Shimer (2005) pointed out that although we have a satisfactory theory of why some workers are unemployed at any given time, we don?t know why the number of unemployed workers varies so much over time. The basic Mortensen-Pissarides (1994) model does not generate nearly enough volatility in unemployment, for plausible parameter values. This paper extends the Mortensen-Pissarides model to allow for informational rents. Productivity is subject to publicly observed aggregate shocks, and to idiosyncratic shocks that are seen only by the employer. It is shown that there is a unique equilibrium, provided that the idiosyncratic shocks are not too large. The main result is that small fluctuations in productivity that are privately observed by employers can give rise to a kind of wage stickiness in equilibrium, and the informational rents associated with this stickiness are sufficient to generate relatively large unemployment fluctuations.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
11967.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11967
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
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Guido Menzio & Espen Moen, 2008.
"Worker Replacement,"
PIER Working Paper Archive
08-040, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
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Christian Haefke & Marcus Sonntag & Thijs van Rens, 2007.
"Wage Rigidity and Job Creation,"
Economics Working Papers
1047, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Aug 2008.
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