Public Wages, Public Employment, and Business Cycle Volatility: Evidence from U.S. Metro Areas

Based on data from a cross section of U.S. metro areas, we show that public employment correlates negatively with business cycle volatility, hinting at a stabilizing effect of public employment, while public wages correlate weakly and positively with business cycle volatility, hinting at a destabilizing effect of public wages. To explain these relationships, we set up a search and matching model that contains a government sector and a role for government spending in product markets. This latter mechanism affects how the outside option behaves, and this mechanism can help a search and matching model to generate wage-reducing and stabilizing effects of public employment. Without this mechanism, a search and matching model cannot generate these effects

Estimating the effects of the "flight to quality", with an application to German bond yields and interest payments

Recent calculations have suggested that the German federal government has saved roughly EUR 90-100 billion, cumulatively, due to low bond yields since the onset of the Euro crisis. In order to determine the contribution of the "flight to quality" to this sum, we define the flight to quality as a factor which has caused German bond yields and crisis country bond yields to move in opposite directions. Estimates show that only a small share is due to the flight to quality. Comparison with other approaches suggests that our factor approach is a promising way to look at the flight to quality