Movements In Unemployment Research Articles

Inflation and Real Activity over the Business Cycle

We study the relation between inflation and real activity over the business cycle. We employ a Trend-Cycle VAR model to control for low-frequency movements in inflation, unemployment, and growth that are pervasive in the post-WWII period. We show that cyclical fluctuations of inflation are related to cyclical movements in real activity and unemployment, in line with what is implied by the New Keynesian framework. We then discuss the reasons for which our results relying on a Trend-Cycle VAR differ from the findings of previous studies based on VAR analysis. We explain empirically and theoretically how to reconcile these differences.

OKUN`S LAW IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (1996-2021): AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF OKUN`S COEFFICIENT VARIATIONS

Economic growth and unemployment are two macroeconomic quantities that have the greatest research interest among economists. The connection established between these two variables, which also describes their inverse relationship, is known in the literature as Okun's law. The subject of this research was to examine Okun's regularity between the movement of gross domestic product and unemployment in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the period from 1996 to 2021. We divided the observed period into two parts, and we observed the total sample, pre-crisis and post-crisis period, and we took 2008 and the economic crisis as the relevant year. The aim of the work was to quantify Okun's coefficient for the entire sample, pre-crisis and post-crisis period. The research results showed the existence of Okun's coefficient with variations of the coefficient over time. Namely, the value of the coefficient in the period from 1996 to 2008 is higher in absolute terms compared to the entire period, as well as the post-crisis period. The value of the coefficient for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the precrisis period was 0.79, and 0.66 is the calculated value of the coefficient for the post-crisis period. The coefficient value of 0.76 was calculated for the period from 1996 to 2021. From this we can conclude that the elasticity of the coefficient in Bosnia and Herzegovina is higher in the post-crisis period compared to the pre-crisis period.

Desigualdades y nuevos actores colectivos en Argentina. De piqueteros a trabajadores de la economía popular (1995-2019)

This article analyzes the collective experiences related with sectors that suffered exclusions and inequalities in Argentina from 1995 to 2019. The study of the ways in which organizations resolved a series of dilemmas (of the agent and the actor) allow us to identify three phases. The first one took place from 1995 to 2004); we call it “phase of the unemployed movements”. The second one occurred between 2005 and 2011; we call it “phase of socio-political organizations”. And from 2011, the third one occurred; we call it “phase of the popular economy”. These phases show how similar social subjects can be configured as different political subjects. In addition, they contribute to understand the way in which a new actor was formed in Argentine politics.

Bargaining shocks and aggregate fluctuations

We argue that social and political risk causes significant aggregate fluctuations by changing workers’ bargaining power. Using a Bayesian proxy-VAR estimated with U.S. data, we show how distribution shocks trigger output and unemployment movements. To quantify the aggregate importance of these distribution shocks, we extend an otherwise standard neoclassical growth economy. We model distribution shocks as exogenous changes in workers’ bargaining power in a labor market with search and matching. We calibrate our economy to the U.S. corporate non-financial business sector, and we back out the evolution of workers’ bargaining power. We show how the estimated shocks agree with the historical narrative evidence. We document that bargaining shocks account for 28% of aggregate fluctuations and have a welfare cost of 2.4% in consumption units.

Social justice and career development: Progress, problems, and possibilities

Drawing on scholarship in the fields of vocational and industrial/organizational (VIO) psychology, we propose a definition of social justice and assess progress and problems in achieving it. Using a critical psychology lens, we find that the historical focus on higher-income settings and workers with relatively privileged status reflects the neoliberal underpinning implicit in most of VIO psychology. We identify five marginalizing conditions that act at macro levels to perpetuate the status quo and restrict progress toward social justice: group bias, forced movement of people, poverty, unemployment, and lack of decent work. Our review of these conditions accentuates the necessity of social justice praxis at multiple ecological levels to effect significant progress. We propose a set of recommendations for the future that highlight the importance of articulating and deconstructing context, power, and perception implicit in extant VIO endeavors. Our recommendations challenge the field to: (1) extend the scope of the locations and range of ecological levels at which VIO research and practice are carried out, (2) highlight who is and is not served and benefitted by VIO research and practice, and (3) question the underlying values and ideological assumptions of existing VIO research and practice. We call for greater critical consciousness among VIO psychologists in order to ensure the relevance and benefit of our research and practice for all workers around the globe.

Do flexible working hours amplify or stabilize unemployment fluctuations?

