IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/32476.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Mechanism of Cyclical Volatility in the Vacancy-Unemployment Ratio: What Is the Source of Rigidity?

Author

Listed:
  • Harashima, Taiji

Abstract

The conventional search and matching model has been criticized for its inability to explain large cyclical volatility in the vacancy-unemployment ratio without ad hoc assumptions of wage rigidity. This paper presents a mechanism of such volatility without assuming wage rigidity by showing that households can rationally select a Nash equilibrium consisting of strategies of choosing a Pareto inefficient transition path. This type of path is generated after a time preference shock and causes a persistently large amount of extra unutilized resources. The labor market is thereby distorted and becomes more cyclically volatile. Vacancy costs are particularly affected by this Nash equilibrium. Because this Pareto inefficient path proceeds “rigidly,” that is, the Pareto inefficiency diminishes gradually, an ingredient of rigidity is introduced into the economy, and the vacancy-unemployment ratio experiences large cyclical fluctuations.

Suggested Citation

  • Harashima, Taiji, 2011. "A Mechanism of Cyclical Volatility in the Vacancy-Unemployment Ratio: What Is the Source of Rigidity?," MPRA Paper 32476, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:32476
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/32476/1/MPRA_paper_32476.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36895/1/MPRA_paper_36895.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Gertler, 1988. "Financial structure and aggregate economic activity: an overview," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 559-596.
    2. Goodfriend, Marvin, 1988. "Financial Structure and Aggregate Economic Activity: An Overview: Comment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(3), pages 589-593, August.
    3. John Kennan, 2010. "Private Information, Wage Bargaining and Employment Fluctuations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(2), pages 633-664.
    4. Jonathan Temple, 2000. "Summary of an Informal Workshop on the Causes of Economic Growth," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 260, OECD Publishing.
    5. Weiss, Laurence, 1988. "Financial Structure and Aggregate Economic Activity: An Overview: Comment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(3), pages 594-596, August.
    6. Arturo Estrella & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1998. "Predicting U.S. Recessions: Financial Variables As Leading Indicators," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 45-61, February.
    7. Boyd, John, 2000. "Comment on Comparing Market and Supervisory Assessments of Bank Performance: Who Knows What, When?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 32(3), pages 668-670, August.
    8. Gary S. Becker & Casey B. Mulligan, 1997. "The Endogenous Determination of Time Preference," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 729-758.
    9. Abel, Andrew B & Blanchard, Olivier J, 1983. "An Intertemporal Model of Saving and Investment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(3), pages 675-692, May.
    10. Parkin, Michael, 1988. "A method for determining whether parameters in aggregative models are structural," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 215-252, January.
    11. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell & Giovanni L. Violante, 2005. "Unemployment and vacancy fluctuations in the matching model: inspecting the mechanism," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 91(Sum), pages 19-50.
    12. Robert Shimer, 2007. "Mismatch," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1074-1101, September.
    13. Ricardo J. Caballero, 2010. "Macroeconomics after the Crisis: Time to Deal with the Pretense-of-Knowledge Syndrome," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(4), pages 85-102, Fall.
    14. Smith, Tony E. & Zenou, Yves, 2003. "Spatial mismatch, search effort, and urban spatial structure," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 129-156, July.
    15. Lucas, Robert Jr. & Stokey, Nancy L., 1984. "Optimal growth with many consumers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 139-171, February.
    16. Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998. "Law and Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December.
    17. William A. Brock & Leonard J. Mirman, 2001. "Optimal Economic Growth And Uncertainty: The Discounted Case," Chapters, in: W. D. Dechert (ed.), Growth Theory, Nonlinear Dynamics and Economic Modelling, chapter 1, pages 3-37, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Yashiv, Eran, 2007. "Labor search and matching in macroeconomics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 1859-1895, November.
    19. 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.
    20. Ihlanfeldt, Keith R., 1997. "Information on the Spatial Distribution of Job Opportunities within Metropolitan Areas," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 218-242, March.
    21. DeYoung, Robert, et al, 2001. "The Information Content of Bank Exam Ratings and Subordinated Debt Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 900-925, November.
    22. Ross Levine & Norman Loayza & Thorsten Beck, 2002. "Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Leonardo Hernández & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.),Banking, Financial Integration, and International Crises, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 031-084, Central Bank of Chile.
    23. Robert Shimer, 2004. "The Consequences of Rigid Wages in Search Models," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 469-479, 04/05.
    24. 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.
    25. Barnichon, Regis, 2012. "Vacancy posting, job separation and unemployment fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 315-330.
    26. Obstfeld, Maurice, 1990. "Intertemporal dependence, impatience, and dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 45-75, August.
    27. Jan K. Brueckner & Yves Zenou, 2003. "Space and Unemployment: The Labor-Market Effects of Spatial Mismatch," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 242-262, January.
    28. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 2006. "Intrinsic and Inherited Inflation Persistence," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 2(3), September.
    29. Ross Levine, 1997. "Financial Development and Economic Growth: Views and Agenda," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 688-726, June.
    30. Das, Mausumi, 2003. "Optimal growth with decreasing marginal impatience," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(10), pages 1881-1898, August.
    31. Curry, Timothy J. & Fissel, Gary S. & Hanweck, Gerald A., 2008. "Equity market information, bank holding company risk, and market discipline," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 807-819, May.
    32. Frederic S. Mishkin, 1991. "Asymmetric Information and Financial Crises: A Historical Perspective," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Markets and Financial Crises, pages 69-108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    33. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2005. "Shooting the Auctioneer," 2005 Meeting Papers 26, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    34. 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.
    35. King, Robert G. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1999. "Resuscitating real business cycles," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 927-1007, Elsevier.
    36. Mortensen, Dale & Pissarides, Christopher, 2011. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 1-19.
    37. Berger, Allen N & Davies, Sally M & Flannery, Mark J, 2000. "Comparing Market and Supervisory Assessments of Bank Performance: Who Knows What When?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 32(3), pages 641-667, August.
    38. Robert E. Hall, 2006. "Job Loss, Job Finding and Unemployment in the US Economy over the Past Fifty Years," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 101-166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    39. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1991. "Financial Markets and Financial Crises," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number glen91-1, May.
    40. Do, Quy-Toan & Levchenko, Andrei A., 2007. "Comparative advantage, demand for external finance, and financial development," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 796-834, December.
    41. Shigeru Fujita & Garey Ramey, 2009. "The Cyclicality Of Separation And Job Finding Rates," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 415-430, May.
    42. Paul Wachtel, 2003. "How much do we really know about growth and finance?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, vol. 88(Q1), pages 33-47.
    43. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    44. Thisse, Jacques-Francois & Zenou, Yves, 2000. "Skill mismatch and unemployment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 415-420, December.
    45. Gali, Jordi & Gertler, Mark, 1999. "Inflation dynamics: A structural econometric analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 195-222, October.
    46. Taiji Harashima, 2004. "A Possibility of Protracted Output Gaps in an Economy without Any Rigidity," Microeconomics 0404007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    47. Simon Burgess & Helene Turon, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies – A Comment," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 05/573, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    48. Epstein, Larry G & Hynes, J Allan, 1983. "The Rate of Time Preference and Dynamic Economic Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 611-635, August.
    49. Melvyn G. Coles & Abhinay Muthoo, 1998. "Strategic Bargaining and Competitive Bidding in a Dynamic Market Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(2), pages 235-260.
    50. Lawrance, Emily C, 1991. "Poverty and the Rate of Time Preference: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(1), pages 54-77, February.
    51. Frederick T. Furlong & Robard Williams, 2006. "Financial market signals and banking supervision: are current practices consistent with research findings?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 17-29.
    52. Curtis R. Taylor, 1995. "The Long Side of the Market and the Short End of the Stick: Bargaining Power and Price Formation in Buyers', Sellers', and Balanced Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 837-855.
    53. Harashima, Taiji, 2009. "Depression as a Nash Equilibrium Consisting of Strategies of Choosing a Pareto Inefficient Transition Path," MPRA Paper 18953, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    54. Paul A. Samuelson, 1937. "A Note on Measurement of Utility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(2), pages 155-161.
    55. Taylor, John B., 1988. "A method for determining whether parameters in aggregative models are structural : A comment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 253-257, January.
    56. Epstein, Larry G., 1987. "A simple dynamic general equilibrium model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 68-95, February.
    57. Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Fluctuations with Equilibrium Wage Stickiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 50-65, March.
    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. Harashima, Taiji, 2013. "Escaping a Liquidity Trap: Keynes’ Prescription Is Right But His Reasoning Is Wrong," MPRA Paper 48115, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Taiji HARASHIMA, 2013. "The Phillips Curve And A Micro-Foundation Of Trend Inflation," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 4(2), pages 151-182.

