Search results for "E24"
showing 10 items of 15 documents
Household Leverage and Fiscal Multipliers
2011
We study the size of fiscal multipliers in response to a government spending shock under different household leverage conditions in a general equilibrium setting with search and matching frictions. We allow for different levels of household indebtedness by changing the intensive margin of borrowing (loan-to-value ratio), as well as the extensive margin, defined as the number of borrowers over total population. The interaction between the consumption decisions of agents with limited access to credit and the process of wage bargaining and vacancy posting delivers two main results: (a) higher initial leverage makes it more likely to find output multipliers higher than one; and (b) a positive g…
A rational expectations model for simulation and policy evaluation of the Spanish economy
2010
This paper presents the model used for simulation purposes within the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. REMS (a Rational Expectations Model for the Spanish economy) is a small open economy dynamic general equilibrium model in the vein of the New-Neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis models, with a strongly micro-founded system of equations. In the long run REMS behaves in accordance with the neoclassical growth model. In the short run, it incorporates nominal, real and financial frictions. Real frictions include adjustment costs in consumption (via habits in consumption and rule-of-thumb households) and investment into physical capital. Due to financial frictions, there is no per…
An international cohort comparison of size effects on job growth
2015
The contribution of different-sized businesses to job creation continues to attract policymakers’ attention, however, it has recently been recognized that conclusions about size were confounded with the effect of age. We probe the role of size, controlling for age, by comparing the cohorts of firms born in 1998 over their first decade of life, using variation across half a dozen northern European countries Austria, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the UK to pin down size effects. We find that a very small proportion of the smallest firms play a crucial role in accounting for cross-country differences in job growth. A closer analysis reveals that the initial size distribution and surviv…
The Employment Effect of Reforming a Public Employment Agency
2015
By how much does an increase in operating effectiveness of a public employment agency (PEA) and a reduction of unemployment benefits reduce unemployment? Using a recent labour market reform in Germany as background, we find that an enhanced effectiveness of the PEA explains about 20% of the observed post-reform unemployment decline. The role of unemployment benefit reduction explains just about 5% of the observed decline. Due to disincentive effects resulting from the reform, the reform of the PEA could have had an even higher impact on unemployment reduction if there had been less focus on long-term unemployed workers.
RENT CREATION AND RENT SHARING: NEW MEASURES AND IMPACTS ON TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY
2019
International audience; This analysis proposes new measures of rent creation and rent sharing and assesses their impact on productivity on cross-country-industry panel data. We find first that: (1) anticompetitive product market regulations positively affect rent creation and (2) employment protection legislation boosts hourly wages, particularly for low-skill workers. However, we find no significant impact of this employment legislation on rent sharing, as the hourly wage increases are offset by a negative impact on hours worked. Second, using regulation indicators as instruments, we find that rent creation and rent sharing both have a substantial negative impact on total factor productivi…
Monopolistic competition and different wage setting systems
2010
In this paper, we present a disequilibrium unemployment model without labor market frictions and monopolistic competition in the goods market within an infinite horizon model of growth. We consider different wage setting systems and compare wages, the unemployment rate, and income per capita in the long-run at firm, sector, and national (centralized) levels. The aim of this paper is to determine under which conditions, the inverted-U hypothesis between unemployment and the degree of centralization of wage bargaining, reported by Calmfors and Driffill [Economic Policy, 6, 14¿61, 1988], is confirmed. Our analysis shows that a high degree of market power normally produces the inverted-U shape …
Fairness Considerations in Labor Union Wage Setting : A Theoretical Analysis
2012
We consider a theoretical model in which unions not only take the outside option into account, but also base their wage-setting decisions on an internal reference, called the fairness reference. Wage and employment outcomes and the shape of the aggregate wage-setting curve depend on the weight and the size of the fairness reference relative to the outside option. If the fairness reference is relatively high compared to the outside option, higher wages and lower employment than in the standard model will prevail. If hit by an adverse technology shock, the economy will then react with a stronger downward adjustment in employment, whereas real wages are more rigid than in the standard model. W…
Household debt and labor market fluctuations
2011
Abstract The co-movements of labor productivity with output, total hours, vacancies and unemployment have changed since the mid 1980s. This paper offers an explanation for the sharp break in the fluctuations of labor market variables based on endogenous labor supply decisions following the mortgage market deregulation. We set up a search model with efficient bargaining and financial frictions, in which impatient borrowers can take an amount of credit that cannot exceed a proportion of the expected value of their real estate holdings. When borrowers' equity requirements are low, the impact of a positive technology shock on the marginal utility of consumption is strengthened, which in turn re…
Instruments, rules, and household debt: the effects of fiscal policy
2015
In this paper, we look at the interplay between the level of household leverage in the economy and fiscal policy, the latter characterised by different combinations of instruments and rules. When the fiscal rule is defined on lump-sum transfers, government spending or consumption taxes, the impact multipliers of transitory fiscal shocks become substantially amplified in an environment of easy access to credit by impatient consumers, regardless of the primary instruments used. However, when the government reacts to debt deviations by raising distortionary taxes on income, labour or capital, the effects of household debt on the size of the impact output multipliers vanish or even reverse, no …
When is there more employment, with individual or collective wage bargaining?
2019
Abstract In a standard Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides labour market with frictions, the authors seek to determine when there is more employment with individual wage bargaining than with collective wage bargaining, using a wage equation generated by the standard total surplus sharing rule. Using a Cobb-Douglas production function, they find that if the bargaining power of the individual is high compared to the bargaining power of the union, there is more unemployment with individual wage setting and vice versa. When the individual worker and the union have the same bargaining power, if the cost of opening a vacancy is sufficiently high, there is more unemployment with individual wage setting. …