The European Labour Markets - Aggregate Unemployment and Relative Wage Rigidities

Konjunkturelle Arbeitslosigkeit, Lohnrigidität, Vereinigte Staaten, EU-Staaten, Vergleich, Cyclical unemployment, Wage rigidity, United States, EU countries, Comparison

Selective Reductions in Labor Taxation Labour Market Adjustments and Macroeconomic Performance

We use a calibrated general equilibrium model with heterogeneous labor and search to evaluate the quantitative effects of various labor tax cut scenarios. The focus is on skill heterogeneity combined with downward wage rigidities at the low end of the skill ladder. Workers can take jobs for which they are overeducated. We compare targeted and non-targeted tax cuts, both with or without over-education effects. Introducing over-education changes substantially the employment, productivity and welfare effects of a tax cut, although tax cuts targeted on the least skilled workers always have larger effects.Minimum Wage, Job Creation, Job Destruction, Job Competition, Search Unemployment, Taxation, Computable General Equilibrium Models

Low-Skilled Unemployment, Biased Technological Shocks and Job Competition

The unempoyment rise in Eu countries has been particularly strong for low-skilled workers. This observation has often been explained in terms of biased technical change and relative wage rigidities. More attention has been paid recently to an alternative mechanism, the crowding-out of low-skiled workers by over-qualified workers. The objective of this paper is both methodological and empirical. We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model with two types of jobs and two types of workers and with search unemployment. The model is calibrated and simulated to examine the interactions between the “skill bias” and “crowding-out” mechanisms. When such interactions are accounted for, the model reproduces quite well the observed unemployment changes.skill bias; equilibrium search unemployment; ladder effect; crowding out; overeducation

Aggregation in Models with Quantity Constraints: The CES Aggregation Function

This paper is devoted to the problem of aggregation in models with quantity constraints. The focus is on quantity rationing macroeconomic (QRM) models where the micromarket outcome can be written as the minimum of several variables and where the diversity of situations across micromarkets is explicitly recognized. The aggregation result given in this paper generalizes that of Lambert (1988) to employment functions with more than two components, and leads to approximate aggregate functions of the CES variety. The approximation used can accomodate general variance-covariance structures. Simulation experiments show that the approximation error remains within reasonable bounds (1-4%). It thus seems that the CES formulation can accomodate a large variety of situations. It remains in particular valid when the (restrictive) conditions required to obtain the CES function as an exact result (independently identically distributed Weibull variables) are not satisfied.Macroeconomics; smoothing-by-aggregation; mismatch; approximation

Selective Reductions in Labour Taxation: Labour Market Adjustments and Macroeconomic Performance

Significant differences in unemployment incidence in Europe have been observed across skill groups, with the least skilled suffering the highest and most persistent unemployment rates. To identify policies alleviating this problem, we study the impact of reductions in employer social security contributions. We construct a general equilibrium model with three types of heterogeneous workers and firms, matching frictions, wage bargaining and a rigid minimum wage. We find evidence in favour of narrow tax cuts targeted at the minimum wage but we argue that it is most important to account for the effects of such reductions on both job creation and job destruction. The failure to do so may explain the gap between macro- and microeconometric evaluations of such policies in France and Belgium. Policy impact on welfare and inefficiencies induced by job competition, ladder effects and on-the-job search are discussed.Skill Bias, Minimum Wage, Job Creation, Job Destruction, Job Competition, Search Unemployment, Taxation

Selective Reductions in Labour Taxation : Labour Market Adjustments and Macroeconomic Performance

Significant differences in unemployment in Europe have been observed across skill groups, with the least skilled suffering the highest and most persistent unemployment rates. To identify policies alleviating this problem, we study the impact of reductions in employer social security contributions. We construct a general equilibrium model with three types of workers and firms, matching frictions, wage bargaining and a rigid minimum wage. We find evidence in favour of narrow tax cuts targeted at the minimum wage, but we argue that it is most important to account for the effects of such reductions on both job creation and job destruction. The failure to do so may explain the gap between macro- and microeconometric evaluations of such policies in France and Belgium. Policy impact on welfare and inefficiencies induced by job competition, ladder effects and on-th-job search are quantified and discussed.Minimum Wage, Job Creation, Job Destruction, Job Competition, Search Unemployment, Taxation, Computable General Equilibrium Models

Microeconomic Uncertainty and Macroeconomic Indeterminacy

We construct a stylised intertemporal macroeconomic model to illustrate how the combination of decentralised trading and microeconomic uncertainty can generate coordination problems and indeterminacy of the macroeconomic equilibrium. With a competitive labour market and a fixed labour supply, the range of equilibria depends mainly on the variance of the idiosyncratic shocks and may thus remain fairly narrow. The situation is different when there is imperfect competition on the labour market. The existence of real rigidities is apt to considerably increase the size of the interval of indeterminacy, for a given variance of the shocks.indeterminacy; non-Walrasian economy; equilibrium unemployment; coordination; continuum of equilibria

Capacity utilization dynamics and market power

In an intertemporal general equilibrium model with imperfect competition, we settle a relationship between factor utilization and markups, via the effect of capacity utilization rate changes on firms' market power when the demand for goods is uncertain. When competition is imperfect, the existence of capacity constraints introduces a distinction between demand and sales price elasticities. At given demand price elasticity, the price elasticity of sales will be smaller the larger the aggregate capacity utilization rateo In such a framework, capacity utilization aifects the propagation mechanism of exogenous disturbances in two ways. The first effect is similar to the effect that bottlenecks and stockouts would have in a perfectly competitive setup; the second effect is related to imperfect competition and works through market power and optimal markup changes. We study these interactions and their implications for the dynamic behavior of sorne key macro variables in response to various "structural" changes. We show that the same shock can have quite different short run effects depending on the characteristics of the initial stationary state (low or high capacity utilization rate)

Low-Skilled Unemployment, Capital-Skill Complementarity and Embodied Technical Progress

We construct an intertemporal general equilibrium model with two types of jobs and two types of workers. We allow for job competition between high- and low-skilled segment of the labour market and for on-the-job search. Matching processes are represented by matching functions à la Pissarides. Workers search intensities are endogenous. Biased technological change is introduced via embodied technical progress and a capital-skill complementarity. The model is calibrated and simulated to evaluate the impact of various types of shocks. The model reproduces quite well the unemployment rate changes and the relative wage stability observed over the last two decades. It suggests strong interactions between biased technological change, discouragement effects and job competition.Skill mismatch; equilibrium unemployment; ladder effect; macro dynamics

Demography, capital flows and unemployment

This paper contributes to the already vast literature on demography-induced international capital flows by examining the role of labor market imperfections and institutions. We setup a two-country overlapping generations model with search unemployment, which we calibrate on EU15 and US data. Labor market imperfections are found to significantly increase the volume of capital flows, because of stronger employment adjustments in comparison with a competitive economy. We next exploit themodel to investigate how demographic asymmetriesmay have contributed to unemployment and welfare changes in the recent past (1950-2010). We show that a policy reform in one country also has an impact on labor markets in other countries when capital is mobile.demographics; capital flows; overlapping generations; general equilibrium; unemployment