2022.01.13
  • 研究会

稲葉大研究員(関西大学)・嶺山友秀氏(IMF)がRISSワークショップで報告します。(2022年1月26日)

日時:2022年1月26日(水) 9:00-11:00

場所:Zoomにて開催いたします

共催:関西大学経済学会

報告者1:稲葉 大(関西大学経済学部 教授)
報告者2:嶺山 友秀(IMF)

タイトル:

報告者1:"What drives fluctuations of labor wedge and business cycles? Evidence from Japan" (joint with Kengo Nutahara[専修大学] and Daichi Shirai[東北学院大学])
報告者2:"Cyclicality and Asymmetry of the User Cost of Labor: Evidence and Theory" (joint with Toshitaka Maruyama [UCLA])

要旨:

報告者1:The literature has empirically verified that the labor wedge worsens during recession. Taking this statement into consideration, this study poses two questions: First, what is the main driving force of the labor wedge, and second, is the main driver of the labor wedge the same as that of business cycles? In this study, we employ a commonly used medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with nominal and real frictions to analyze which structural shocks drive the fluctuation of the labor wedge and of business cycles. The model is estimated using Japanese data. Our estimation strategy is a particularly novel approach. In standard Bayesian estimation, the prior distribution of the parameters for the standard deviations of the structural shocks is the inverse gamma distribution, which does not support zero value and assumes the existence of structural shocks. By contrast, we employ a more flexible prior distribution of the parameters for the standard deviations of structural shocks and measurement errors to allow for the non-existence of structural shocks. Under the standard prior distribution, the estimation results imply that the labor wedge is mainly driven by preference and transitory technology shocks, whereas the investment adjustment cost shock is the most important for the business cycle fluctuations. However, under our relaxed prior distribution, which allows for the non-existence of structural shocks, the estimation results imply that both the labor wedge and business cycles are mainly driven by permanent technology and investment adjustment cost shocks.

報告者2:The user cost of labor (UCL) plays an allocative role in a wide class of macroeconomic models. Despite this appealing feature, estimating the UCL involves empirical challenges as it requires a sequence of wages from hiring until separation. The cyclical changes in the average quality of new matches weigh on measuring the cyclicality of the UCL. In this paper, we overcome these challenges by exploiting unique Japanese data, which tracks wages at each tenure after school graduation. Our empirical findings are twofold. First, the UCL remains highly procyclical after controlling for the cyclical changes in the average job-match quality, whereas the new-hire wage is no longer more cyclical than the incumbent-worker wage. Second, downward adjustments of the UCL are smaller than upward ones. The downward rigidity arises from the combination of that of the new-hire and incumbent-worker wages. We then develop a wage posting model to account for these observations. We demonstrate that under asymmetric information, firms use wages as a screening tool to receive the application from targeted workers and maintain a high value of a posted contract in recessions, leading to the downward rigidity and overall high cyclicality of the UCL.

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