Standard Search Model Research Articles

Minimum wages and youth unemployment

This paper constructs a labor search model to explore the effects of minimum wages on youth unemployment. To capture the gradual decline in unemployment for young workers as they age, the standard search model is extended so that workers gain experience when employed. Experienced workers have higher average productivity and lower job finding and separation rates that match wage and worker flow data. In this environment, minimum wages can have large effects on unemployment because they interact with a worker's ability to gain job experience. The increase in minimum wages between 2007 and 2009 can account for a 0.8 percentage point increase in the steady state unemployment rate and a 2.8 percentage point increase in unemployment for 15–24 year old workers in the model parameterized to simulate outcomes of high school educated workers. Minimum wages can also help explain the high rates of youth unemployment in France compared to the United States.

A Forest Fire Theory of Recessions and Unemployment

We show that a class of models of matching from firms' perspectives (that nest most standard search models) necessarily exhibit specific dynamic patterns of employment. Despite the prevalent use of models within this class, these patterns have not been noted before. Focusing on labor search as a leading example, in presence of search frictions, firms prefer to hire low productivity workers in high-demand states to take advantage of current profit opportunities. This implies that bad matches accumulate during expansions, leading to drops in employment, and other inputs, that are positively related to the length of the expansion when a negative shock eventually hits: the longer since the last contraction, the larger the absolute and percentage drop in the employment of labor and capital inputs.We also show that this phenomenon is present in observed dynamics, using US micro-data. We find that five additional years of expansion lead to an additional drop of thirty percent in employment growth at the onset of a downturn.

Aggregate Implications of Employer Search and Recruiting Selection

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of nonsequential employer search with recruiting selection and heterogeneous workers, and characterizes its equilibrium. Unlike standard search models, employers can simultaneously meet several applicants and choose the best candidate. Recruiting selection is empirically important: firms interview a median of 5 applicants per vacancy and spend 2.5% of their total labor cost in these activities. The model provides an endogenous matching process with heterogeneous workers in which the job nding probability increases in productivity. Under recruiting selection, lifetime inequality increases relative to the sequential search benchmark due to e ects on job nding rates and wages. Search frictions coupled with recruiting selection generate new kinds of externalities that a ect not only transition probabilities, but also the expected productivity of recruited workers. The calibrated model can replicate moments of the distribution of wages and unemployment durations in CPS data. Using this parametrization, I also show that an increase of screening costs reduces inequality and productive efficiency, and decreases negative externalities on other employers.

Centralized Wage Setting and Active Labor Market Policies in Frictional Labor Markets: The Nordic Case

We adopt a standard search and matching model with endogenous job destruction to investigate two issues. First, we use a simplified version of Boeri-Burda to show that at sufficiently low levels of wage share, centralized wage bargaining performs better than decentralized bargaining in terms of average productivity, unemployment, and income inequality. Second, we incorporate active labor market policies in the model and establish that they are more effective in reducing unemployment when wage setting is centralized. Finally, numerical analysis suggests that the difference in effectiveness is sizeable.

Unemployment compensation under partial program coverage

More than half of the unemployed in the U.S. are not covered by unemployment insurance. For them the provision of employment-dependent UI creates an additional benefit from work: future UI eligibility. This paper explores the overall and distributional effects of providing unemployment compensation under partial coverage. I extend a standard search model to accommodate eligible and non-eligible workers, where eligibility status is determined by previous separation history. While the effect of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration and post unemployment wages is theoretically ambiguous, a calibration of the model to the U.S. economy shows that unemployment benefits raise the unemployment rate. In addition I show that wage gaps and unemployment duration differentials between the eligible and non-eligible exist and are larger when layoffs are high.

Credible threats in a wage bargaining model with on-the-job search

This note shows that in standard equilibrium search models with strategic wage bargaining and on-the-job search, renegotiation does not require mutual consent. If the worker needs a credible threat to trigger renegotiation, wages are renegotiated less frequently than in the original model.

