Understanding Labour Market Frictions: A Tobin’s Q Approach

Abstract

Labour market friction is viewed as the Tobin’s Q of an employed worker as opposed to the position of the Beveridge curve. This Tobin’s Q is inversely proportional to the average quality of the match between employers and workers. Based on this measure, I find that the labour market friction has a procyclical trend in the US, which is indicative of the fact that firms compromise on the quality of the skill match during an expansion.Intangible Capital, Skill matching, Human capital