This course presents a matching model of unemployment. It uses the model to study unemployment fluctuations; job rationing; efficient unemployment and unemployment gap; and labor market policies such as minimum wage, public employment, and unemployment insurance.
This paper develops a simple business-cycle model with divine coincidence: inflation is on target when unemployment is efficient. The divine coincidence arises from directed search under a quadratic price-adjustment cost.
This graduate course presents various matching models of economic slack. It uses them to study business-cycle fluctuations; Keynesian, classical, and frictional unemployment; optimal monetary policy and the zero lower bound; and optimal government spending.
This book reviews basic facts about business cycles. It then develops a matching model to explain these business-cycle facts. Finally, it explains how monetary policy and government spending should be designed to stabilize business cycles.
This minicourse presents basic facts about business cycles. It then develops a matching model to explain these business-cycle facts. Finally, it explains how monetary policy and government spending should be designed to tame business cycles.
This paper explains why a wave of immigration reduces the employment rate of native workers, and why this reduction is larger in bad times. Yet, immigration improves native welfare when the labor market is inefficiently tight, because it helps firms to recruit.
This paper shows that under simple but realistic assumptions, the efficient unemployment rate u* is the geometric average of the unemployment and vacancy rates. In the United States, 1930–2022, u* is stable and averages 4.1%.
This paper develops a policy-oriented business-cycle model with fluctuating unemployment and long zero-lower-bound episodes. The innovations are that producers and consumers meet through a matching function, and wealth enters the utility function.
This paper develops a sufficient-statistic formula for the unemployment gap. The formula depends on the elasticity of the Beveridge curve, cost of unemployment, and recruiting cost. In the United States the unemployment gap is countercyclical and often positive.
This paper develops a model of pricing in which buyers care about the fairness of markups but misinfer them from prices. The model yields price rigidity, generates realistic Phillips curves, and explains why people dislike inflation so much.
This paper resolves the anomalies of the New Keynesian model at the zero lower bound—explosive recession, forward guidance puzzle, multiplier puzzle—by introducing wealth into the utility function.
This paper shows that when unemployment is inefficient, optimal public expenditure deviates from the Samuelson rule to reduce the unemployment gap. Optimal stimulus spending depends on the unemployment gap, unemployment multiplier, and an elasticity of substitution.
This undergraduate course introduces macroeconomic concepts—such as GDP and inflation—and covers the IS-LM model of business cycles, matching model of unemployment, Phillips curve, Malthusian model of growth, and Solowian model of growth.
This paper explores how the optimal generosity of unemployment insurance varies over the business cycle in the United States. It finds that the optimal replacement rate is countercyclical, just like the actual replacement rate.
This paper develops a theory of optimal unemployment insurance in matching models. It derives a sufficient-statistic formula for optimal unemployment insurance, which is useful to determine the optimal cyclicality of unemployment insurance.
This paper develops a model of unemployment fluctuations. The innovation is to represent the labor and product markets with a matching structure. The model simultaneously features Keynesian unemployment, classical unemployment, and frictional unemployment.
This paper develops a New Keynesian model in which the government multiplier doubles when the unemployment rate rises from 5% to 8%. The multiplier is so countercyclical because in bad times, on the labor market, job rationing dwarfs matching frictions.
This paper proposes a matching model of the labor market with job rationing: unemployment does not disappear in the absence of matching frictions. In recessions, job rationing drives the rise of unemployment, whereas matching frictions contribute little to it.