Capitalizing on Information Organization and Information Visualization for a New-Generation Catalogue

Subject searching is difficult with traditional text-based online public access library catalogues (OPACs), and the next-generation discovery layers are keyword searching and result filtering tools that offer little support for subject browsing. Next-generation OPACs ignore the rich network of relations offered by controlled subject vocabulary, which can facilitate subject browsing. A new generation of OPACs could leverage existing information-organization investments and offer online searchers a novel browsing and searching environment. This is a case study of the design and development of a virtual reality subject browsing and information retrieval tool. The functional prototype shows that the Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) can be shaped into a useful and usable tree structure serving as a visual metaphor that contains a real world collection from the domain of science and engineering. Formative tests show that users can effectively browse the LCSH tree and carve it up based on their keyword search queries. This study uses a complex information-organization structure as a defining characteristic of an OPAC that goes beyond the standard keyword search model, toward the cutting edge of online search tools.

Labor force participation and pair-wise efficient contracts with search and bargaining

A “constant” wage is pair-wise inefficient in a standard search model when workers endogenously separate from employment. We derive a pair-wise efficient employment contract that involves workers paying a hiring fee (or bond) upon the formation of a match. We estimate the constant wage and pair-wise efficient contract assuming the hiring fee is unobservable, and find evidence to reject the pair-wise efficient contract in favor of the constant wage rule. A counterfactual experiment reveals the current level of labor force participation to be 9.6% below the efficient level, and a structural shift to the pair-wise efficient contract improves welfare by roughly 3.5%.

Selective Hiring and Welfare Analysis in Labor Market Models

Firms select not only how many, but also which workers to hire. Yet, in standard search models of the labor market, all workers have the same probability of being hired. We argue that selective hiring crucially affects welfare analysis. Our model is isomorphic to a search model under random hiring but allows for selective hiring. With selective hiring, the positive predictions of the model change very little, but the welfare costs of unemployment are much larger because unemployment risk is distributed unequally across workers. As a result, optimal unemployment insurance may be higher and welfare is lower if hiring is selective.

Deep habits and the cyclical behaviour of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies

We extend the standard textbook search and matching model by introducing deep habits in consumption. This assumption generates amplification in the response of labour market variables to technology shocks by producing endogenous countercyclical mark-ups. The cyclical fluctuations of vacancies and unemployment in our model can replicate those observed in the US data, with labour market tightness being 20 times more volatile than consumption. Vacancies display a hump-shaped response to technology shocks and the numerical simulations generate an artificial Beveridge curve that is in line with the data. Our model preserves the assumption of fully flexible wages for new hires and the calibration is consistent with the estimated elasticity of unemployment to unemployment benefits. Finally, we show that in contrast to models with exogenous mark-up shocks, the deep habits model does not require an implausible variation in the elasticity of demand to match the volatility of labour market variables, and the cyclical properties of the mark-up are in line with empirical evidence.

THE UNEMPLOYMENT VOLATILITY PUZZLE: THE ROLE OF MATCHING COSTS REVISITED

Pissarides has argued that the standard search model with sunk fixed matching costs increases unemployment volatility without introducing an unrealistic response of wages of new matches to productivity shocks. We revise the role of matching costs and show that when these costs are not sunk and, therefore, can be partially passed on to new hired workers in the form of lower wages, the amplification mechanism of fixed matching costs is considerably reduced. Finally, we observe that an empirical reasonable share of sunk costs is not able to match the volatility of unemployment without introducing unrealistic sensitivity to unemployment benefits. (JEL E32, J32, J64)

Collateral fluctuations in a monetary economy

This paper studies economy-wide fluctuations that occur endogenously in the presence of monetary and real assets. Using a standard monetary search model, we consider an economy in which agents can increase consumption, over and above what their liquid monetary asset holdings would allow, pledging real assets as collateral for monetary loans. It is shown that, if the liquidation value of real assets is below full market value, a stable cyclical equilibrium can emerge in consumption and capital around the unstable steady state. We also provide conditions for the existence of cycles of higher order, chaos and sunspot equilibria.

Information and Prices with Capacity Constraints

In the theoretical literature on consumer search, one conclusion is nearly universal: as buyers become better able to observe and compare prices ex ante, sellers will set lower prices in equilibrium. In this paper, I examine a standard consumer search model with one small -- yet often relevant -- additional restriction: I assume that sellers are capacity constrained. In this environment, I illustrate that the conventional wisdom regarding information and prices does not necessarily hold: having more informed consumers can lead to a decrease in prices, have no effect at all, or even lead to an increase in prices.

