IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v117y2021icp335-353.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unemployment crises

Author

Listed:
  • Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas
  • Zhang, Lu

Abstract

An equilibrium search model with credible bargaining, when calibrated to the mean and volatility of postwar unemployment rates, is a good start to understanding the unemployment crisis in the Great Depression. Drawing from rarely used data sources, this paper compiles historical monthly time series of U.S. unemployment rates, vacancy rates, and labor productivity, some of which date back to 1890. The frequency, persistence, and severity of the unemployment crises in the model are quantitatively consistent with those in the historical data.

Suggested Citation

  • Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Zhang, Lu, 2021. "Unemployment crises," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 335-353.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:117:y:2021:i:c:p:335-353
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2020.01.009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393220300064
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2020.01.009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:wop:calsdi:97-23 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Ken Binmore & Ariel Rubinstein & Asher Wolinsky, 1986. "The Nash Bargaining Solution in Economic Modelling," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(2), pages 176-188, Summer.
    3. Ben S. Bernanke & Kevin Carey, 1996. "Nominal Wage Stickiness and Aggregate Supply in the Great Depression," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 853-883.
    4. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    5. Christopher J. Erceg & Michael D. Bordo & Charles L. Evans, 2000. "Money, Sticky Wages, and the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1447-1463, December.
    6. Garey Ramey & Wouter J. den Haan & Joel Watson, 2000. "Job Destruction and Propagation of Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 482-498, June.
    7. Mark Gertler & Antonella Trigari, 2009. "Unemployment Fluctuations with Staggered Nash Wage Bargaining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 38-86, February.
    8. Eichengreen, Barry & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1985. "Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(4), pages 925-946, December.
    9. Morten O. Ravn & Harald Uhlig, 2002. "On adjusting the Hodrick-Prescott filter for the frequency of observations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 371-375.
    10. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2009. "The Unemployment Volatility Puzzle: Is Wage Stickiness the Answer?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1339-1369, September.
    11. Merz, Monika, 1995. "Search in the labor market and the real business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 269-300, November.
    12. Robert E. Hall & Paul R. Milgrom, 2008. "The Limited Influence of Unemployment on the Wage Bargain," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1653-1674, September.
    13. Paolo Martellini & Guido Menzio, 2020. "Declining Search Frictions, Unemployment, and Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(12), pages 4387-4437.
    14. Chatterjee, Satyajit & Corbae, Dean, 2007. "On the aggregate welfare cost of Great Depression unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1529-1544, September.
    15. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2007. "Business Cycle Accounting," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 781-836, May.
    16. Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau & Etienne Wasmer, 2013. "The Cyclical Volatility of Labor Markets under Frictional Financial Markets," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-221, January.
    17. Marcus Hagedorn & Iourii Manovskii, 2008. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1692-1706, September.
    18. Darby, Michael R, 1976. "Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(1), pages 1-16, February.
    19. Jay L. Zagorsky, 1998. "Job Vacancies In The United States: 1923 To 1994," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 338-345, May.
    20. Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau & Lu Zhang & Lars-Alexander Kuehn, 2018. "Endogenous Disasters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(8), pages 2212-2245, August.
    21. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    22. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 1999. "The Great Depression in the United States from a neoclassical perspective," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 23(Win), pages 2-24.
    23. Nicolas Petrosky‐Nadeau & Lu Zhang, 2017. "Solving the Diamond–Mortensen–Pissarides model accurately," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(2), pages 611-650, July.
    24. Rose, Jonathan D., 2010. "Hoover's Truce: Wage Rigidity in the Onset of the Great Depression," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 843-870, December.
    25. Barnichon, Regis, 2010. "Building a composite Help-Wanted Index," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 175-178, December.
    26. Harold L. Cole & Lee E. Ohanian, 2004. "New Deal Policies and the Persistence of the Great Depression: A General Equilibrium Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 779-816, August.
    27. Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Fluctuations with Equilibrium Wage Stickiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 50-65, March.
    28. Miron, Jeffrey A. & Romer, Christina D., 1990. "A New Monthly Index of Industrial Production, 1884–1940," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(2), pages 321-337, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kohlbrecher, Britta & Merkl, Christian, 2022. "Business cycle asymmetries and the labor market," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. Merkl, Christian & Stüber, Heiko, 2024. "Wage and employment cyclicalities at the establishment level," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    3. Bai, Hang & Zhang, Lu, 2022. "Searching for the equity premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(2), pages 897-926.
    4. Kothari, Pratik & O’Doherty, Michael S., 2023. "Job postings and aggregate stock returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    5. Carlos Carrillo-Tudela & Ludo Visschers & David Wiczer, 2022. "Cyclical Earnings, Career and Employment Transitions," CESifo Working Paper Series 9990, CESifo.

