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Book Cover
E-book
Author Shimer, Robert, author.

Title Labor markets and business cycles / Robert Shimer
Published Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©2010

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 172 pages) : illustrations
Series CREI lectures in macroeconomics
CREI lectures in macroeconomics.
Contents The labor wedge -- Benchmark search model : neutrality -- Real effects of productivity shocks -- Rigid wages -- Looking ahead
Summary Labor Markets and Business Cycles integrates search and matching theory with the neoclassical growth model to better understand labor market outcomes. Robert Shimer shows analytically and quantitatively that rigid wages are important for explaining the volatile behavior of the unemployment rate in business cycles. The book focuses on the labor wedge that arises when the marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure does not equal the marginal product of labor. According to competitive models of the labor market, the labor wedge should be constant and equal to the labor income tax rate. But in U.S. data, the wedge is strongly countercyclical, making it seem as if recessions are periods when workers are dissuaded from working and firms are dissuaded from hiring because of an increase in the labor income tax rate. When job searches are time consuming and wages are flexible, search frictions--the cost of a job search--act like labor adjustment costs, further exacerbating inconsistencies between the competitive model and data. The book shows that wage rigidities can reconcile the search model with the data, providing a quantitatively more accurate depiction of labor markets, consumption, and investment dynamics. --From publisher's description
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Labor market.
Business cycles
Employment (Economic theory)
employing.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Labor.
Business cycles
Labor market
Arbeitsmarkt
Konjunkturschwankung
Konjunkturtheorie
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2009047840
ISBN 9781400835232
1400835232
9786612607516
6612607513