The cyclical volatility of labor markets under frictional financial markets

Abstract

This paper shows in an economy with search on credit and labor markets that a financial multiplier raises the elasticity of labor market tightness to productivity shocks, and that this multiplier is an increasing function of total financial costs in the economy. Under a credit market Hosios-Pissarides rule, total search costs in the credit market are minimized, and so is the financial multiplier. Relaxing that condition leads to larger multipliers which can match or even overshoot the elasticity of market tightness in the data. The reason is similar to that of Hagedorn and Manovskii (2008) small labor surplus assumption: we identify the configurations of parameters leading to small "bank" surplus or a small "firm surplus" in the credit market, conducive of an amplification of productivity shocks. Furthermore, when wages are endogenous, it is possible to partially relax the small labor surplus assumption in order to match the data.