Standard Search Model Research Articles

The impact of growth on unemployment in a low vs. a high inflation environment

The standard search model of unemployment predicts, under realistic assumptions about household preferences, that disembodied technological progress leads to higher steady-state unemployment. This prediction is at odds with the 1970s experience of slow productivity growth and high unemployment in industrial countries. We show that introducing nominal price rigidity helps in reconciling the model's prediction with experience. Faster growth is shown to lead to lower unemployment when inflation is relatively high, as was the case in the 1970s. In general, the sign of the effect of growth on unemployment is shown to depend on the level of steady-state inflation. There is a threshold level of inflation below (above) which faster growth leads to higher (lower) unemployment. The prediction of the model is supported by an empirical analysis based on US and European data.

Adaptive Learning and Labour Market Dynamics

It is well known that the standard search and matching model with Rational Expectations (RE) is unable to generate amplification in unemployment and vacancies. We show that relaxing the RE assumption has the potential to provide a solution to this well known unemployment volatility puzzle. A model in which agents use Recursive Least Square algorithms to update their expectations as new information becomes available is presented. Firms choose vacancies by making infinite horizon forecasts over (un)employment rates, wages and interest rates at each point in time. Firms have much greater incentive for vacancy posting because of overoptimism about the discounted value of expected profits at the time a positive TFP shock hits the economy. The model with adaptive learning is able to match the relative volatility of labour market variables in US data and the properties of forecast errors of unemployment rates obtained from the Survey of Professional Forecasters.

Evaluating random search strategies in three mammals from distinct feeding guilds.

Searching allows animals to find food, mates, shelter and other resources essential for survival and reproduction and is thus among the most important activities performed by animals. Theory predicts that animals will use random search strategies in highly variable and unpredictable environments. Two prominent models have been suggested for animals searching in sparse and heterogeneous environments: (i) the Lévy walk and (ii) the composite correlated random walk (CCRW) and its associated area-restricted search behaviour. Until recently, it was difficult to differentiate between the movement patterns of these two strategies. Using a new method that assesses whether movement patterns are consistent with these two strategies and two other common random search strategies, we investigated the movement behaviour of three species inhabiting sparse northern environments: woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), barren-ground grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) and polar bear (Ursus maritimus). These three species vary widely in their diets and thus allow us to contrast the movement patterns of animals from different feeding guilds. Our results showed that although more traditional methods would have found evidence for the Lévy walk for some individuals, a comparison of the Lévy walk to CCRWs showed stronger support for the latter. While a CCRW was the best model for most individuals, there was a range of support for its absolute fit. A CCRW was sufficient to explain the movement of nearly half of herbivorous caribou and a quarter of omnivorous grizzly bears, but was insufficient to explain the movement of all carnivorous polar bears. Strong evidence for CCRW movement patterns suggests that many individuals may use a multiphasic movement strategy rather than one-behaviour strategies such as the Lévy walk. The fact that the best model was insufficient to describe the movement paths of many individuals suggests that some animals living in sparse environments may use strategies that are more complicated than those described by the standard random search models. Thus, our results indicate a need to develop movement models that incorporate factors such as the perceptual and cognitive capacities of animals.

A two-agent model of sequential search and choice

This paper extends the standard sequential search model by allowing the agent who compiles the choice set via search (the “searcher”) to differ from the agent who chooses from the set (the “chooser”). I show for a general joint distribution of the agents’ preferences that the searcher's optimal policy is a threshold rule. In contrast to the standard model, the threshold is weakly decreasing in time (i.e., exhibits the “discouragement effect”), although the search horizon is infinite and the search environment stationary. I characterise the threshold and discuss the testable implications of the discouragement effect. The characteristics of my model differ from two single-agent search models that feature a time-varying threshold (convex search costs or deadline). In particular, my model features a threshold that decreases endogenously over time and never generates return to an item rejected earlier, in contrast to the other models.

