IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mit/worpap/351.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adjusting the Gross Changes Data: Implications for Labor Market Dynamics

Author

Listed:
  • James M. Poterba
  • Lawrence H. Summers

Abstract

This paper develops a procedure for adjusting the Current Population Survey gross changes data for the effects of reporting errors. The corrected data suggest that the labor market is much less dynamic than has frequently been suggested. Conventional measures sy understate the duration of unemployment by as much as eighty percent and overstate the extent of movement into and out ofthe labor force by several hundred percent. The adjusted data also throw demographic differences in patterns of labor market dynamics into sharp relief.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1984. "Adjusting the Gross Changes Data: Implications for Labor Market Dynamics," Working papers 351, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mit:worpap:351
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kim B. Clark & Lawrence H. Summers, 1979. "Labor Market Dynamics and Unemployemnt: A Reconsideration," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 10(1), pages 13-72.
    2. Hall, Robert E., 1979. "A theory of the natural unemployment rate and the duration of employment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 153-169, April.
    3. Stephen T. Marston, 1976. "Employment Instability and High Unemployment Rates," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 7(1), pages 169-210.
    4. Abowd, John M & Zellner, Arnold, 1985. "Estimating Gross Labor-Force Flows," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(3), pages 254-283, June.
    5. Akerlof, George A & Main, Brian G M, 1980. "Unemployment Spells and Unemployment Experience," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 885-893, December.
    6. James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1983. "Survey Response Variation in the Current Population Survey," NBER Working Papers 1109, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Stephen W. Salant, 1977. "Search Theory and Duration Data: A Theory of Sorts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 39-57.
    8. Lancaster, Tony, 1979. "Econometric Methods for the Duration of Unemployment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(4), pages 939-956, July.
    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. James W. Shockey, 1988. "Adjusting for Response Error in Panel Surveys," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 17(1), pages 65-92, August.
    2. Michael R. Darby & John C. Haltiwanger & Mark W. Plant, 1986. "The Ins and Outs of Unemployment: The Ins Win," NBER Working Papers 1997, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Michael W. L. Elsby & Ryan Michaels & David Ratner, 2015. "The Beveridge Curve: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(3), pages 571-630, September.
    2. Kiefer, Nicholas M & Lundberg, Shelly J & Neumann, George R, 1985. "How Long Is a Spell of Unemployment? Illusions and Biases in the Use of CPS Data," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(2), pages 118-128, April.
    3. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:849-919 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:921-999 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Elsby, Michael W.L. & Hobijn, Bart & Şahin, Ayşegül, 2015. "On the importance of the participation margin for labor market fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 64-82.
    6. Jones, Stephen R G & Riddell, W Craig, 1995. "The Measurement of Labor Force Dynamics with Longitudinal Data: The Labour Market Activity Survey Filter," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(2), pages 351-385, April.
    7. Darby, Michael R & Haltiwanger, John C & Plant, Mark W, 1985. "Unemployment Rate Dynamics and Persistent Unemployment under Rational Expectations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 614-637, September.
    8. Bell, Una Louise & Artola, Concha, 2001. "Identifying labour market dynamics using labour force survey data," ZEW Discussion Papers 01-44, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Christopher A. Pissarides & Barbara Petrongolo, 2001. "Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 390-431, June.
    10. R.F. Elliott & I. Theodossiou, 1992. "The Inequality of Unemployment Experience in a Local Labour Market," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 29(5), pages 783-797, June.
    11. Wolfgang Franz, 1979. "The Duration of Youth Unemployment in West Germany: Some Theoretical Considerations," NBER Working Papers 0397, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Anthony Shorrocks, 2009. "Spell incidence, spell duration and the measurement of unemployment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(3), pages 295-310, September.
    13. Manimay Sengupta, 2009. "Unemployment duration and the measurement of unemployment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(3), pages 273-294, September.
    14. Robert G. Valletta, 1998. "Changes in the structure and duration of U.S. unemployment, 1967-1998," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 29-40.
    15. Shibata, Ippei, 2022. "Reassessing classification errors in the analysis of labor market dynamics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    16. Alan L. Gustman, 1980. "Analyzing the Relation of Unemployment Insurance to Unemployment," NBER Working Papers 0512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Michael C. Keeley, 1984. "Cyclical unemployment and employment: effects of labor force entry and exit," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Sum, pages 5-25.
    18. Steiner, Viktor & Kwiatkowski, Eugeniusz, 1995. "The Polish labour market in transition," ZEW Discussion Papers 95-03, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    19. Galiani, Sebastian & Hopenhayn, Hugo A., 2003. "Duration and risk of unemployment in Argentina," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 199-212, June.
    20. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1998. "Measuring Gross Worker and Job Flows," NBER Chapters, in: Labor Statistics Measurement Issues, pages 77-122, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Michael W. L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Aysegul Sahin, 2010. "The Labor Market in the Great Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 41(1 (Spring), pages 1-69.
    22. Lawrence F. Katz, 1986. "Layoffs, Recall and the Duration of Unemployment," NBER Working Papers 1825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:mit:worpap:351. 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: Linda Woodbury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edmitus.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.