Taxing Mobile Capital with Labor Market Imperfections

Taxing internationally mobile factors of production has been dismissed as an inefficient means of raising tax revenue. This paper addresses the question of whether it is efficient to tax capital at source when labor markets and the taxation of lumpsum income suffer from imperfections. Four reasons for taxing capital are identified: (i) institutional constraints rendering any taxation of profit income infeasible; (ii) market power in the demand for labor; (iii) market power in the supply of labor if it increases with the employment of capital; (iv) unemployment benefits that are not tied to net real wages. It is argued that the case for taxing capital is not particularly strong. By reinterpreting capital as energy the results are applicable to the discussion about ecological tax reforms.     

The Shadow Open Market Committee: Origins and Operations

Other articles from the conference discuss Anna Schwartz's many achievements and contributions to theory and policy in her long career as an economist and economic historian. Anna's interest in better policy is shown, also, by her work with the Shadow Open Market Committee. She was a charter member who remains on the Committee. We have worked there together for more than 25 years. This article tells of the origin and some of the workings of the Shadow Committee.     

Labor Market and Financial Shocks: A Time-Varying Analysis

We estimate a time-varying VAR model to analyze the effects of a financial shock on the U.S. labor market. We find that a tightening of financial conditions is highly detrimental to the labor market. We show that while negative financial shocks have been responsible for increases in unemployment, our model does not find significant contributions of financial shocks during periods of expansion. The source of this asymmetry is the time-varying standard deviation of the identified shock, which is higher in times of financial distress; on the other hand, we find that the transmission mechanism does not significantly change over time.     

Labor Market Effects of Spatial Licensing Requirements: Evidence from CPA Mobility

We exploit the staggered introduction of CPA Mobility provisions in the United States to study the effects of spatial licensing requirements on the labor market for accounting professionals. Specifically, we examine whether the removal of licensing‐induced geographic barriers affects CPA wages and employment levels, as well as the pricing and quality of professional services. We find that, subsequent to the adoption of CPA Mobility provisions, wages of accounting professionals decrease, whereas employment levels are unaffected. The documented wage effect stems from smaller CPA firms, is more pronounced for CPAs holding senior positions, and persists over time. We also find that service prices decline and that this effect is concentrated in local CPA firms. Moreover, we document that the increased wage and price pressure is not associated with deteriorating service quality. Collectively, our results suggest that the removal of occupational licensing barriers has sizable effects on labor supply and service prices. Our findings inform the current regulatory debate on occupational licensing.     

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.     

Welfare Cost of Fluctuations When Labor Market Search Interacts with Financial Frictions

We study the welfare costs of business cycles in a search and matching model with financial frictions. The model replicates the volatility on labor and financial markets. Business cycle costs are sizable. Indeed, the interactions between labor market and financial frictions magnify the impact of shocks via (i) a credit multiplier effect and (ii) an endogenous wage rigidity inherent to financial frictions. In addition, in a nonlinear framework, large welfare costs of fluctuations are explained by the high average unemployment and the low job finding rates with respect to their deterministic steady‐state values.     

The Role of Real Wage Rigidity and Labor Market Frictions for Inflation Persistence

We analyze the transmission mechanism of wages to inflation within a New Keynesian business cycle model with wage rigidities and labor market frictions. Our main focus is on the channel of real wage rigidities on inflation persistence for which we find the specification of the wage bargaining process to be of crucial importance. Under the standard efficient Nash bargaining, the feedback of wage rigidities on inflation is ambiguous and depends on other labor market variables. However, under the alternative right‐to‐manage bargaining we find that more rigid wages translate directly into more persistent movements of aggregate inflation.     

