frictions

We study the impact of tax and transfer programs on steady-state allocations in a model with search frictions, an operative labor supply margin, and incomplete markets. In a benchmark model that has indivisible labor and incomplete markets but no trading frictions we show that the aggregate effects of taxes are identical to those in the economy with employment lotteries, though individual employment and asset dynamics can be different. The effect of frictions on the response of aggregate hours to a permanent tax change is highly nonlinear. There is considerable scope for substitution between “voluntary” and “frictional” nonemployment in some situations.