Cyclical Behavior of a Matching Model with Capital Investment

This paper studies the role of capital investment in a search and matching model. I develop an endogenous job separation matching model in which a firm's capital investment decision is endogenously determined. The incorporation of capital investment provides an additional channel for firms to respond to productivity shocks, significantly magnifying labor market fluctuations. The numerical results demonstrate that the incorporation of capital investment improves the ability of the standard search and matching model to generate cyclical fluctuations of unemployment and vacancies in response to productivity shocks. Moreover, my model can generate the pro-cyclicality of vacancies, which the standard endogenous separation models often fail to generate.

A Search Model with a Quasi-Network

In a standard search model the expected duration of unemployment is independent of the duration of previous employment, as well as of the current length of the unemployment spell. This paper offers a network mechanism to generate these correlations. Here, employed workers invest in social contacts with other employed workers, which will help them find jobs in the event of unemployment. These social contacts depreciate because they can also become unemployed and unemployed contacts are assumed to be useless. In this model the longer you have been working, the more contacts you are likely to have, and the more contacts you have the shorter your expected unemployment duration will be. The model is a simple and tractable way of introducing network ideas in one of the workhorses of labour and macroeconomics. In the model the network is eroded during periods of high unemployment, and is therefore less productive in an absolute sense. Nevertheless, the number of job finders per contact in the unemployment pool increases during periods of high unemployment. Finally, the model provides guidance for indirect inference of network effects from the data.

Cyclical Behavior of a Matching Model with Capital Investment

This paper studies the role of capital investment in a search and matching model. I develop an endogenous job separation matching model in which a firm's irreversible capital investment is endogenously determined. The incorporation of capital investment provides an additional channel for firms to respond to productivity shocks, significantly magnifying labor market fluctuations. The numerical results demonstrate that the incorporation of irreversible capital investment improves the ability of the standard search and matching model to generate cyclical fluctuations of unemployment and vacancies in response to productivity shocks. Moreover, my model can generate the pro-cyclicality of vacancies, which the standard endogenous separation models often fail to generate.

A Search Model with a Quasi-Network

In a standard search model the expected duration of unemployment is independent of the duration of previous employment, as well as of the current length of the unemployment spell. This paper offers a network mechanism to generate these correlations. Here, employed workers invest in social contacts with other employed workers, which will help them find jobs in the event of unemployment. These social contacts depreciate because they can also become unemployed and unemployed contacts are assumed to be useless. In this model the longer you have been working, the more contacts you are likely to have, and the more contacts you have the shorter your expected unemployment duration will be. The model is a simple and tractable way of introducing network ideas in one of the workhorses of labour and macroeconomics. The model also suggests that networks are less productive during periods of high unemployment, mainly because high unemployment destroys part of the network. In addition, the model provides guidance for indirect inference of network effects from the data.

Do time-varying risk premiums explain labor market performance?

Within the standard search and matching model, time-to-build implies that high aggregate risk premiums should forecast low employment growth in the short run but high employment growth in the long run. If there is also time-to-plan, high risk premiums should forecast low net hiring rates in the short run but high net hiring rates in the long run. Our evidence indicates two-quarter time-to-build in the aggregate payroll data, no time-to-plan in the aggregate hiring data, but two-quarter time-to-plan in the job creation data for manufacturing firms. High payroll growth and high net job creation rate in manufacturing also forecast low stock market excess returns at business cycle frequencies.

Deep Habits and the Cyclical Behaviour of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies

We extend the standard textbook search and matching model by introducing deep habits in consumption. The cyclical fluctuations of vacancies and unemployment in our model can replicate those observed in the US data, with labour market tightness being 20 times more volatile than consumption. Vacancies display a hump-shaped response to technology shocks as well as autocorrelation coefficients that are in line with the empirical evidence. Our model preserves the assumption of fully flexible wages for the new hires and the calibration is consistent with the estimated elasticity of unemployment to unemployment benefits. The numerical simulations generate an artificial Beveridge curve which is in line with the data.

Monetary persistence and the labor market: A new perspective

Abstract In this paper we propose a novel way to model the labor market in the context of a New-Keynesian general equilibrium model, incorporating labor market frictions in the form of hiring and firing costs. We show that such a model is able to replicate many important stylized facts of the business cycle. The reactions to monetary and real shocks become much more sluggish. Job creation and job destruction are negatively correlated. And the volatility of unemployment is much larger than in the standard search and matching model.