Modeling Migration-Induced Unemployment

This paper explains why a wave of in-migration reduces the employment rate of local workers, and why this reduction is larger in bad times. Yet, when the labor market is inefficiently tight, in-migration improves local welfare because it aids firms in recruiting.

December 2024 · Pascal Michaillat

Beveridgean Phillips Curve

This paper builds a Beveridgean model of the Phillips curve. Prices respond to slack so the divine coincidence holds: prices are stable at full employment. The Phillips curve is kinked if wage cuts are more costly to producers than price hikes.

October 2024 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

An Economical Business-Cycle Model

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.

April 2022 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

Optimal Public Expenditure with Inefficient Unemployment

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.

May 2019 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

A Macroeconomic Approach to Optimal Unemployment Insurance: Applications

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.

May 2018 · Camille Landais, Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

A Macroeconomic Approach to Optimal Unemployment Insurance: Theory

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.

May 2018 · Camille Landais, Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

Aggregate Demand, Idle Time, and Unemployment

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.

May 2015 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

A Theory of Countercyclical Government Multiplier

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.

January 2014 · Pascal Michaillat

Do Matching Frictions Explain Unemployment? Not in Bad Times

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.

June 2012 · Pascal Michaillat