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Slow to Hire, Quick to Fire: Employment Dynamics with Asymmetric Responses to News

Author

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  • Cosmin Ilut
  • Matthias Kehrig
  • Martin Schneider

Abstract

Concave hiring rules imply that firms respond more to bad shocks than to good shocks. They provide a united explanation for several seemingly unrelated facts about employment growth in macro and micro data. In particular, they generate countercyclical movement in both aggregate conditional �macro� volatility and cross-sectional �micro� volatility as well as negative skewness in the cross section and in the time series at different level of aggregation. Concave establishment level responses of employment growth to TFP shocks estimated from Census data induce significant skewness, movements in volatility and amplification of bad aggregate shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Cosmin Ilut & Matthias Kehrig & Martin Schneider, 2017. "Slow to Hire, Quick to Fire: Employment Dynamics with Asymmetric Responses to News," Working Papers 17-15, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:17-15
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    business cycles; time varying volatility; asymmetric adjustment; skewness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D2 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • E2 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor

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