In this paper we challenge the conventional view that increasing working time flexibility limits the amplitude of unemployment fluctuations. We start by showing that hours per worker in European countries are much less procyclical than in the US, and even co-move negatively with output in selected economies. This is confirmed by the results from a structural VAR model for the euro area, in which hours per worker increase after a contractionary monetary shock, exacerbating the upward pressure on unemployment. To understand these counterintuitive results, we develop a structural search and matching macroeconomic model with endogenous job separations that resemble layoffs. We show that this feature is key to generating a countercyclical response of hours per worker. When we augment the model with frictions in working hours adjustment and estimate it using euro area time series, we find that increasing flexibility of working time amplifies cyclical movements in unemployment.

The Role of Monetary and Non-Monetary Job Quality Components in Determining Welfare Exit

AbstractContemporary welfare policies in many Western countries limit means tested public assistance for the long-term unemployed and spur rapid movement into the labor market. Studies on welfare use determinants that traced these policy changes focused on individuals’ characteristics, economic condition, and various policy components. Little attention was paid to welfare recipients’ job quality or its role in determining welfare exit. The present study examined the contribution of various job quality aspects, beyond wages, to welfare exit among welfare recipients in Israel. We considered the use of workers’ own skills and occupation, existence of standard employment contract (versus temporary), irregular work schedule, and application of mandatory and non-mandatory non-wage compensation attributes. The data derive from a national panel survey of 2,800 single-mother recipients of welfare in 2003. The results indicate the importance of these job components for welfare exit, above and beyond wages. Implications for policy are discussed.

Российский рынок труда: тенденции и трансформации

he article deals with the multifactorial aspects of the labour market development as a special economic category: stages of development, impact of the economic crisis, trends during the pandemic, movement of employment and unemployment, etc. The analysis of the situation on the labour market, both in the whole world, and in the context of Russia and its subjects, is carried out. Trends in the development of the labour market are shown through the prism of global trends in economic development and the specifics of decision-making at the level of the Russian Federation since 1989, the period of transformation of its socio-economic development and entry into the world market. Much attention is paid to the situational response of the labour market to the global coronavirus pandemic in terms of analyzing the supply and demand of vacancies, salaries and their dynamics over the past year of the largest recruitment portal in the country. The risk sectors of the labour market development are shown for the territory of Russia as a whole, federal districts and subjects of the federation. The conclusion is made about sufficient decisions of the government of the Russian Federation in the pre-crisis period and forced anti-crisis actions during the pandemic in the conditions of long-term sanctions by key world actors. The measures necessary for the adoption of federal decisions to reduce the strain on the labour market in the long term, taking into account the reduction in the economy’s income, are outlined: closing more territories or sectors of the labor market to foreign labour, organizing jobs at real enterprises, optimizing the flow of domestic labour migration and new technological solutions in the economy

When unemployment meets environment. The case of the anti-fracking coalition in Ouargla

ABSTRACT The ‘Popular Committee Against Shale Gas,’ which emerged in the city of Ouargla in 2014 to protest governmental fracking plans in the Sahara, constitutes an interesting case of coalition building between a movement of unemployed and environmental activists, operating in Algeria’s uncertain post-electoral context. Given strong fragmentation of the contentious space, the question of what enabled these groups to converge becomes even more relevant. Drawing on research on contentious politics, resistance and participation in authoritarian contexts as well as on ethnographic fieldwork from 2014 to 2016, the paper explores how this unusual coalition was formed, analyzes the unemployed movement’s motivation to join the struggle against fracking, and examines the modalities of how both groups temporarily managed to overcome their differences by producing common mobilization frames. Despite the challenges this coalition faced, especially their differing class identities, diverging long-term interests and authoritarian destabilization strategies, this paper sheds light on the ambivalent power dynamics within the coalition and the transformation processes that become apparent.

From contestation to conciliation: social networks and engagement in the unemployed graduates movement in Morocco

ABSTRACTIn Morocco, since the early 1990s, thousands of higher education graduates have participated in a protest movement seeking to secure employment in the public service. The ‘unemployed graduates movement’ takes the form of a fragmented multi-organizational field. All the groups share a main demand (a job in the public sector for their members), but they represent several ways to defend the ‘right to work’. Early risers of the unemployed movement were very close to far-left networks. However, over the years, recruitment networks diversified in such way that the far left is no longer the main source of activists. This contribution proposes to show why and how the activist recruitment networks of unemployed graduates groups changed, as well as unveil some effects of this change. By showing empirically how the recruitment networks of the unemployed have diversified across time and how this has encouraged conciliating attitudes within the movement, I make two theoretical contributions: firstly, that the normalisation of protest does not make networks irrelevant, but it transforms them; secondly, that it is necessary to take into account the ‘bargaining costs’ generated during the negotiation processes in order to understand change within the movement.