Intra-Industry Trade and Labor Market Adjustment in Taiwan

This paper investigates the relationship between intra-industry trade (IIT) expansion and labor market adjustment in Taiwan. We adopt a panel data set containing detailed employment information and utilize various measures of labor market adjustment to conduct empirical estimations. After controlling for industry-specific effects and occupational composition, the empirical results demonstrate that IIT expansion does have a smoothing effect on labor market adjustment. Moreover, industries with abundant skilled workers experience lower employment adjustment costs.     

Extensive and Intensive Margins of Labour Supply: Work and Working Hours in the US,the UK and France*

This paper provides a new analysis of the main stylised facts underlying the evolution of labour supply at the extensive and intensive margins in three countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and France. We propose a definition of the extensive and intensive margins corresponding respectively to the employment rate and to hours when employed. This definition is robust to the choice of the reference period and we develop a new statistical decomposition that provides bounds on changes at these margins. We focus on longer-run labour supply changes over the period 1977 to 2007 and abstract from the shorter-run impact of recessions. Examining secular changes over this period, we show that both margins matter in explaining changes in total hours. We then provide a detailed analysis across countries and across time by demographic type. Given the large systematic differences we uncover in the importance of these margins by age and gender, it is unlikely that a single explanation will suffice to account for the macroeconomic evolutions in the three countries.     

The Effect of Labor Market Demand on U.S. CEO Pay Since 1980

This paper shows that the rise in U.S. chief executive officer (CEO) pay from 1980 to 2003 is only partially explained by competition for profit‐producing talent in the labor market. This conclusion is obtained by removing unintended data biases from tests of the only theoretical model in the literature that relates labor market competition (measured by large firm size) to CEO pay level. When the biases are removed or minimized, no more than 33% of the 600+ percentage rise in large‐firm CEO pay since 1980 is explained by a corresponding increase in large firm size.     

老龄退休人员的劳动供给行为经济学分析

本文在一般均衡世代交叠模型框架下研究了退休后劳动供给对于主要经济变量的影响。结果表明：老年人退休后劳动供给的增加会导致劳动相对于资本贬值、人均资本存量和人均产出降低、个人消费和储蓄降低、个人福利下降。由于增加退休后劳动供给和延迟退休年龄具有较强的替代关系,本文认为这一结论对于延迟退休年龄决策有一定的借鉴意义。     

我国城市化进程与城乡收入差距的内在关系研究——基于托达罗模型的分析

本文以托达罗模型为框架,在“双二元”假设下,构造了劳动力转移的数理模型,分析中国城市化进程与城市劳动力市场的关系.结果显示,城乡收入差距是影响城市化进程的主要因素.随着城乡收入差距的扩大,城市化以单纯的人口迁移和农民工进城的方式展开,表现为粗放式的城市化.只有提高现代工业部门生产效率,同时引导金融资源进入农村,加快产业...     

Asymmetric Labor Market Institutions in the EMU and the Volatility of Inflation and Unemployment Differentials

How does the asymmetry of labor market institutions affect the adjustment of a currency union to shocks? To answer this question, this paper sets up a dynamic currency union model with monopolistic competition and sticky prices, hiring frictions, and real wage rigidities. In our analysis, we focus on the differentials in inflation and unemployment between countries, as they directly reflect how the currency union responds to shocks. We highlight the following three results. First, we show that it is important to distinguish between different labor market rigidities as they have opposite effects on inflation and unemployment differentials. Second, we find that asymmetries in labor market structures tend to increase the volatility of both inflation and unemployment differentials. Finally, we show that it is important to take into account the interaction between different types of labor market rigidities. Overall, our results suggest that asymmetries in labor market structures worsen the adjustment of a currency union to shocks.     

新生代劳动力供给变化对出口国内附加值的影响研究

基于中国工业企业数据库、海关贸易数据库与新生代劳动力数据,考察新生代劳动力供给变化对出口国内附加值的影响.结果表明:新生劳动力供给数量增加与供给质量增加均有助于提升出口国内附加值,且新生劳动力供给质量增加的作用更加明显;在沿海地区,新生劳动力供给数量增加与供给质量增加对出口国内附加值有提升作用,而在内陆地区其作用并不显著.机制检验显示:新生代劳动力供给数量增加和供给质量增加均会通过提高企业全要素生产率来提升出口国内附加值,与新生代劳动力供给数量增加相比,新生代劳动力供给质量增加更能通过提高企业全要素生产率提升出口国内附加值.     

