Collateral Constraints, Wage Rigidity, and Jobless Recoveries

The Great Recession has drawn attention to the importance of macro-financial linkages. In this paper I explore the joint role of imperfections in labor and financial markets for the cyclical adjustment of the labor market. I show that jobless recoveries emerge when, upon exiting a recession, firms are faced with deteriorating credit conditions. On the financial side, collateral requirements affect the cost of borrowing for firms. On the employment side, hiring frictions and wage rigidity increase the need for credit, making the binding collateral constraint more relevant. In a general equilibrium business cycle model with search and matching frictions, I illustrate that tightening credit conditions calibrated from data negatively affect employment adjustments during recovery periods. Wage rigidity substantially amplifies this mechanism, generating empirically plausible fluctuations in employment and output.

Job Polarization and Jobless Recoveries

Job polarization refers to the shrinking share of employment in middle-skill, routine occupations experienced over the past 35 years. Jobless recoveries refers to the slow rebound in aggregate employment following recent recessions despite recoveries in aggregate output. We show how these two phenomena are related. First, essentially all employment loss in routine occupations occurs in economic downturns. Second, jobless recoveries in the aggregate can be accounted for by jobless recoveries in the routine occupations that are disappearing.