Worker flows, job flows and unemployment in a matching model

Standard matching models of unemployment generate far too little volatility in unemployment and vacancies relative to the variation in the shock variables. Shimer (2005) showed that in US data the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio is about 26 times more volatile than the standard model predicts. He identified the flexibility of wages as the key issue and triggered a heated debate on possible improvements of the core model to accommodate these empirical facts. In this paper, we first document Shimer's facts for the UK and find them to be qualitatively similar to US facts. We then develop and calibrate a model based on the Mortensen and Pissarides approach that increases the volatility of the v/u ratio 20-fold compared to the standard framework. The key features of our model relate to the job creation decision by firms and the search options of workers. We allow these to search whilst employed, and firms to re-advertise jobs that have been quit from. This leads us to use a different job creation process, whereby potential vacancies, or job ‘ideas’, arise at a finite rate per period over a range of idiosyncratic productivities. Calibrating the model to UK data, we show that it delivers volatility in unemployment and vacancies much closer to, though still not as large as, that observed for the UK, whilst retaining the standard wage determination process.     

Youth labor market expectations and job matching in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from school-to-work transition surveys

In this paper, we investigate the factors that influence youth labour market expectations and outcomes. We also perform a job matching exercise to understand youth labour market dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results show that youth education is an influential factor of youth employment expectations and employment, ceteris paribus. Higher educational attainments have a great impact on expecting and securing better jobs, particularly in the technical and professional fields. Youth with low educational attainments, particularly primary education and lower, have a higher tendency to expect to be employed in occupations with low job complexity. Our results indicate a severe job-skill mismatch in all occupational categories, both before and after the youth’s transition into the labour market. Using education as the only selection criterion, we found that less than 10 per cent of employment expectations match with skills required while 55 per cent and 34 per cent are under or over-educated for the jobs expected, respectively. Over and under education is a notable feature in youth labour markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 47 per cent of employed youth in the sample are overqualified for their respective jobs while 28 per cent are under qualified.     

Entrepreneurs,jobs, and trade

We propose a simple theory of endogenous firm productivity, unemployment, and top income inequality. High-talented individuals choose to become self-employed entrepreneurs and acquire more managerial (human) capital; whereas low-talented individuals become workers and face the prospect of equilibrium unemployment. In a two-country global economy, trade openness raises firm productivity, increases top income inequality, and may reduce welfare in the country exporting the good with lower relative labor-market frictions. Trade openness reduces firm productivity, lowers top income inequality, and necessarily raises welfare in the other country. The effect of trade on unemployment is ambiguous. Unilateral job-creating policies increase welfare in both countries. However, they reduce unemployment and raise top income inequality in the policy-active country; and reduce top income inequality while increasing unemployment in the policy-passive country.     

Labor market institutions and aggregate fluctuations in a search and matching model

This paper explores the influence of labor market institutions on aggregate fluctuations. It uses a dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium model characterized by search and matching frictions in the labor market and nominal rigidities in the goods market. It finds that firing costs and unemployment benefits can have substantial effects on aggregate fluctuations. Increasing firing costs decreases the volatility of output, employment, and job flows due to the reduction in the mass of jobs sensitive to disturbances and lower incentives for firms to hire and fire workers. Hence, firms adjust to shocks mainly through prices, causing inflation to become more volatile. Raising unemployment benefits has the reverse effect on aggregate fluctuations.     

Working capital requirement and the unemployment volatility puzzle

Shimer (2005) argues that a search and matching model of the labor market in which wage is determined by Nash bargaining cannot generate the observed volatility in unemployment and vacancy in response to reasonable labor productivity shocks. This paper examines how incorporating monopolistically competitive firms with a working capital requirement (in which firms borrow funds to pay their wage bills) improves the ability of the search models to match the empirical fluctuations in unemployment and vacancy without resorting to an alternative wage setting mechanism. The monetary authority follows an interest rate rule in the model. A positive labor productivity shock lowers the real marginal cost of production and lowers inflation. In response to the fall in price level, the monetary authority reduces the nominal interest rate. A lower interest rate reduces the cost of financing and partially offsets the increase in labor cost from a higher productivity. A reduced labor cost implies the firms retain a greater portion of the gain from a productivity shock, which gives them a greater incentive to create vacancies. Simulations show that a working capital requirement does indeed improve the ability of the search models to generate fluctuations in key labor market variables to better match the U.S. data.     