    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. Bai, Hang & Zhang, Lu, 2022. "Searching for the equity premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(2), pages 897-926.
    2. Tsasa, Jean-Paul K., 2022. "Labor market volatility in a fully specified RBC search model: An analytical investigation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    3. Bodenstein, Martin & Kamber, Güneş & Thoenissen, Christoph, 2018. "Commodity prices and labour market dynamics in small open economies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 170-184.
    4. Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Wasmer, Etienne, 2015. "Macroeconomic dynamics in a model of goods, labor, and credit market frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 97-113.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5l6uh8ogmqildh09h481l2tb5 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau & Lu Zhang, "undated". "Unemployment Crises," GSIA Working Papers 2013-E5, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    7. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1787nsa6d1927a90u4bkkombn4 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Kuehn Lars-Alexander & Petrosky-Nadeau Nicolas & Zhang Lu, "undated". "An Equilibrium Asset Pricing Model with Labor Market Search," GSIA Working Papers 2010-E63, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5por5bt92h8l0bc7ls4elmcc0b is not listed on IDEAS
    10. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/1787nsa6d1927a90u4bkkombn4 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Alejandro Justiniano & Claudio Michelacci, 2011. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies in the US and Europe," NBER Working Papers 17429, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Alejandro Justiniano & Claudio Michelacci, 2012. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies in the United States and Europe," NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 169-235.
    13. Liu, Zheng & Miao, Jianjun & Zha, Tao, 2016. "Land prices and unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 86-105.
    14. Josué Diwambuena & Raquel Fonseca & Stefan Schubert, 2021. "Italian Labour Frictions and Wage Rigidities in an Estimated DSGE," BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series BEMPS88, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen.
    15. Lin, Tsu-ting Tim, 2015. "Working capital requirement and the unemployment volatility puzzle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 201-217.
    16. Drautzburg, Thorsten & Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Guerrón-Quintana, Pablo, 2021. "Bargaining shocks and aggregate fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    17. Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, 2014. "Credit, Vacancies and Unemployment Fluctuations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(2), pages 191-205, April.
    18. Ryan Chahrour & Sanjay K. Chugh & Tristan Potter, 2014. "Searching for Wages in an Estimated Labor Matching Model," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 867, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 20 Dec 2016.
    19. Basu, S. & House, C.L., 2016. "Allocative and Remitted Wages," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 297-354, Elsevier.
    20. Matthias S. Hertweck & Vivien Lewis & Stefania Villa, 2021. "Going the Extra Mile: Effort by Workers and Job‐Seekers," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(8), pages 2099-2127, December.
    21. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Mathias Trabandt, 2016. "Unemployment and Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1523-1569, July.
    22. Amaral, Pedro S. & Tasci, Murat, 2016. "The cyclical behavior of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies across OECD countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 184-201.
    23. Bai, Hang, 2021. "Unemployment and credit risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 127-145.
    24. Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau & Etienne Wasmer, 2015. "Macroeconomic Dynamics in a Model of Goods, Labor and Credit Market Frictions," SciencePo Working papers hal-03392977, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Search model of equilibrium unemployment; The great depression; The unemployment volatility; Economic history; Globally nonlinear solution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    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:eee:moneco:v:117:y:2021:i:c:p:335-353. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

    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.