    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. Harashima, Taiji, 2009. "Depression as a Nash Equilibrium Consisting of Strategies of Choosing a Pareto Inefficient Transition Path," MPRA Paper 18953, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Harashima, Taiji, 2016. "The Cause of the Great Recession: What Caused the Downward Shift of the GDP Trend in the United States?," MPRA Paper 69215, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Gabriele Cardullo, 2010. "Matching Models Under Scrutiny: An Appraisal Of The Shimer Puzzle," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 622-656, September.
    4. Haefke, Christian & Sonntag, Marcus & van Rens, Thijs, 2013. "Wage rigidity and job creation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 887-899.
    5. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2009. "The Unemployment Volatility Puzzle: Is Wage Stickiness the Answer?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(5), pages 1339-1369, September.
    6. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    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. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. Brown, Alessio & Merkl, Christian & Snower, Dennis, 2015. "An Incentive Theory Of Matching," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 643-668, April.
    13. Burcu Eyigungor, 2010. "Specific Capital and Vintage Effects on the Dynamics of Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1214-1237, June.
    14. 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).
    15. Domenico Ferraro, 2018. "The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 145-162, October.
    16. Richard Rogerson & Lodewijk P. Visschers & Randall Wright, 2009. "Labor market fluctuations in the small and in the large," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 5(1), pages 125-137, March.
    17. James Costain & Marcel Jansen, 2010. "Employment Fluctuations with Downward Wage Rigidity: The Role of Moral Hazard," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(4), pages 782-811, December.
    18. Martin Gervais & Nir Jaimovich & Henry E. Siu & Yaniv Yedid‐Levi, 2015. "Technological Learning And Labor Market Dynamics," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(1), pages 27-53, February.
    19. James Malcomson & Sophocles Mavroeidis, 2010. "Nash Bargaining, Credible Bargaining and Efficiency Wages in a Matching Model for the US," Economics Series Working Papers 511, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Vacancy; Unemployment; Rigidity; Pareto efficiency; Nash equilibrium; Business cycles; Time preference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D50 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - General
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:32476. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.