IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/53260.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sticky wages, labor demand elasticity and rational unemployment

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Siyan
  • Desiderio, Saul

Abstract

In this paper we give a clear-cut explanation to the sluggish wage adjustments which are commonly experienced also in face of involuntary unemployment. We prove that unemployment may be the physiological outcome of rational decisions by competing workers who may find it optimal to ask higher wages than the full-employment ones. The key element driving the result is the slope (or elasticity) of labor demand schedule: in case of rigid labor demand, in fact, workers’ wage requests are kept high because of reduced unemployment opportunity costs. This contrasts with other approaches to the analysis of unemployment, where only the level of labor demand is considered. Impatience of working and effort required by the job are also showed to influence the degree of wage stickiness.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Siyan & Desiderio, Saul, 2014. "Sticky wages, labor demand elasticity and rational unemployment," MPRA Paper 53260, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:53260
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53260/1/MPRA_paper_53260.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Taylor, John B, 1979. "Staggered Wage Setting in a Macro Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(2), pages 108-113, May.
    2. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    3. Moen, Espen R, 1997. "Competitive Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 385-411, April.
    4. Diamond, Peter A, 1982. "Aggregate Demand Management in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 881-894, October.
    5. James D. Montgomery, 1991. "Equilibrium Wage Dispersion and Interindustry Wage Differentials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(1), pages 163-179.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    2. William Hawkins & Daron Acemoglu, 2007. "Equilibrium Unemployment in a Generalized Search Model," 2007 Meeting Papers 384, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Rosch, Stephanie D & Zhang, Cathy & Preckel, Paul & Ortega, David L., 2015. "Do Search Frictions Compound Problems of Relational Contracting?," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205779, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Coles, Melvyn G & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2002. "A Test Between Unemployment Theories Using Matching Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 3241, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Maciej K. Dudek & ówna Handlowa, 2006. "On Artificial Structural Unemployment," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 171, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Kircher, Philipp & Wright, Randall & Julien, Benoit & Guerrieri, Veronica, 2017. "Directed Search: A Guided Tour," CEPR Discussion Papers 12315, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Richard Rogerson & Robert Shimer & Randall Wright, 2004. "Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market-A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10655, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Josheski, Dushko & Magdinceva-Sopova, Marija, 2014. "Еconomic theory and the New-Keynesian school," MPRA Paper 53284, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Shouyong Shi, 2005. "Frictional Assignment, Part II: Infinite Horizon and Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(1), pages 106-137, January.
    10. Shi, Shouyong, 2001. "Frictional Assignment. I. Efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 232-260, June.
    11. Shouyong Shi, 2019. "Sequentially Mixed Search and Equilibrium Price Dispersion," 2019 Meeting Papers 322, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2567-2627 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Bruche, Max & Segura, Anatoli, 2017. "Debt maturity and the liquidity of secondary debt markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 599-613.
    14. Manolis Galenianos & Philipp Kircher & Gábor Virág, 2011. "Market Power And Efficiency In A Search Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 85-103, February.
    15. Rosen, Sherwin, 1985. "Implicit Contracts: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 1144-1175, September.
    16. Ewa Gałecka-Burdziak, 2012. "Labour market matching – the case of Poland," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 43(3), pages 31-46.
    17. Guillaume Rocheteau & Pierre‐Olivier Weill, 2011. "Liquidity in Frictional Asset Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(s2), pages 261-282, October.
    18. Peter Diamond, 2011. "Unemployment, Vacancies, Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1045-1072, June.
    19. Pascal Michaillat & Emmanuel Saez, 2015. "Aggregate Demand, Idle Time, and Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 507-569.
    20. Athanasios Geromichalos, 2015. "Unemployment Insurance and Optimal Taxation in a Search Model of the Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 365-380, April.
    21. Krolikowski, Pawel M. & McCallum, Andrew H., 2021. "Goods-market frictions and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sticky wages; involuntary unemployment; labor demand elasticity; game theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:53260. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.