Changing Macroeconomic Dynamics at the Zero Lower Bound

ABSTRACTThis article develops a change-point VAR model that isolates four major macroeconomic regimes in the US since the 1960s. The model identifies shocks to demand, supply, monetary policy, and spread yield using restrictions from a general equilibrium model. The analysis discloses important changes to the statistical properties of key macroeconomic variables and their responses to the identified shocks. During the crisis period, spread shocks became more important for movements in unemployment and inflation. A counterfactual exercise evaluates the importance of lower bond-yield spread during the crises and suggests that the Fed’s large-scale asset purchases helped lower the unemployment rate by about 0.6 percentage points, while boosting inflation by about 1 percentage point.

Kretanje nezaposlenosti i inflacije u evrozoni

Analysis of movement of unemployment and inflation in the observed period makes the basic object of this paper. Received results are grouped on the way that they can be used during the forming of future measures of macroeconomic policy. The aim of this paper is to be determined whether and up to which measure movements of unemployment and inflation can be represented with analyzed shapes of the Phillips curve. In order to accomplish that, the basic hypothesis, which will be examined in this paper, is formulated on the following way: as the relation of unemployment and inflation in the Eurozone is closer to its inverse shape that their simultaneous movement can be more directly represented with the traditional Phillips curve. For collecting and classification of empirical data of movement of observed macroeconomic magnitudes in this paper is used a method of quantitative analysis. Methods of scientific research which were used for analyzing of theoretical concepts of the Phillips curve are a method of qualitative analysis and a comparative method.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS AND MATCHING EFFICIENCY IN AN ESTIMATED DSGE MODEL WITH LABOR MARKET SEARCH FRICTIONS

To explain the high and persistent unemployment rate in the United States during and after the Great Recession, this effort develops and estimates a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions and shocks to unemployment benefits and matching efficiency. It finds that unemployment benefits play an important role in the cyclical movement of unemployment through their effects on labor demand, a channel overlooked in previous studies. From the second half of 2008 to 2011, extended unemployment benefits may have increased the overall unemployment rate by one percentage point. In contrast, matching efficiency changes had less effect on the cyclical movement of unemployment for the same period, but significantly slowed down the recovery after 2012.

Okun's Law: Fit at 50?

AbstractThis paper asks how well Okun's Law fits short‐run unemployment movements in the United States since 1948 and in 20 advanced economies since 1980. We find that Okun's Law is a strong relationship in most countries, and one that is fairly stable over time. Accounts of breakdowns in the Law, such as the emergence of “jobless recoveries,” are flawed or exaggerated. We also find that the coefficient in the relationship—the effect of a 1% change in output on the unemployment rate—varies substantially across countries. This variation is partly explained by idiosyncratic features of national labor markets, but it is not related to differences in employment protection legislation.

Alternating offers with asymmetric information and the unemployment volatility puzzle

To provide micro-founded real wage rigidities, the literature on the unemployment volatility puzzle has considered alternating offers on one side, and asymmetric information on the other. Separately, however, these two frameworks deliver a limited amount of wage stickiness and thus require questionable calibrations to raise unemployment fluctuations. In this paper, we argue that the alternating offers model with one-sided asymmetric information, which combines the two frameworks, gives a more satisfactory answer to the puzzle. The results are improved along two dimensions. First, we show that this model is capable to generate large unemployment movements for a realistic calibration. Secondly, the model produces a right degree of real wage pro-cyclicality for such a calibration and therefore delivers a micro-founded explanation to real wage rigidities.

CAPITAL DESTRUCTION, JOBLESS RECOVERIES, AND THE DISCIPLINE DEVICE ROLE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

I consider an economy growing along the balanced growth path that is hit by an adverse shock to its capital accumulation process. The model integrates efficiency wages due to imperfect monitoring of the quality of labor in a search and matching framework with methods of dynamic general equilibrium analysis. I show that, depending on the firms' abilities to assess workers' performance, the discipline device role of unemployment may account for sharp declines in employment and jobless recoveries driven by exceptional increases in the work effort of employees. The model also explains why rigid real wages may prevail in equilibrium: the large movements in unemployment are indeed associated with real wage rigidity, which is generated endogenously by efficiency wages.