Labour Market Modelling in the Light of the Financial Crisis

This paper revisits the empirical relationship between unemployment and output, and its evolution following the financial crisis of 2008, with the aim of drawing potential consequences for labour market modelling strategies in place within the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). First, the negative correlation between output and unemployment (Okun’s law) at cyclical frequencies is found to be a robust feature of macro data across time, countries and identification schemes. Focusing on the euro area, the financial distress seems to have altered the dynamics of output and unemployment mainly at lower frequencies, interpreted as trend developments by the statistical filters used in the analysis. Looking at the implications for modelling strategies, we propose an extension of the standard labour search and matching model in which financial frictions impinge directly on the labour market rather than on the capital market, opening the way to protracted and lagged response of employment after a “financial” crisis. In terms of policy implications, the importance of the interplay between financial and labour market frictions in trend developments should be read as strong support for an ambitious structural reform agenda in Europe, so as to make our labour (and goods) markets more flexible and resilient. JEL Classification: E10, E32, J64

Job Search, Locus of Control, and Internal Migration

Internal migration can substantially improve labor market efficiency. Consequently, policy is often targeted towards reducing the barriers workers face in moving to new labor markets. In this paper we explicitly model internal migration as the result of a job search process and demonstrate that assumptions about the timing of job search have fundamental implications for the pattern of internal migration that results. Unlike standard search models, we assume that job seekers do not know the true job offer arrival rate, but instead form subjective beliefs - related to their locus of control - about the impact of their search effort on the probability of receiving a job offer. Those with an internal locus of control are predicted to search more intensively (i.e. across larger geographic areas) because they expect higher returns to their search effort. However, they are predicted to migrate more frequently only if job search occurs before migration. We then test the empiricalimplications of this model. We find that individuals with an internal locus of control not only express a greater willingness to move, but also undertake internal migration more frequently.

How Auctions Amplify House-Price Fluctuations

I develop a tractable dynamic model of the housing market where the prices are determined in auctions rather than by Nash bargaining as in the standard housing search model. Markets that use auctions mimic actual housing markets, in that the model can portray a \hot market where numerous buyers ock to each new house on the market and a \cold market, where numerous houses are on the market and a buyer has a wide choice without competing directly with other buyers. In the auction model prices are higher, the market is bigger and waiting times are longer in the steady state compared to the standard model. In particular, the house prices are 30 percent higher in the auction model than in the bargaining model. There are four times more buyers and sellers and it takes four times longer to buy or sell a house in steady state. The dynamic response of prices to shocks is larger in the auction model than in the bargaining model. Auctions amplify the response of house prices to shocks because prices respond more to changes in the present value of the housing services, and the option value to sell is more sensitive to the state of the housing

Collusion with costly consumer search

I use standard consumer search models to study how an increase in market transparency (lower search costs or higher share of fully informed consumers) affects cartel stability. When firms sell horizontally differentiated products, cartels become more stable as the search cost increases; with homogeneous products, by contrast, the opposite holds. A higher share of fully informed consumers makes collusion less stable when the market is initially sufficiently transparent, whereas it happens otherwise if the market is originally little transparent.

The Cyclical Properties of Unemployment and Vacancies in Taiwan

AbstractThis paper examines the quantitative performance of the standard search and matching model in explaining the cyclical behaviour of Taiwan's labour market. Although the model accounts well for the data in some dimensions, simulated volatility is counterfactually very low, as pointed out in Shimer (2005) for the US labour market. Nevertheless, calibrated to Taiwan's data, the model explains a higher proportion of the observed volatility than the Shimer (2005) results, due to a higher parameter value for leisure; if an extremely high value is assumed, the model explains substantially better, but still partially, the volatility in Taiwan.

Real wage rigidity and the unemployment volatility puzzle in small open economies

Standard search models of the labour market feature a volatility puzzle: labour market variables move too little in response to productivity shocks. I investigate if real wage rigidity is sufficient to solve this in an open economy. Starting from a closed economy benchmark in which wage rigidity makes labour market variables sufficiently volatile, I find that the puzzle reopens in the open economy, despite a rigid real wage. This is because terms of trade movements move the wedge between the consumer and producer real wage in such a way that labour market variables respond less to productivity shocks. A quantitative exercise shows that the effect of this mechanism can be sizeable.