Price formation in a matching market with targeted offers

We model a market where the surpluses from seller–buyer matches are heterogeneous but common knowledge. Price setting is synchronous with search: buyers simultaneously make one personalized offer each to the seller of their choice. With impatient players efficient coordination is not possible, and both temporary and permanent mismatches occur. Nonetheless, for patient players efficient matching (with monopsony wages) is an equilibrium. The setting is inspired by a labor market for highly skilled workers, such as the academic job market, but it can be easily adapted to, for example, the housing market or Internet advertising auctions.     

Improving estimates of job matching efficiency with different measures of unemployment

Traditional measures of unemployment can mask important changes in the labor market across time. We therefore use broader definitions of unemployment to estimate time-varying job-matching efficiency rates that are consistent with vacancies and hiring activity data for the U.S. Our efficiency rates are then modelled along with employment data to study their dynamic, non-linear relationship. We find that including marginally attached workers and part-time workers for economic reasons helps explain the changes in employment patterns observed after the global financial crisis. This finding emphasizes the importance of accounting for labor underutilization, particularly during the latest economic recovery.     

The reallocation of workers and jobs in Russian industry

Gross job and worker flows in Russian industry are studied using panel data from a survey of 530 firms selected through national probability sampling. The data permit examination of several crucial measurement issues, including the timing and definition of employment and the role of reorganizations, and they contain rich information on firm characteristics. We find that new and reorganized firms display larger flows than unreorganized enterprises. Product market dispersion and managerial and dispersed outsider ownership are associated with greater worker churning, and unionization and concentrated outsider ownership with less. There is little evidence that the average firm's employment adjustments have become more responsive to adjustment costs during the transition, but private ownership and product market competition appear to increase responsiveness. JEL Classifications: E24, J23, J63, P23, P31.     

Technological choices and unemployment benefits in a matching model with heterogenous workers

This article aims at understanding the interactions between public policies, such as unemployment benefit systems, and firms’ technological choices. For this purpose, we use a matching model in which workers are vertically differentiated and where the nature of jobs is endogenous. We show that an improvement in unemployment benefits leads to an increase in productivity by making agents more selective and jobs more complex. However, the impact on labour market participation is negative.     

Learning and Efficiency with Search Frictions

This paper studies the allocative efficiency in a Moscarini (2005)-type equilibrium search environment with learning. It is shown that the stationary equilibrium is efficient if and only if the Hosios condition holds no matter whether learning is about firm-specific human capital or about general human capital. However, the stationary equilibrium can never be efficient if externalities exist from unemployment. In contrast, even with externalities, the stationary equilibrium can be efficient under some modified Hosios condition if there is no uncertainty (standard Mortensen and Pissarides (1994)-type equilibrium search environment). The key intuition is that the equilibrium can only be efficient if firm-worker matching is formed and terminated efficiently.     

Measuring technical progress in matching models of the labour market

Technical Progress in matching models of the labour market has not received serious attention. This article examines the impact on the results of these models when an attempt is made to allow time to enter in a realistic fashion, and finds that recently published results on the possibility of multiple equilibria are overturned. Also, different parametric representations of the matching technology are compared, with problems of more general forms not satisfying regularity conditions being identified. While the possibility of Pareto-improving government intervention due to multiple equilibria arising out of increasing returns to scale cannot be supported, the results suggest a role for government intervention in the labour market.     

Marriage, commitment and divorce in a matching model with differential aging

This paper analyses a matching model of the marriage market with directed, on-the-job search. Everyone is born attractive but “matures” according to a Poisson process into unattractiveness. Marriages between equally attractive people are stable but mixed marriages are not. The implied patterns of marriage and divorce are consistent with those identified in the empirical literature. When the utility from being single is low, in order to commit to their relationship, attractive people in mixed marriages may voluntarily divest of their attractiveness.     

Efficiency in a search and matching model with training costs

This paper studies the efficiency of the search and matching model with training costs. I incorporate productivity enhancing firm-specific skill training into the search and matching model of Pissarides (2000). I demonstrate that while the decentralized economy can be efficient if training costs are not sunk at the time of wage determination, the decentralized economy is not efficient due to a hold-up problem if training costs are sunk.     

