Terms of Trade Shocks and Endogenous Search Unemployment: A Two-sector Model with Non-Traded goods

We develop a simple and tractable two-sector search model featuring a non-traded sector and endogenous search unemployment to examine the impact of terms of trade shocks on unemployment. We show that changes in terms of trade will not only lead to employment reallocation across sectors, as in the traditional trade models, but more importantly, impact upon search unemployment within each sector. Specifically, we show that an improvement (deterioration) of terms of trade reduces (increases) unemployment rates in both traded and non-traded sectors.two-sector search model, trade and unemployment, non-traded good