Fluctuations and Rigidities in Local Labor Markets. Part 1: Theory and Evidence

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
G L Clark

Cyclical sensitivity in employment, wages, and hours worked are explored with reference to three industries and eleven US cities over the period 1972–1980. Conventional neoclassical discrete-exchange models of the labor market are shown to be inadequate because of marked rigidities in the patterns of short-run adjustment. Money wages are very stable, being dominated by a long-run trend, and firms tend to adjust hours worked and only then employment in the short run. There are, however, significant interregional variations in these patterns within the same industry. Spectral analysis and tests for periodicities in the patterns of residuals derived from trend-line estimates of money wages confirm a supposition that urban Phillips curves do not exist. The evidence supports the implicit notion of contract theory that continuous employer-worker relationships exist over the business cycle. The question of how useful, in general, this theory might be is left open for the present.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Sangyup Choi ◽  
Myungkyu Shim

This paper establishes new stylized facts about labor market dynamics in developing economies, which are distinct from those in advanced economies, and then proposes a simple model to explain them. We first show that the response of hours worked and employment to a technology shock—identified by a structural VAR model with either short-run or long-run restrictions—is substantially smaller in developing economies. We then present compelling empirical evidence that several structural factors related to the relevance of subsistence consumption across countries can jointly account for the relative volatility of employment to output and that of consumption to output. We argue that a standard real business cycle (RBC) model augmented with subsistence consumption can explain the several salient features of business cycle fluctuations in developing economies, especially their distinct labor market dynamics under technology shocks.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1593-1621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya Lovcha ◽  
Alejandro Perez-Laborda

A recent finding of the SVAR literature is that the response of hours worked to a (positive) technology shock depends on the assumed order of integration of the hours. In this work we relax this assumption, allowing fractional integration in hours and productivity. We find that the sign and magnitude of the estimated responses depend crucially on the identification assumptions employed. Although the responses of hours recovered with short-run (SR) restrictions are positive in all data sets, long-run (LR) identification results in negative, although sometimes not significant responses. We check the validity of these assumptions with the Sims procedure, concluding that both LR and SR are appropriate to recover responses in a fractionally integrated VAR. However, the application of the LR scheme always results in an increase in sampling uncertainty. Results also show that even the negative responses found in the data could still be compatible with real business cycle models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 247-256
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Anastasiou ◽  
Konstantinos Drakos

Abstract We explored the trajectory of bank loan terms and conditions over the business cycle, where the latter was decomposed into its long-run (trend) and short-run (cyclical) components. We found that deterioration of each business cycle component leads to a significant tightening of credit terms and conditions. We found mixed results concerning the symmetry of impacts of the short and long run components. Symmetry was found between the terms and conditions on loans for small vs. large enterprises. Our findings provide very useful information to policy makers and should be taken into consideration when monetary policies are designed.


2002 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 72-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jagjit S. Chadha ◽  
Charles Nolan

We outline a number of ‘stylised’ facts on the UK business cycle obtained from analysis of the long-run UK annual dataset. The findings are to some extent standard. Consumption and investment are pro-cyclical, with productivity playing a dominant role in explaining business cycle fluctuations at all horizons. Money neutrality obtains over the long run but there is clear evidence of non-neutrality over the short run, particularly at the business cycle frequencies. Business cycle relationships with the external sector via the real exchange rate and current account are notable. Postwar, the price level is counter-cyclical and real wages are pro-cyclical, as are nominal interest rates. Modern general equilibrium macroeconomic models capture many of these patterns.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry T. Hirsch ◽  
Muhammad M. Husain ◽  
John V. Winters

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michalis Nikiforos

The paper develops a model of economic fluctuations in the medium run and their relation with the short-run macroeconomic equilibrium. The business cycle is the result of two separate forces. On the one hand, there is Harrodian instability. On the other hand, this instability is contained by the inherent contradictions of capitalism. I focus on two of these contradictions: the profit-squeeze that results from the tightening of the labor market as employment and utilization increase, and the financial instability hypothesis as formulated by Hyman Minsky. With the inclusion of overhead labor, the model can explain the U-shaped behavior of the wage share along the business cycle (wage share decreases for low levels of utilization and increases for higher levels) that prevailed in most of the post-WWII period, as well as the decrease in the wage share as utilization increases that has been observed in the most recent cycles.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richmond Sam Quarm ◽  
Mohamed Osman Elamin Busharads

In conventional economics, two types of macroeconomic policy i.e. fiscal policy and monetary policy are used to streamline the business cycle. This paper has examined the cyclical behavior of these variables over the business cycle of Bangladesh. The objective of this examination is to show whether policies (fiscal policy and monetary policy) in Bangladesh are taken with a motive to stabilize the economy or only to promote economic growth. In other words, it has examined whether the policies in Bangladesh are procyclical or countercyclical or acyclical. Hodrick Prescott (HP) filter has been used to separate the cyclical component of considered variables. Both correlation and regression-based analysis have provided that in Bangladesh government expenditure and interest rates behave procyclically, but money supply behaves acyclically over the business cycle. Besides, this paper has tried to identify the long-term as well as the short-term relationship between real GDP and the macroeconomic policy variables with the help of the Johansen cointegration test, vector error correction model (VECM), and block exogeneity Wald test. Through these analyses, this study has found that fiscal policy has a significant impact on GDP growth both in the short-run and long-run. In the case of monetary policy, although the interest rate has an impact on real output both in the short-run and long-run, the money supply has neither a short-run nor long-run effect on output growth.


1998 ◽  
Vol 217 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Breitung ◽  
Maik Heinemann

SummaryFollowing standard real business cycle theory, long run economic growth and short run business cycle fluctuations are attributed to a series of productivity shocks propagated by the economic system which is assumed to be in a rational expectations equilibrium. Characterizing the technical progress as the common stochastic trend we are able to investigate the short and long run effects of the productivity shocks using a cointegrated system. From the empirical analysis it emerges that the long run relationship between the system variables can be traced back to a single permanent component which is interpreted as a measure of technological progress. The short run dynamic impact of the permanent innovations is investigated using the empirical impulse response functions. It turns out that the permanent shocks are able to explain a substantial portion of business cycle fluctuations.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document