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Organizational Capital and Employment Fluctuations

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Author Info
Thijs van Rens ()

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Abstract

In this paper I present a model in which production requires two types of labor inputs: regular productive tasks and organizational capital, which is accumulated by workers performing organizational tasks. By allocating more workers from organizational to productive tasks, firms can temporarily increase production without hiring. The availability of this intensive margin of labor adjustment, in combination with adjustment costs along the extensive margin (search frictions, firing costs, training costs), makes it optimal to delay employment adjustments. Simulations indicate that this mechanism is quantitatively important even if only a small fraction of workers perform organizational tasks, and explains why the hiring rate is persistent and why employment is slow to recover after the end of a recession.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 944.

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Date of creation: Nov 2004
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Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:944

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Web page: http://www.econ.upf.edu/

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Related research
Keywords: Business cycles labor market organizational capital jobless recoveries

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D92 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice and Growth, Investment, or Financing
E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution
J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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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.:
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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. McKay, Alisdair & Reis, Ricardo, 2006. "The Brevity and Violence of Contractions and Expansions," CEPR Discussion Papers 5756, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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