Phillips curves, monetary policy, and a labor market transmission mechanism

This paper develops a general equilibrium monetary model with performance incentives to study the inflation-unemployment relationship. A long-run downward-sloping Phillips curve can exist with perfectly anticipated inflation because workers’ incentive to exert effort depend on financial market returns. Consequently, higher inflation rates can reduce wages and stimulate employment. An upward-sloping or vertical Phillips Curve can arise instead, depending on agents’ risk aversion and the possibility of capital formation. Welfare might be higher away from the Friedman rule and with a central bank putting some weight on employment.Phillips curve ; Labor market ; Monetary policy ; Wages

Knowledge Exchange, Matching, and Agglomeration

Despite wide recognition of their significant role in explaining sustained grwoth and economic development, uncompensated knowledge spillovers have not yet been fully modeled with a microeconomic foundation. The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the creation of knowledge as well as its consequences for agglomerative activity in a general-equilibrium search-theoretic framework. Agents, possessing differentiated types of knowledge, search for partners to exchange ideas and create new knowledge in order to improve production efficacy. When individuals' types of knowledge are too diverse, a match is less likely to generate significant innovations. We demonstrate that the extent of agglomeration has significant implications for the patterns of information flows in economies. Further, by simultaneously determining the patterns of knowledge exchange and the spatial agglomeration of an economy we identify additional channels for interaction between agglomerative activity and knowledge exchange. Finally, contrary to previous work on spatial agglomeration, our model suggests that agglomerative environments may be either under-specialized and under-populated or over-specialized and over-populated relative to the social optimum.

Knowledge exchange, matching, and agglomeration

Despite wide recognition of their significant role in explaining sustained growth and economic development, uncompensated knowledge spillovers have not yet been fully modeled with a microeconomic foundation. The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate the exchange of knowledge as well as its consequences on agglomerative activity in a general-equilibrium search-theoretic framework. Agents, possessing differentiated types of knowledge, search for partners to exchange ideas and create new knowledge in order to improve production efficacy. When individuals’ types of knowledge are too diverse, a match is less likely to generate significant innovations. We demonstrate the extent of agglomeration has significant implications for the patterns of information flows in economies. Further, by simultaneously determining the patterns of knowledge exchange and the spatial agglomeration of an economy we identify additional channels for interaction between agglomerative activity and knowledge exchange. Finally, contrary to previous work in spatial agglomeration, our model suggests that agglomerative environments may be either under-specialized and under-populated or over-specialized and over-populated relative to the social optimum.Econometric models

Knowledge Exchange, Matching, and Agglomeration

Despite wide recognition of their significant role in explaining sustained growth and economic development, uncompensated knowledge spillovers have not yet been fully modeled with a microeconomic foundation. This paper illustrates the exchange of knowledge as well as its consequences for agglomerative activity in a general-equilibrium search-theoretic framework. Agents, possessing differentiated types of knowledge, search for partners to exchange ideas in order to improve production efficacy. When individuals’ types of knowledge are too diverse, a match is less likely to generate significant innovations. We demonstrate that the extent of agglomeration has significant implications for the patterns of information flows in economies. By simultaneously determining the patterns of knowledge exchange and the population agglomeration of an economy, we identify additional channels for interaction between agglomerative activity and knowledge exchange. The main implications of the model are a negative correlation between city population and diversity of knowledge exchange and a positive correlation between city population and per capita knowledge or patent output. Contrary to previous work in urban economics and growth theory, it is possible that a decentralized equilibrium is under-populated or over-populated and under-selective or over-selective in knowledge exchange, compared to the social optimum. By allowing for perpetual knowledge accumulation, we find that population agglomeration is generally accompanied by higher growth. The main findings remain qualitatively unchanged even if we allow individual knowledge types to change over time, though the creation of new types of knowledge may result in multiple equilibria.Matching, Knowledge Exchange and Spillovers, Agglomerative Activity

Knowledge Exchange, Matching, and Agglomeration

Despite wide recognition of their significant role in explaining sustained growth and economic development, uncompensated knowledge spillovers have not yet been fully modeled with a microeconomic foundation. This paper illustrates the exchange of knowledge as well as its consequences for agglomerative activity in a general-equilibrium search-theoretic framework. Agents, possessing differentiated types of knowledge, search for partners to exchange ideas in order to improve production efficacy. Contrary to previous work, we demonstrate that a decentralized equilibrium may be under-populated or over-populated and under-selective or over-selective in knowledge exchange, compared to the social optimum.matching, knowledge exchange and spillovers, agglomerative activity

Labor Market Search and Optimal Retirement Policy

A popular view about social security, dating back to its early days of inception, is that it is a means for young, unemployed workers to 'purchase' jobs from older, employed workers. The question we ask is: Can social security, by encouraging retirement and hence creating job vacancies for the young, improve the allocation of workers to jobs in the labor market? Using a standard model of labor market search, we establish that the equilibrium with no policy-induced retirement can be efficient. Even under worst-case parameterizations of our model, we find that public retirement programs pay the elderly substantially more than labor market search theory implies that their jobs are worth. An important effect, ignored by the popular view, is that the creation of a vacant job by a retirement reduces the value of other vacant jobs.

Aging, unemployment, and welfare in a life-cycle model with costly labor market search

In recent years, many countries have experienced a significant shift in demographic patterns towards the elderly. This phenomenon poses numerous challenges for the design of public pension programs and labor market policies. To better understand how public policy should be designed in response to a aging workforce, it is imperative to first make an assessment of how the lifecycle affects aggregate labor market activity, and in particular, unemployment. While much work has been done on exploring how the lifecycle influences individual labor market behavior, its impact on aggregate labor market outcomes is far less studied. This paper is an attempt at addressing this lacuna within the context of a lifecycle model with costly search and matching in the labor market. The lifecycle of workers in conjunction with frictions in the labor market produces an environment in which unemployment arises as a natural possibility and both young and old workers find themselves contemporaneously competing for the same jobs. The lifecycle is shown to have significant implications for aggregate labor market activity; it may even be responsible for an inefficient allocation of workers to jobs. Additionally, public policies designed to increase labor market participation among older workers may not necessarily enhance aggregate welfare