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Jobs and Unemployment in Macroeconomic Theory: A Turbulence Laboratory

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Author Info
Ljungqvist, Lars
Sargent, Thomas J

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Abstract

We use three general equilibrium frameworks with jobs and unemployed workers to study the effects of government mandated unemployment insurance (UI) and employment protection (EP). To illuminate the forces in these models, we study how UI and EP affect outcomes when there is higher 'turbulence' in the sense of worse skill transition probabilities for workers who suffer involuntary layoffs. Matching and search-island models have labour market frictions and incomplete markets. The representative family model with employment lotteries has no labour market frictions and complete markets. The adverse welfare state dynamics coming from high UI indexed to past earnings that were isolated by Ljungqvist and Sargent (1998) are so strong that they determine outcomes in all three frameworks. Another force stressed by Ljungqvist and Sargent (2005), through which higher layoff taxes suppress frictional unemployment in less turbulent times, prevails in the models with labour market frictions, but not in the frictionless representative family model. In addition, the high aggregate labour supply elasticity that emerges from employment lotteries and complete insurance markets in the representative family model makes it impossible to include generous government-supplied unemployment insurance in that model without getting the unrealistic result that economic activity virtually shuts down.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 5340.

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Date of creation: Nov 2005
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5340

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Related research
Keywords: discouraged worker; employment protection; job; matching; search; skills; turbulence; unemployment; unemployment insurance;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution
J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Morten O. Ravn, 2006. "The Consumption-Tightness Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 12421, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Olivier Blanchard, 2005. "European Unemployment: The Evolution of Facts and Ideas," NBER Working Papers 11750, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
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