IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed018/1007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Technological Origins of the Decline in Labor Market Dynamism

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Eeckhout

    (University College London and Barcelona)

  • Xi Weng

    (Guanghua School of Management, Peking Un)

Abstract

We ask whether and how technological change can account for the secular decline in labor market dynamism with decreasing job flows to and from unemployment and between employment. We focus on two determinants of technology broadly defined: 1. the complementarity between worker skill and firm productivity; and 2. the volatility in productivity shocks. We derive job flows in a sorting model with search frictions and endogenous search effort both on and off the job, as well as shocks that lead to mismatch. We find a decrease in complementarities between labor and technology, driven mainly by a decline in the elasticity of labor. The decrease in the labor share is largest for workers with high school education only. Instead, changes in the shock process leads a decrease in the frequency and a slight increase in the variance of those shocks. We show quantitatively that the changing nature of the technology contributes to the secular decline in labor market dynamism.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Eeckhout & Xi Weng, 2018. "The Technological Origins of the Decline in Labor Market Dynamism," 2018 Meeting Papers 1007, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed018:1007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2018/paper_1007.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce Fallick & Charles Fleischman & Jonathan Pingle, 2010. "The Effect of Population Aging on the Aggregate Labor Market," NBER Chapters, in: Labor in the New Economy, pages 377-417, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Edouard Schaal, 2017. "Uncertainty and Unemployment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1675-1721, November.
    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. Jan De Loecker & Jan Eeckhout & Gabriel Unger, 2020. "The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications [“Econometric Tools for Analyzing Market Outcomes”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(2), pages 561-644.

    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. Isaac Baley & Ana Figueiredo & Robert Ulbricht, 2022. "Mismatch Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(11), pages 2943-2984.
    2. Soojin Jo & Justin J. Lee, 2019. "Uncertainty and Labor Market Fluctuations," Working Papers 1904, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    3. Alessandro Gavazza & Simon Mongey & Giovanni L. Violante, 2018. "Aggregate Recruiting Intensity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(8), pages 2088-2127, August.
    4. Maarten Dossche & Andrea Gavazzi & Vivien Lewis, 2023. "Labor Adjustment and Productivity in the OECD," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 111-130, January.
    5. Oscar Claveria & Petar Sorić, 2023. "Labour market uncertainty after the irruption of COVID-19," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 1897-1945, April.
    6. Boragan Aruoba & Dun Jia & Felipe Saffie, 2018. "Measuring Uncertainty," 2018 Meeting Papers 490, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Ahmed Ali & Granberg Mark & Troster Victor & Uddin Gazi Salah, 2022. "Asymmetric dynamics between uncertainty and unemployment flows in the United States," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 26(1), pages 155-172, February.
    8. Helmut Herwartz & Alexander Lange, 2024. "How certain are we about the role of uncertainty in the economy?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 126-149, January.
    9. Luca Gambetti & Dimitris Korobilis & John D. Tsoukalas & Francesco Zanetti, 2023. "Agreed and Disagreed Uncertainty," Working Paper series 23-01, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    10. Bachmann, Rüdiger & Bayer, Christian & Merkl, Christian & Seth, Stefan & Stüber, Heiko & Wellschmied, Felix, 2021. "Worker churn in the cross section and over time: New evidence from Germany," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 781-797.
    11. Steffen R. Henzel & Malte Rengel, 2017. "Dimensions Of Macroeconomic Uncertainty: A Common Factor Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 843-877, April.
    12. Tanaka, Satoshi & Warren, Lawrence & Wiczer, David, 2023. "Earnings growth, job flows and churn," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 86-98.
    13. Carlos Carrillo-Tudela & Hermann Gartner & Leo Kaas, 2023. "Recruitment Policies, Job-Filling Rates, and Matching Efficiency," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(6), pages 2413-2459.
    14. Hikaru Saijo & Cosmin Ilut, 2015. "Learning, Confidence, and Business Cycles," 2015 Meeting Papers 917, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Kölling, Arnd, 2023. "Does skill shortage pay off for nursing staff in Germany? Wage premiums for hiring problems, industrial relations, and profitability," MPRA Paper 116205, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Xuewen Liu, 2023. "A Model of Systemic Bank Runs," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(2), pages 731-793, April.
    17. Jared C. Carbone & Linda T.M. Bui & Don Fullerton & Sergey Paltsev & Ian Sue Wing, 2022. "When and How to Use Economy-Wide Models for Environmental Policy Analysis," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 447-465, October.
    18. Scott R Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Stephen J Terry, 2024. "Using Disasters to Estimate the Impact of Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(2), pages 720-747.
    19. Choi, Sangyup & Furceri, Davide & Yoo, Seung Yong, 2024. "Heterogeneity in the effects of uncertainty shocks on labor market dynamics and extensive vs. intensive margins of adjustment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    20. Kolev, Atanas & Randall, Timothy, 2024. "The effect of uncertainty on investment: Evidence from EU survey data," EIB Working Papers 2024/02, European Investment Bank (EIB).

    More about this item

    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:red:sed018:1007. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.