We revisit the issue of the high cyclicality of wages of new hires.We show that after controlling for composition effects likely involving procyclical upgrading of job match quality, the wages of new ...hires are no more cyclical than those of existing workers. The key implication is that the sluggish behaviour of wages for existing workers is a better guide to the cyclicality of the marginal cost of labour than is the high measured cyclicality of new hires wages unadjusted for composition effects. Key to our identification is distinguishing between new hires from unemployment versus those who are job changers. We argue that to a reasonable approximation, the wages of the former provide a composition-free estimate of the wage flexibility, while the same is not true for the latter. We then develop a quantitative general equilibrium model with sticky wages via staggered contracting, on-the-job search, and heterogeneous match quality, and show that it can account for both the panel data evidence and aggregate evidence on labour market volatility.
This paper uses readily accessible aggregate time series to measure the probability that an employed worker becomes unemployed and the probability that an unemployed worker finds a job, the ins and ...outs of unemployment. Since 1948, the job finding probability has accounted for three-quarters of the fluctuations in the unemployment rate in the United States and the employment exit probability for one-quarter. Fluctuations in the employment exit probability are quantitatively irrelevant during the last two decades. Using the underlying microeconomic data, the paper shows that these results are not due to compositional changes in the pool of searching workers, nor are they due to movements of workers in and out of the labor force. These results contradict the conventional wisdom that has guided the development of macroeconomic models of the labor market since 1990.
► The job finding rate is strongly procyclical. ► The employment exit probability is weakly countercyclical. ► This holds in models with and without a participation margin. ► This holds after accounting for worker heterogeneity.
•A theoretically consistent measure of match quality in on-the-job search models•A method to identify wage offer distribution and contribution of on-the-job search•An estimated standard deviation of ...the wage-offer distribution of 13%
A wide class of models with On-the-Job Search (OJS) predict that workers gradually select into better jobs. We develop a simple method based on the expected number of job offers received that can be used to measure match quality, identify the wage offer distribution and estimate the contribution of OJS to wage dispersion and the increase in wages over the lifecycle. The method uses two sources of identification: (i) time variation in job-finding rates and (ii) individual variation in the time since the last layoff. Applying this method to the NLSY 79, we find that the standard deviation of the wage-offer distribution is 13% and that OJS accounts for 8% of the total wage dispersion and 30% of the wage-increase over the lifecycle.
We consider a worker's job search problem in which firms arrive sequentially, observe the worker's unemployment duration, and conduct an interview to learn about her unobservable productivity. Firms ...engage in fully flexible information acquisition subject to a uniformly posterior‐separable cost function. We provide a closed‐form characterization of equilibrium job search dynamics and demonstrate that endogenous information amplifies the “stigma” effect of long unemployment duration relative to exogenous information. We also show that lowering firms' information‐acquisition costs has ambiguous implications for a worker's unemployment duration.
We study the effect of public health insurance on labor supply by exploiting a large public health insurance disenrollment. In 2005, approximately 170,000 Tennessee residents abruptly lost Medicaid ...coverage. Using both across- and within-state variation in exposure to the disenrollment, we estimate large increases in labor supply, primarily along the extensive margin. The increased employment is concentrated among individuals working at least 20 hours a week and receiving private, employer-provided health insurance. We explore the dynamic effects of the disenrollment and find an immediate increase in job search behavior and a steady rise in both employment and health insurance coverage following the disenrollment. Our results are consistent with a significant degree of ‘‘employment lock’’—workers who are employed primarily to secure private health insurance coverage.
