Job Flows, Demographics and the Great Recession

The recession the United States economy entered in December of 2007 is considered to be the most severe downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate reached as high as 10.1 percent in October 2009 - the highest we have seen since the 1982 recession. In this paper we examine the severity of this recession compared to those in the past by examining worker flows into and out of unemployment taking into account changes in the demographic structure of the population. We identify the most vulnerable groups of this recession by dissagregating the workforce by age, gender and race. We find that adjusting for the aging of the U.S. labor force increases the severity of this recession. Our results indicate that the increase in the unemployment rate is driven to a larger extent by the lack of hiring (low outflows), but flows into unemployment are still important for understanding unemployment rate dynamics (they are not as acyclical as some literature suggests) and differences in unemployment rates across demographic groups. We find that this is indeed a "mancession," as men face higher job separation probabilities, lower job finding probabilities and, as a result, higher unemployment rates than women. Lastly, there is some evidence that blacks suffered more than whites (again, this difference is particularly pronounced for men).Unemployment, Worker flows, Job Finding Rate, Separation Rate, Demographics, Gender

Wealth effects out of financial and housing wealth: cross country and age group comparisons

To explore the link between household consumption and wealth, we use a new source of harmonized microdata (Luxembourg Wealth Study). We investigate whether there are differences in wealth effects from different types of wealth and across age groups. We consider three countries: Canada, Italy and Finland. We find that the overall wealth effect from housing is stronger than the effect from financial wealth for the three countries in the sample. Additionally, in accordance with the life-cycle theory of consumption, we find the housing wealth effect to be significantly lower for younger households. We also find between-country differences in the wealth effect.Consumption (Economics) ; Wealth ; Households - Economic aspects

Gender differences in the effect of monetary policy on employment: The case of nine OECD countries.

In many countries, the focus of monetary policy is increasingly shifting to low and stable inflation as it provides many benefits to the economy. However, there is evidence that costs of inflation reduction are inequitably distributed by gender in developing countries. This paper addresses employment costs of inflation reduction in developed countries. Using quarterly data for 1980-2006, we examine gender and country differences in the effects of interest rate on employment in nine OECD countries. We look at total employment, as well as employment dis-aggregated by three sectors: agriculture, industry and services. We find that the link between monetary policy instruments (short-term interest rates) and employment in the industrial countries under investigation is neither strong nor varies by gender.employment ; IS curve ; interest rates ; monetary policy inflation ; compensation

Job Flows, Demographics and the Great Recession

The recession the United States economy entered in December of 2007 is considered to be the most severe downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate reached as high as 10.1 percent in October 2009 - the highest we have seen since the 1982 recession. In this paper we examine the severity of this recession compared to those in the past by examining worker flows into and out of unemployment taking into account changes in the demographic structure of the population. We identify the most vulnerable groups of this recession by dissagregating the workforce by age, gender and race. We find that adjusting for the aging of the U.S. labor force increases the severity of this recession. Our results indicate that the increase in the unemployment rate is driven to a larger extent by the lack of hiring (low outflows), but flows into unemployment are still important for understanding unemployment rate dynamics (they are not as acyclical as some literature suggests) and differences in unemployment rates across demographic groups. We find that this is indeed a mancession, as men face higher job separation probabilities, lower job finding probabilities and, as a result, higher unemployment rates than women. Lastly, there is some evidence that blacks suffered more than whites (again, this difference is particularly pronounced for men)

Understanding changes in exchange rate pass-through

Recent research suggests that there has been a decline in the extent to which firms "pass-through" changes in exchange rates to prices. This paper provides further evidence in support of this claim. Additionally, it proposes an explanation for this phenomenon. The paper then presents empirical evidence of a structural break during the 1990s in the relationship between the real exchange rate and CPI inflation for a set of fourteen OECD countries. It is suggested that the recent reduction in the real exchange rate pass-through can in part be attributed to the low inflationary environment of the 1990s.Pass-through Inflation Exchange rate Monopolistic competition Staggered price setting

The Effect of Wealth on Consumption Expenditures: Cross Country and Cross Socio-Demographic Group Comparisons

This study is a contribution to literature on the impact of wealth on consumption (the wealth effect). We assess within- and between-country differences in the housing and financial wealth effect and analyze these differences according to socio-demographic characteristics. Our interest in separating the wealth effect into two is motivated by increases in housing prices in many industrialized countries. The fact that many developed countries are undergoing demographic changes prompted us to consider the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and wealth effects. Differences are found in the magnitudes of financial and housing wealth effects by age, gender, as well as family composition of the households in all three countries. This paper reports some of the first findings based on data from a new source, the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS), built within the larger Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). LWS is a database containing harmonized wealth micro-datasets from a number of industrialized countries. In our analysis we use data from three countries: Canada, Finland and Italy.

Disentangling the wealth effect: some international evidence

In this Economic Letter, we report on research that takes advantage of newly available international data and examines in some detail the wealth effect in three countries, Canada, Finland, and Italy (Sierminska and Takhtamanova 2007). First, we investigate whether consumption responds differently to changes in housing and financial wealth. Second, we investigate whether there are differences in consumption responses to changes in wealth across different age groups.Consumption (Economics) ; Wealth ; Households - Economic aspects