A Congestion Theory of Unemployment Fluctuations
Yusuf Mercan, Benjamin Schoefer, Petr Sedláček
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics,
No. 1,
2024
Abstract
We propose a theory of unemployment fluctuations in which newhires and incumbentworkers are imperfect substitutes. Hence, attempts to hire away the unemployed during recessions diminish the marginal product of new hires, discouraging job creation. This single feature achieves a ten-fold increase in the volatility of hiring in an otherwise standard search model, produces a realistic Beveridge curve despite countercyclical separations, and explains 30–40% of U.S. unemployment fluctuations. Additionally, it explains the excess procyclicality of new hires’ wages, the cyclical labor wedge, countercyclical earnings losses from job displacement, and the limited steady-state effects of unemployment insurance.
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The Importance of Credit Demand for Business Cycle Dynamics
Gregor von Schweinitz
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 21,
2023
Abstract
This paper contributes to a better understanding of the important role that credit demand plays for credit markets and aggregate macroeconomic developments as both a source and transmitter of economic shocks. I am the first to identify a structural credit demand equation together with credit supply, aggregate supply, demand and monetary policy in a Bayesian structural VAR. The model combines informative priors on structural coefficients and multiple external instruments to achieve identification. In order to improve identification of the credit demand shocks, I construct a new granular instrument from regional mortgage origination.
I find that credit demand is quite elastic with respect to contemporaneous macroeconomic conditions, while credit supply is relatively inelastic. I show that credit supply and demand shocks matter for aggregate fluctuations, albeit at different times: credit demand shocks mostly drove the boom prior to the financial crisis, while credit supply shocks were responsible during and after the crisis itself. In an out-of-sample exercise, I find that the Covid pandemic induced a large expansion of credit demand in 2020Q2, which pushed the US economy towards a sustained recovery and helped to avoid a stagflationary scenario in 2022.
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