Human Capital and Employment Risks Diversification

Both educational expenditures and attainment have increased sharply over the last decades, despite rising prices of education, and stagnating income returns to human capital. This paper emphasizes conditional employment risks diversification as additional motivation for education demand. Job risk protection through education is strongly evidenced in the data, yet is absent from the Human Capital (HC) literature, whereas dynamic HC choices by agents are not considered in standard unemployment Search and Matching models. A benchmark HC model is thus modified to allow for lower job displacement risk, and higher re-employment probability, in addition to higher income for the better educated. Numerical solutions for optimal dynamic investment in human capital are consistent with observed patterns, such as unemployment duration dependence (stigma), post-re-employment income loss (scarring), and cyclical co-movements in education expenditures. The effects of permanent shifts affecting human capital returns in employment risks diversification, and income returns are investigated and shown to be consistent with rising educational expenditures and attainment.

The slow job recovery in a macro model of search and recruiting intensity

Despite steady declines in the unemployment rate and increases in the job openings rate after the Great Recession, the hiring rate in the United States has lagged behind. Significant gaps remain between the actual job filling and finding rates and those predicted from the standard labor search model. To examine the forces behind the slow job recovery, we generalize the standard model to incorporate endogenous variations in search intensity and recruiting intensity. Our model features a vacancy creation cost, which implies that firms rely on variations in both the number of vacancies and recruiting intensity to respond to aggregate shocks, in contrast to the textbook model with costless vacancy creation and thus constant recruiting intensity. Cyclical variations in search and recruiting intensity drive a wedge into the matching function even absent exogenous changes in match efficiency. Our estimated model suggests that fluctuations in search and recruiting intensity help substantially bridge the gap between the actual and model-predicted job filling and finding rates in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Does Extending Unemployment Benefits Improve Job Quality?

Contrary to standard search models predictions, past studies have not found a positive effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on reemployment wages. We estimate a positive UI wage effect exploiting an age-based regression discontinuity design in Austria. A search model incorporating duration dependence predicts two countervailing forces: UI induces workers to seek higher-wage jobs, but reduces wages by lengthening unemployment. Matching-function heterogeneity plausibly generates a negative relationship between the UI unemployment-duration and wage effects, which holds empirically in our sample and across studies, reconciling disparate wage-effect estimates. Empirically, UI raises wages by improving reemployment firm quality and attenuating wage drops. (JEL J31, J64, J65)

Homeownership, mortgages, and unemployment

According to Oswald’s thesis, homeownership increases unemployment. Empirical research on micro-data has indeed confirmed that unemployed homeowners are less inclined to change their residential location and accept a new job elsewhere. However, it is also repeatedly found that unemployed homeowners tend to find a job more easily than otherwise comparable tenants. This paper aims to make a new contribution to the scientific debate on Oswald’s thesis by addressing the risk attitudes of job seekers. We show that decreasing absolute risk aversion implies that the exit rate from unemployment is increasing in housing costs, in the context of a standard job search model. Therefore, the higher costs associated with leveraged homeownership may be the driving force of homeowners’ observed labor market performance. We test this prediction on the basis of Dutch data on individual unemployment spells. Contrary to our hypothesis, we do not find evidence that a higher mortgage is associated with higher exit rates from unemployment. Rather, our findings support earlier micro-econometric results that homeownership tends to accelerate a successful job search.

Does Extending Unemployment Benefits Improve Job Quality?

Contrary to standard search model predictions, prior studies failed to estimate a positive effect of unemployment insurance (UI) on reemployment wages. This paper estimates a positive UI wage effect exploiting an age-based regression discontinuity in Austrian administrative data. A search model incorporating duration dependence determines the UI wage effect as the balance between two offsetting forces: UI causes agents to seek higher-wage jobs, but also reduces wages by lengthening unemployment. This implies a negative relationship between the UI unemployment duration and wage effects, which holds empirically both in our sample and across studies, reconciling disparate wage-effect estimates. Empirically, UI raises wages by improving reemployment firms' quality and attenuating wage drops.