Political Distribution Risk and Aggregate Fluctuations

We argue that political distribution risk is an important driver of aggregate fluctuations. To that end, we document significant changes in the capital share after large political events, such as political realignments, modifications in collective bargaining rules, or the end of dictatorships, in a sample of developed and emerging economies. These policy changes are associated with significant fluctuations in output and asset prices. Using a Bayesian proxy-VAR estimated with U.S. data, we show how distribution shocks cause movements in output, unemployment, and sectoral asset prices. To quantify the importance of these political shocks for the U.S. as a whole, we extend an otherwise standard neoclassical growth model. We model political shocks as exogenous changes in the bargaining power of workers in a labor market with search and matching. We calibrate the model to the U.S. corporate non-financial business sector and we back up the evolution of the bargaining power of workers over time using a new methodological approach, the partial filter. We show how the estimated shocks agree with the historical narrative evidence. We document that bargaining shocks account for 34% of aggregate fluctuations.

De vizinhos a piqueteiros: movimentos de trabalhadores desempregados e grupos subalternos na Argentina recente

A partir da década de 1980, para as frações mais débeis dos grupos subalternos urbanos na Argentina, o bairro torna-se espaço vital – o único – de ação e organização política. Este artigo pretende analisar as significativas mudanças que o surgimento e o desenvolvimento dos Movimentos de Trabalhadores Desempregados (piqueteiros), a partir de meados dos anos 1990, operam na ação e no pensamento político desses setores populares, ainda que o bairro siga sendo a espinha dorsal da organização política desses grupos. Avaliamos que os MTD argentinos expressam, de forma significativa, várias facetas da reconfiguração da relação entre capital e trabalho no capitalismo contemporâneo (pós-1970) As reflexões apresentadas aqui derivam de nossa pesquisa de doutorado, cujas fontes foram documentos produzidos por MTD – jornais, periódicos, panfletos, comunicados – e entrevistas temáticas e de história de vida realizadas com trabalhadores desses movimentos.

Piqueteros after the Hype: Unemployed Movements in Argentina, 2008-2015

The Argentine unemployed movement of the piqueteros was a key socio-political player in the early 2000s. Although public and academic attention paid to these piqueteros has decreased notably since 2010, they continue to be active. This article provides an empirical update to the existing research on Argentina’s unemployed movement by analysing how distinct piquetero organizations have adapted to evolving political and socioeconomic changes during the presidency of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2008-2015). In drawing on social movement research, we suggest a number of mechanisms that can help to explain the continuing existence of the piqueteros. While a persistent focus on grassroots work has been identified as key to their existence, adaptation to the changing political and socioeconomic context has meant that core claims related to the very issue of (un-)employment, including the demand for dignified work, have largely been dropped from the political agenda of various piquetero organizations. Resumen: Los piqueteros despues del auge: Los movimientos de desocupados en Argentina, 2008-2015 A comienzos del siglo el movimiento de desocupados de Argentina era un actor sociopolitico clave, pero desde 2010 ha decrecido notablemente el interes publico y academico en los denominados piqueteros. Los piqueteros, sin embargo, siguen existiendo. Este articulo ofrece una actualizacion de la investigacion existente sobre el movimiento de desocupados en Argentina. Se analiza como las distintas organizaciones piqueteras han adaptado a los cambios politicos y socioeconomicos durante la presidencia de Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2008-2015). Basandonos en la investigacion sobre movimientos sociales, sugerimos una serie de mecanismos que contribuyen a entender la persistencia de los piqueteros. Por un lado, un continuo enfoque en el trabajo territorial ha sido clave para tal persistencia. Por otro, la adaptacion al nuevo contexto ha llevado a que reivindicaciones importantes relacionadas justamente al tema del (des-)empleo, como la demanda por un trabajo digno, hayan perdido relevancia en la agenda politica de las distintas organizaciones piqueteras.

Fiscal Policy in an Unemployment Crisis

This paper shows that large scal multipliers arise naturally from equilibrium unemployment dynamics. In response to a shock that brings the economy into a liquidity trap, an expansion in government spending increases output and causes a fall in the unemployment rate. Since movements in unemployment are persistent, the eects of current spending linger into the future, leading to an enduring rise in income. As an enduring rise in income boosts private demand, even a temporary increase in government spending sets in motion a virtuous employment-spending spiral with a large associated multiplier. This transmission mechanism contrasts with the conventional view in which scal policy may be ecacious only under a prolonged and committed rise in government spending, which engineers a spiral of increasing ination.