企业通用人力资本培训激励研究——基于贝克尔模型的视角

在人力资本成为企业核心要素的背景下,研究企业培训通用人力资本的激励成为当前的热点问题。对贝克尔模型进行扩展发现,在不完全竞争的劳动力市场中,由于交易成本与信息不对称的存在,压缩的工资结构以及企业培训雇员的潜在收益使企业具有对雇员通用性人力资本的培训激励,并获得一定的培训利益。但是这种培训激励会受到市场环境的制约,市场环境的变化使劳资双方对培训利益的分享发生变化。     

Matching, Heterogeneity, and the Evolution of Income Distribution

This paper analyzes a model in which firms and workershave to engage in costly search to find a production partner,and endogenizes the skill, job, and wage distributions in thiscontext. The presence of search frictions implies that thereare two redistributive forces in the labor market. The firstis mismatch relative to the Walrasian economy; skilled workerstend to work with lower physical to human capital ratios, andthis compresses the earnings differentials. The second is theopportunity cost effect; because the opportunity cost of acceptingan unskilled worker, which is to forgo the opportunity to employa skilled worker, is high, unskilled wages are pushed down. Theinteraction between these two forces leads to a non-ergodic equilibriumprocess for wage and income inequality. Further, the presenceof mismatch reduces the rate of return to physical capital andthus depresses growth. A key prediction of the analysis is thatincreasing wage inequality is more likely to arise in economieswith less frictional labor markets, which is in line with thediverse cross-country patterns observed over the past two decades.Finally, the paper predicts that, as is largely the case withU.S. data, between group and within group wage inequality shouldmove in the same direction.     

基于智力资本的科技型大学衍生公司价值形成机理的实证研究

科技型大学衍生公司的价值形成机理是指导其生存和发展的理论基础。本文首先分析了科技型大学衍生公司价值形成的关键影响要素;在此基础上,研究了基于智力资本的科技型大学衍生公司的价值形成机理,并形成理论模型;同时,利用结构方程模型验证了理论假设,并对实证结果做出分析。     

Teaching Regressions with a Lagged Dependent Variable and Autocorrelated Disturbances

The author attempts to rectify the unsatisfactory textbook treatment of the finite-sample properties of estimators of regression models with a lagged dependent variable and autocorrelated disturbances. He contends that the bias of the OLS estimator of a regression model with a lagged dependent variable and autocorrelated disturbances is determined by two effects, the dynamic effect and the correlation effect, which may be reinforcing or offsetting. The implications of these two effects are explored within a theoretical and a Monte Carlo framework.     

开放式创新模式下价值创造与管理

亨利·切萨布鲁夫认为开放式创新是一种商业模式,是一种开放式价值创造系统。但从本质上来讲创新技术本身没有任何价值,只有将其转化为顾客效用,价值才能体现出来。企业则通过价值创造获得收益,构建竞争优势。基于此,文章总结出开放式创新模式下价值创造的新理念,从创新源视角说明开放式价值创造的类型,围绕开放式创新价值商业化,构建了商业运营模型,指出了开放式创新价值商业化的路径。在创新价值收益的获取中, Teece认为互补性资产对获取绩效起决定性作用,围绕价值实现对互补性资产选择、活动管理提出了要求;在强化创新价值专属性的同时要提高互补性创新资产专用性和低流动性,藉此提高谈判实力和位势,获得更多价值收益份额。此研究为开放式创新模式下价值创造与管理提供了理论性框架。     

农村人力资本投资及外溢与城乡差距实证研究

文章以人力资本溢出效应城乡两区域模型为基础,采用协整检验和误差修正模型,对中国农村人力资本投资及外溢与城乡差距的关系进行实证检验。结果表明,缩小中国城乡差距,必须加大对农村的人力资本投资。同时,要加强政府对农村的基础设施投资,为农村人力资本作用的充分发挥创造条件。     

共创价值对顾客忠诚和员工工作绩效的影响

利用对420名消费者的问卷调查数据,运用结构方程模型实证分析了共创价值是如何影响顾客满意和员工工作满意度、进而如何作用于顾客忠诚和员工工作绩效水平的。结果表明:共创价值与顾客满意显著相关,并对顾客满意具有促进作用;顾客满意对顾客忠诚具有促进作用;共创价值与员工工作满意度显著相关,并对员工工作满意度具有促进作用;员工工作满意度对其工作绩效具有促进作用;顾客满意与员工工作绩效显著相关,并对员工工作绩效具有促进作用;员工工作满意度与顾客忠诚显著相关,并对顾客忠诚具有促进作用。