The cyclicality of worker flows: new evidence from the SIPP

Drawing on CPS data, the authors show that total monthly job loss and hiring among U.S. workers, as well as job loss hazard rates, are strongly countercyclical, while job finding hazard rates are strongly procyclical. They also find that total job loss and job loss hazard rates lead the business cycle, while total hiring and job finding rates trail the cycle. In the current paper the authors use information from the Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to reevaluate these findings. SIPP data are used to construct new longitudinally consistent gross flow series for U.S. workers, covering 1983-2003. The results strongly validate the authors' findings, with two important exceptions: (1) total hiring leads the cycle in the SIPP data, and (2) the job loss rate is substantially more volatile than the job finding rate at business cycle frequencies.

Industry Evidence on the Effects of Government Spending

This paper investigates industry-level effects of government purchases in order to shed light on the transmission mechanism for government spending on the aggregate economy. We begin by highlighting the different theoretical predictions concerning the effects of government spending on industry labor market equilibrium. We then create a panel data set that matches output and labor variables to shifts in industry-specific government demand. The empirical results indicate that increases in government demand raise output and hours, but lower real product wages and productivity. Markups do not change as a result of government demand increases. The results are consistent with the neoclassical model of government spending, but they are not consistent with the New Keynesian model of the effects of government spending.

Measuring U.S. labor market dynamics

This dissertation develops new data and methods for properly measuring U.S. labor market dynamics using large, nationally-representative household surveys. These data are used to assess potential biases arising from time aggregation and from geographic mobility. Time aggregation is estimated using weekly labor force information from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The degree of time aggregation is large: gross flows estimated from monthly data understate the true number of transitions by 20 percent on average. However, time aggregation creates no meaningful cyclical bias in measured gross flows or hazard rates. Separation hazard rates calculated from the SIPP and the Current Population Survey (CPS) are strongly countercyclical and remain so after adjusting for time aggregation. Using a new database that captures all longitudinal information in the CPS individuals who move can be identified. Comparing the behavior of the entire CPS sample with the subset known not to have moved provides a bound to the bias from geographic mobility. The cyclical bias from geographic mobility is small. At business cycle frequencies, the difference between the separation hazard rate calculated from the entire CPS sample and from a subset that are known not to have moved never exceeds 4 percent. There is little effect of mobility on the job finding hazard rate. The weekly SIPP data identify direct employment-to- employment (EE) transitions. Abstracting from labor force participation, EE transitions account for one-half of all separations from employment. Similar estimates using the CPS are twice as large however the CPS overstates EE transitions because of time aggregation. Separations to a new job are strongly procyclical while separations to unemployment are strongly countercyclical. The combination yields a nearly acyclical total separation rate. The weekly job finding rate is strongly procyclica

Industry Evidence on the Effects of Government Spending

This paper investigates the effects of government purchases at the industry level in order to shed light on the transmission mechanism for government spending on the aggregate economy. We create a new panel dataset that matches output and labor variables to industry-specific shifts in government demand. An increase in government demand raises output and hours, lowers real product wages and labor productivity, and has no effect on the markup. The estimates also imply approximately constant returns to scale. The findings are more consistent with the effects of government spending in the neoclassical model than the textbook New Keynesian model. (JEL E12, E23, E62, H50)

Industry evidence on the effects of government spending

This paper investigates industry-level effects of government purchases in order to shed light on the transmission mechanism for government spending on the aggregate economy. We begin by highlighting the different theoretical predictions concerning the effects of government spending on industry labor market equilibrium. We then create a panel data set that matches output and labor variables to shifts in industry-specific government demand. The empirical results indicate that increases in government demand raise output and hours, but lower real product wages and productivity. Markups do not change as a result of government demand increases. The results are consistent with the neoclassical model of government spending, but they are not consistent with the New Keynesian model of the effects of government spending.Expenditures, Public ; Government spending policy