One goal of extending the duration of unemployment insurance (UI) in recessions is to increase UI coverage in the face of longer unemployment spells. Although it is a common concern that such ...extensions may themselves raise nonemployment durations, it is not known how recessions would affect the magnitude of this moral hazard. To obtain causal estimates of the differential effects of UI in booms and recessions, this article exploits the fact that in Germany, potential UI benefit duration is a function of exact age which is itself invariant over the business cycle. We implement a regression discontinuity design separately for 20 years and correlate our estimates with measures of the business cycle. We find that the nonemployment effects of a month of additional UI benefits are, at best, somewhat declining in recessions. Yet the UI exhaustion rate, and therefore the additional coverage provided by UI extensions, rises substantially during a downturn. The ratio of these two effects represents the nonemployment response of workers weighted by the probability of being affected by UI extensions. Hence, our results imply that the effective moral hazard effect of UI extensions is significantly lower in recessions than in booms. Using a model of job search with liquidity constraints, we also find that in the absence of market-wide effects, the net social benefits from UI extensions can be expressed either directly in terms of the exhaustion rate and the nonemployment effect of UI durations, or as a declining function of our measure of effective moral hazard.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between proactive personality and job search outcomes through network size, job search clarity, and networking behavior by surveying a sample ...of 773 university graduates. The results revealed that proactive personality has direct and indirect effects on job seeker's job search networking behaviour and number of job interviews and job offers. Additionally, the results also indicated that people displaying high proactivity traits tend to expand their social network size and having a clear job search goal, which results in increasing their networking behaviour and job search outcomes. Our findings are discussed in terms of the understanding mechanism linking a distal variable, proactive personality, to job search results.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study builds on a self-regulation framework to examine the influence of employment self-efficacy and perceived progress on job search intensity. Results from a repeated-measures study with new ...labor market entrants indicated that job seekers with higher between-person chronic employment self-efficacy put more intensity in their job search compared to those with lower chronic employment self-efficacy. Notably, however, within-person analyses indicated that as employment self-efficacy increased, job search intensity subsequently decreased. These results provide support for social cognitive theory for between-person employment self-efficacy, and for control theory for within-person employment self-efficacy. Furthermore, increased perceived progress was positively related to subsequent job search intensity. The positive relationship of perceived progress with subsequent job search intensity was moderated by chronic employment self-efficacy, such that the relationship was positive only for job seekers with lower chronic employment self-efficacy.
•Importance of self-efficacy and perceived progress in self-regulation•Job seekers with higher chronic employment self-efficacy exert higher intensity.•Increased transient employment self-efficacy is related to lower intensity.•Increased perceived progress is related to higher intensity.•This relation is positive only for those lower in chronic employment self-efficacy.
Abstract
This article investigates gender differences in the job search process in the field and lab. Our analysis is based on rich information on initial job offers and acceptances from ...undergraduates of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. We find (i) a clear gender difference in the timing of job offer acceptance, with women accepting jobs substantially earlier than men, and (ii) a sizable gender earnings gap in accepted offers, which narrows in favor of women over the course of the job search period. To understand these patterns, we develop a job search model that incorporates gender differences in risk aversion and overoptimism about prospective offers. We validate the model’s assumptions and predictions using the survey data and present empirical evidence that the job search patterns in the field can be partly explained by the greater risk aversion displayed by women and the higher levels of overoptimism displayed by men. We replicate these findings in a laboratory experiment that features sequential job search and provide direct evidence on the purported mechanisms. Our findings highlight the importance of risk preferences and beliefs for gender differences in job-finding behavior and, consequently, early-career wage gaps among the highly educated.
We study an equilibrium model of the labor market with identical firms and homogeneous workers, and with search and on-the-job search. Jobs are dynamic contracts that allow firms to match the ...worker's outside offers or let the job be terminated. For a non-degenerate distribution of wage offers to arise in the environment, it is necessary and sufficient that (i) there is a positive cost of job turnover, in terminating an existing job or posting a new one; and (ii) there is asymmetric information regarding the worker's outside offers. The model is calibrated to the U.S. labor market to match observed worker flows and the observed mean-min ratio in wages earned. The calibrated model predicts a unimodal distribution for both wages offered and wages earned.
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