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Labor wedges and open economy puzzles

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  • Karabarbounis, Loukas

Abstract

A parsimonious model with home production, estimated to match moments of the “labor wedge,” explains prominent puzzles of the international business cycle. If market and home activity are substitutes, then the measured labor wedge increases whenever market consumption and employment decrease. Home production breaks the tight negative link between market consumption and its marginal utility and therefore helps explain the international risk sharing puzzle. In an estimated two-country dynamic general equilibrium model in which the labor wedge is endogenously generated to match its empirical moments, market output and market employment are more correlated than market consumption and investment across countries, relative market consumption is negatively related to the real exchange rate and real net exports are countercyclical. Further, the international risk sharing puzzle becomes easier to explain as the degree of financial completeness increases.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 31370.

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Date of creation: Oct 2010
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:31370

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Keywords: Labor Wedge; Home Production; International Business Cycles; Risk Sharing;

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References

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  1. Labor wedges and open economy puzzles
    by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2011-06-19 23:27:30
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Cited by:
  1. Gianluca Benigno & Hande Küçük-Tuger, 2011. "Portfolio Allocation and International Risk Sharing," CEP Discussion Papers dp1048, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
  2. Mark A. Aguiar & Erik Hurst & Loukas Karabarbounis, 2011. "Time Use During Recessions," NBER Working Papers 17259, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Mariya Mileva, 2013. "Optimal Monetary Policy in Response to Shifts in the Beveridge Curve," Kiel Working Papers 1823, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
  4. Anton A. Cheremukhin, 2011. "Labor matching: putting the pieces together," Working Papers 1102, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

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