Understanding How Price Responds to Costs and Production

The importance of sticky prices in business cycle fluctuations has been debated for many years. But we argue, based on a large empirical literature from the 1950's and 60's, that it is necessary to distinguish the response of price to an increase in factor prices from its response to an increase in marginal cost generated by an expansion in production. Consistent with that earlier literature, we find for 450 U.S. manufacturing industries that prices do respond more to increases in costs driven by changes in factor prices than to increases in marginal cost precipitated by expansions in output. We explore two models that can potentially explain these findings. Both break the link between price and marginal cost, thereby generating what one might naively interpret as average-cost pricing. The first is driven by firms pricing to limit entry. The second is driven by firms pricing to limit non-price competition within their market.

Asymmetric Phase Shifts in the U.S. Industrial Production Cycles

We identify the cyclical turning points of 74 U.S. manufacturing industries and uncover new empirical regularities: (i) Cyclical phase shifts are highly concentrated around the aggregate turning points; (ii) In contrast to the conventional notion of a sudden stop and slow recovery, troughs are much more concentrated than peaks; (iii) Occurrences of phase shifts across industries support the spillovers through input-output linkages; (iv) The common macroeconomic shocks, such as exogenous changes in the federal funds rate, government spending, and oil prices, are significant drivers of industrial phase shifts; (v) Both monetary and fiscal policy shocks are more effective in recessions.Business cycles; Comovement; Turning points; Asymmetries

Labor-Supply Shifts and Economic Fluctuations

We investigate the role of labor-supply shifts in economic fluctuations. A new VAR identification scheme for labor supply shocks is proposed. According to our VAR analysis of post-war U.S. data, labor-supply shifts account for about half the variation in hours and one-fifth of variation in aggregate output. To assess the role of labor-supply shifts in a more structural framework, estimates from a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with stochastic variation in home production technology are compared to those from the VAR. To obtain a VAR identification scheme that is consistent with the DSGE model, we cannot solely rely on ``zero-restrictions''. Instead we indirectly specify a proper prior distribution for impulse responses and variance decompositions and update it through the sample information. Our method provides an alternative to recently proposed identification schemes that rely on inequality restrictions on the direction of impulse responses.Fluctuation of Hours, VAR Identification, Home Production, Bayesian Econometrics

Welfare Costs of Sticky Wages When Effort Can Respond

We examine the impact of wage stickiness when employment has an effort as well as hours dimension. Despite wages being predetermined, the labor market clears through the effort margin. Consequently, welfare costs of wage stickiness are potentially much, much smaller.Sticky Wage, Endogenous Effort, Welfare Cost

Cyclical Movements in Hours and Effort under Sticky Wages

We examine the response of a sticky-wage economy to various real and nominal shocks. In addition to variations in hours, we allow for an endogenous response in worker effort per hour. Despite wages being predetermined, the labor market clears through the effort margin. We find that the ability of a sticky-wage model to mimic U.S. business cycles is much improved by allowing for reasonable effort movements. The model also provides a ready explanation for the finding that TFP is negatively affected by nominal shocks.Sticky Wages, Endogenous Effort, Productivity, Business Cycles

On the aggregate labor supply

Labor supply

Decomposition of Hours Based on Extensive and Intensive Margins of Labor

We decompose underlying disturbances in total hours into three kinds: disturbances that shift the steady-state level of hours, those that change the sectoral composition of employment in the long-run, and those that cause temporary movement of hours around the steady-state. Our identifying restriction exploits the distinctive nature of the two margins of labor: employment and hours per worker. According to the variance decompostion from a VAR based on Post-War U.S. monthly data, we find that disturbances which eventually shift the steady-state level of hours account for three-quarters of cyclical fluctuation in aggregate hours. This challenges the commonly used restriction of constant hours along the balanced growth path in the business cycle literature. Further, we do not find a significant role for sectoral reallocation shocks in the cyclical fluctuation of hours.

On the Employment Effect of Technology: Evidence from US Manufacturing for 1958-1996

Recently, Galí and others find that technological progress may be contractionary: a favorable technology shock reduces hours worked in the short run. We ask whether this observation is robust in disaggregate data. According to our VAR analysis of 458 four-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for 1958-1996, some industries do exhibit temporary reduction in hours in response to a permanent increase in TFP. However, there are far more industries in which technological progress significantly increases hours. Using micro data on average price duration, we ask whether the difference across industries is related to the stickiness of industry-output prices. Among 87 manufacturing goods, we do not find such a relation.Technology Shocks, Hours Fluctuations, Sticky Prices

Do technological improvements in the manufacturing sector raise or lower employment?

We find that technology's effect on employment varies greatly across manufacturing industries. Some industries exhibit a temporary reduction in employment in response to a permanent increase in TFP, whereas far more industries exhibit an employment increase in response to a permanent TFP shock. This raises serious questions about existing work that finds that a labor productivity shock has a strong negative effect on employment. There are tantalizing and interesting differences between TFP and labor productivity. We argue that TFP is a more natural measure of technology because labor productivity reflects shifts in the input mix as well as in technology.Technology - Economic aspects ; Manufactures ; Employment

The Price of Egalitarianism

We compute the welfare cost of egalitarianism - a tax policy that equalizes wages for all. The benchmark "laissez-faire" economy has features a la Aiyagari (1994) with endogenous labor supply. A progressive income tax provides insurance against income risks but at the cost of efficiency: it undermines highly productive workers' incentives to work. We find that in an economy with the labor-supply elasticity of 1, the welfare cost of egalitarianism, measured in consumption-equivalence units, is only 1% as the welfare gain from insurance against income risks nearly offsets the efficiency loss from distorting labor effort. However, with an elastic labor supply, the welfare cost of egalitarianism is as large as 7.5% of steady state consumption.Egalitarianism; Welfare Cost; Equal-Wage Policy; Income Risks.