The Effects of Government Spending in Segmented Labor and Financial Markets

This paper develops a model with high-skilled and low-skilled workers to show the expansionary effects of government spending despite large training costs for new hires. The main idea is that a fiscal stimulus induces changes in the composition of the labor force conditional on the extent of aggregate demand pressure. A period of high aggregate demand pressure is followed by a high value of forgone output as training activity causes production disruption. In this period firms decide to hire more low-skilled workers, who constitute a cheaper part of the labor force. When aggregate demand pressure is diminished, firms switch to hiring more high-skilled workers. However, the current literature considers only high-skilled workers, who tend to increase saving in government bonds to protect against poor employment prospects. In this case, the combination of weak employment prospects and the crowding-out effects of higher lump-sum taxes and government debt on private consumption and capital investment gives rise to recessionary effects. In contrast, this paper provides a model with a more realistic labor and financial market structure and suggests that countercyclical government spending in the form of government consumption and especially government investment can be used to deal with recessions.