题目：Search and (In-)elastic Rest Unemployment: a Quantitative Framework 

报告人：周 莹 助理教授 （香港城市大学）

主持人：余一帆 讲师 （浙江大学民营经济研究中心）

时间：2023年4月3日（星期一）下午15:30-17:00

地点：经济学院325室

简介：Dr. ZHOU Ying is an Assistant Professor in economics at the City University of Hong Kong. She obtained her Ph.D in economics from The University of Chicago, and her B.A. in economics from Zhejiang University. She is broadly interested in macroeconomics. Her papers have been accepted by many important conferences, including Neurips 2022 and SED 2023. 

Abstract: This paper develops a tractable quantitative framework for analyzing sectoral labor reallocation and unemployment from the seminal work of Alvarez and Shimer (2011). The framework exploits the analytical relationships between sectoral wages, employment and unemployment dynamics in the structural model for fast model estimation from labor market transition data. In particular, the framework accommodates two important features of the data: (i) heterogeneous responses of sectoral labor

market dynamics to shocks at different wages; and (ii) persistent unemployment

accompanied by persistently depressed wages for the sectors at the bottom of the sectoral wage distribution. In addition, the analytical solution to the structural model allows convenient counterfactuals to quantify the impact of sectoral shocks and the relevant labor market institutions. I validate the structural model with two non-targeted data moments: sectoral wage persistence

and the distribution of unemployment spells. Lastly, I apply the framework to test the sectoral shifts hypothesis and find that a 1% increase in sectoral shock dispersion would raise aggregate unemployment by 0.55%. The result is consistent with the observation of slow employment recovery after recessions upon job polarization.