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Bad Jobs and Low Inflation

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Abstract

We study a model in which firms compete to retain and attract workers searching on the job. A drop in the rate of on-the-job search makes such wage competition less likely, reducing expected labor costs and lowering inflation. This model explains why inflation has remained subdued over the last decade, which is a conundrum for general equilibrium models and Phillips curves. Key to this success is the observed slowdown in the recovery of the employment-to-employment transition rate in the last five years, which is interpreted by the model as a decline in the share of employed workers searching for a job. This fall in the on-the-job search rate is corroborated by the micro data.

Suggested Citation

  • Renato Faccini & Leonardo Melosi, 2020. "Bad Jobs and Low Inflation," Working Paper Series WP 2020-09, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:87688
    DOI: 10.21033/wp-2020-09
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    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Bad Jobs and Low Inflation
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2019-10-19 20:21:04

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    Cited by:

    1. Marco Del Negro & Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2020. "What's Up with the Phillips Curve?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(1 (Spring), pages 301-373.
    2. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi & Anna Rogantini Picco, 2022. "Who is Afraid of Eurobonds?," Working Paper Series WP 2022-43, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    3. Drago Bergholt & Francesco Furlanetto & Etienne Vaccaro-Grange, 2023. "Did monetary policy kill the Phillips Curve? Some simple arithmetics," Working Paper 2023/2, Norges Bank.
    4. Nicholas Apergis, 2024. "Eurozone inflation: fresh projections from global factors," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 39-47.
    5. Siena, Daniele & Zago, Riccardo, 2022. "Employment protection legislation matters for the Phillips Curve," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    6. Felipe Alves, 2022. "Job Ladder and Business Cycles," Staff Working Papers 22-14, Bank of Canada.
    7. Cynthia L. Doniger, 2021. "What Can We Learn from Asynchronous Wage Changes?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-055r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 31 Mar 2022.
    8. Gregor Boehl & Philipp Lieberknecht, 2021. "The Hockey Stick Phillips Curve and the Zero Lower Bound," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2021_266, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    9. Chris Martin & Magdalyn Okolo, 2022. "Modelling the Differing Impacts of Covid‐19 in the UK Labour Market," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(5), pages 994-1017, October.
    10. Richard Ashley & Randal J. Verbrugge, 2019. "The Intermittent Phillips Curve: Finding a Stable (But Persistence-Dependent) Phillips Curve Model Specification," Working Papers 19-09R2, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, revised 14 Feb 2023.
    11. R. Jason Faberman & Andreas I. Mueller & Ayşegül Şahin* & Giorgio Topa, 2020. "The Shadow Margins of Labor Market Slack," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(S2), pages 355-391, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    misallocation; cyclical; labor market slack; Inflation; job ladder; Phillips curve;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

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