Search Frictions,Labor Supply,and the Asymmetric Business Cycle

We develop a business cycle model that generates asymmetry between peaks and troughs of the unemployment rate and symmetric fluctuations of the participation rate as in the U.S. data. We calibrate the model and find that search frictions are solely responsible for the peak–trough asymmetry. Participation decisions do not generate asymmetry but contribute to the fluctuations in search frictions by changing the size and composition of the pool of job seekers, which in turn affects the tightness ratio and thereby slack in the labor market. The participation rate would be counterfactually asymmetric absent labor supply responses to shocks.     

Individual and Aggregate Labor Supply with Coordinated Working Times

I analyze two extensions to the standard model of life‐cycle labor supply that feature operative choices along both the intensive and extensive margin. One assumes that individuals face continuous wage‐hours schedules, while the other assumes that all work must be coordinated across individuals. Though similar qualitatively, the two models have very different implications for aggregate labor supply responses to tax policy. In the first model, curvature in the individual utility from leisure function plays relatively little role, but in the second model, it is of first‐order importance. The second model also has important implications for what data are best able to provide evidence on the extent of curvature in the utility from leisure function.     

异质性劳动力供给、工资粘性与中国经济周期

通过同时引入异质性劳动力供给和工资粘性拓展了包含五类外生冲击的新凯恩斯DSGE模型,在此框架下考察异质性劳动力供给和工资粘性对经济周期的作用及传导机制,并分析两者传播和放大外生冲击作用的异同,研究发现：同时包含异质性劳动力供给和工资粘性的一般均衡模型要明显优于非异质性劳动力供给和无工资粘性模型;异质性劳动力供给和工资粘性均在一定程度上放大了外生冲击对经济波动的影响,在不包含两者的情形下,投资冲击的贡献度变小,技术冲击和政府支出冲击的贡献度变大。     

Nominal GDP Targeting with Heterogeneous Labor Supply

We study nominal gross domestic product (GDP) targeting as optimal monetary policy in a model with a credit market friction following Azariadis et al. (2018), henceforth ABSS. We extend the ABSS framework to allow for heterogeneous labor supply. We show that nominal GDP targeting continues to characterize optimal monetary policy in this setting. We also analyze the incomplete markets equilibrium that exists when the monetary policymaker pursues a suboptimal policy, and show how an extension to more general preferences can limit the ability of the policymaker to provide full insurance to households in this setting.     

The Impact of Labor Market Regulations

This article investigates the impact of labor market regulationsin a setting with incomplete compliance. It takes as its startingpoint the limited evidence regarding the distortionary costsof labor market regulations and argues that there may existnatural limits to the efficiency losses engendered by such regulations.The article reviews some stylized facts regarding labor marketbehavior, presents an analytical model that may explain suchbehavior, and provides a checklist for assessing the distortionaryimpact of regulations such as minimum wages.     

Screening and Labor Market Flows in a Model with Heterogeneous Workers

We construct a model in which screening of heterogeneous workers by employers plays a central role in determining both the flows into and out of unemployment. Following a negative productivity shock, the share of low‐efficiency workers in the pool of unemployed rises, and this composition effect reduces the incentive of firms to post vacancies, lowering job opportunities for all workers. Heterogeneity in workers’ efficiency amplifies unemployment fluctuations in economies with small gross labor flows and leads to persistent buildups of unemployment and slow recoveries. The composition effect worsens the unemployment–inflation trade‐off faced by the monetary authority, leading to very large sacrifice ratios when a fall in productivity primarily affects low‐efficiency workers.