Japan's Labor Market Cyclicality and the Volatility Puzzle
The search and matching model has recently come under criticism for its inability to account for some of the cyclical properties of the U.S. labor market. Shimer (2005) has shown that the basic version of the model is incapable of reproducing the volatility of the market tightness for reasonable movements in productivity. This paper considers whether the so-called "Shimer Puzzle" also holds for the Japanese economy. We present empirical evidence on the cyclical properties of the labor market variables in Japan and compare these to their U.S. counterparts. We then build, parametrize, and simulate three different versions of the search and matching model (with exogenous job destruction, with endogenous job destruction, and embedded in a Real Business Cycle model) and compare the simulated statistics to the data. We find that the "Shimer Puzzle" does hold for Japan, since the model is unable to generate as much volatility on the market tightness as in the data.
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| Length: | 30 pages |
| Date of creation: | Apr 2011 |
| Handle: | RePEc:eti:dpaper:11040 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: 11th floor, Annex, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) 1-3-1, Kasumigaseki Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8901 Phone: +81-3-3501-1363 Fax: +81-3-3501-8577 Web page: http://www.rieti.go.jp/ Email: More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS
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.:
- Esteban-Pretel, Julen & Nakajima, Ryo & Tanaka, Ryuichi, 2010.
"TFP growth slowdown and the Japanese labor market in the 1990s,"
Journal of the Japanese and International Economies,
Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 50-68, March.
- Julen ESTEBAN-PRETEL & NAKAJIMA Ryo & TANAKA Ryuichi, 2009. "TFP Growth Slowdown and the Japanese Labor Market in the 1990s," Discussion papers 09003, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
- Cooley, Thomas F. & Quadrini, Vincenzo, 1999. "A neoclassical model of the Phillips curve relation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 165-193, October. Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)