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Employment Efficiency and Sticky Wages: Evidence from Flows in the Labor Market

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  • Robert E. Hall

    (Hoover Institution and Department of Economics, Stanford University and National Bureau of Economic Research)

Abstract

I consider three views of the labor market. In the first, wages are flexible and employment follows the principle of bilateral efficiency. Workers never lose their jobs because of sticky wages. In the second, wages are sticky and inefficient layoffs do occur. In the third, wages are also sticky, but employment governance is efficient. I show that the behavior of flows in the labor market strongly favors the third view. In the modern U.S. economy, recessions do not begin with a burst of layoffs. Unemployment rises because jobs are hard to find, not because an unusual number of people are thrown into unemployment. 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Efficiency and Sticky Wages: Evidence from Flows in the Labor Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 397-407, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:87:y:2005:i:3:p:397-407
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    1. Bruce Fallick & Charles A. Fleischman, 2001. "The importance of employer-to-employer flows in the U.S. labor market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-18, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
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    More about this item

    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
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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