Big ideas in macroeconomics: a nontechnical view

Macroeconomists have been caricatured either as credulous savants in love with the beauty of their mathematical models or as free-market fundamentalists who admit no doubt as to the market's wisdom. In this book, Kartik Athreya draws a truer picture, offering a nontechnical description of prominent ideas and models in macroeconomics, and arguing for their value as interpretive tools as well as their policy relevance. Athreya deliberately leaves out the technical machinery, providing an essential guide to the sometimes abstract ideas that drive macroeconomists' research and practical policy advice. Athreya describes the main approach to macroeconomic model construction, the foundational Walrasian general-equilibrium framework, and its modern version, the Arrow-Debreu-McKenzie (ADM) model. In the heart of the book, Athreya shows how the Walrasian approach shapes and unifies much of modern macroeconomics. He details models central to ongoing macroeconomic analyses: the neoclassical and stochastic growth models, the standard incomplete-markets model, the overlapping-generations model, and the standard search model. Athreya's accessible primer traces the links between the views and policy advice of modern macroeconomists and their shared theoretical approach.

Procyclicality of Pension Fund Regulation and Behaviour

This paper studies the labour market effects of pension fund restoration plans at a business cycle frequency. During a recession, pension funds’ funding ratios typically drop significantly and regulations force funds to restore their buffers by increasing their contributions, lower future indexation or cut liabilities immediately. Using a standard search and matching model of the labour market, I find that especially raising contribution rates has significant amplification effects on the key labour market statistics. A less distorting solution is to let pension rights fluctuate with the value of the pension assets and to use pension contributions only to finance new rights. This paper shows that risk sharing via the pension system will amplify labour market fluctuations, something not taken into account by standard risk sharing recipes.

Private Information, Wage Stickiness, and Labor Market Fluctuations

This paper develops a tractable job search model with information friction to analyze the interaction between the performance-based compensation scheme and labor market fluctuations. Workers privately learn their match quality upon starting the job and keep searching for better matches. Firms post performance-based wage schedules to incentivize production. This paper demonstrates that as reflecting internal pressure (incentive provision) as well as external pressure (market fluctuation), 'across-job-wage-variations' are volatile, but 'within-job-wage-variations' moderate. In contrast to the standard search and matching model with Nash-Bargaining sharing rule, the sticky behavior of the performance-based wage scheme amplifies fluctuations in unemployment and vacancies.

Homeownership, Unemployment and Commuting Distances

More than a decade ago Oswald has formulated the thesis that homeownership increases unemployment. Empirical research on micro data has confirmed that unemployed homeowners are less inclined to move house in combination with accepting a new job elsewhere. However, in general for European countries, residential mobility associated with unemployment spells appears to be too small to be able to have a substantial impact on labour market outcomes. The present paper aims to make a new contribution to the scientific debate on Oswald’s thesis by addressing two complementary issues: risk attitudes of job seekers and commuting costs. We show that decreasing absolute risk aversion implies that the exit rate from unemployment is increasing in housing cost in the context of a standard job search model. In a spatial setting this is shown to imply that higher housing costs increase average commuting distances as well. We test these predictions on Dutch register data. Our empirical results show that outright homeowners have lower exit rates from unemployment than renters and are more reluctant to accept long commutes, which confirms Oswald’s thesis. However, highly leveraged homeowners have higher exit rates than renters and are more inclined to accept longer commutes, which confirms earlier findings in the literature.

Labor-market volatility in a matching model with worker heterogeneity and endogenous separations

This paper shows that introducing worker heterogeneity into a standard search and matching model can help increase the volatility of unemployment without violating the tight negative correlation between vacancies and unemployment, i.e., the Beveridge curve. In the model, periods of high job destruction and unemployment correspond with periods of more severe mismatch between the demands of firms and the qualifications of job seekers. A more severe mismatch translates into fewer successful employment matches conditional on the number of contacts per firm and, as a result, into a higher expected recruitment cost per worker hired, with adverse effects on incentives to open vacancies.