IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/moneco/v57y2010i5p557-572.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How to reduce unemployment: A new policy proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Farmer, Roger E.A.

Abstract

This paper uses a model with a continuum of equilibrium steady state unemployment rates to explore the effectiveness of fiscal policy. The existence of multiple steady state equilibria is explained by the presence of search and recruiting costs. I use the model to explain the current financial crisis as a shift to a high unemployment equilibrium, induced by the self-fulfilling beliefs of market participants about asset prices. I ask two questions. (1) Can fiscal policy help us out of the crisis? (2) Is there an alternative to fiscal policy that is less costly and more effective? The answer to both questions is yes.

Suggested Citation

  • Farmer, Roger E.A., 2010. "How to reduce unemployment: A new policy proposal," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 557-572, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:57:y:2010:i:5:p:557-572
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3932(10)00051-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcus Hagedorn & Iourii Manovskii, 2008. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1692-1706, September.
    2. Davig, Troy & Leeper, Eric M., 2011. "Monetary-fiscal policy interactions and fiscal stimulus," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 211-227, February.
    3. Davig, Troy & Leeper, Eric M., 2011. "Monetary-fiscal policy interactions and fiscal stimulus," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 211-227, February.
    4. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    5. Mark Gertler & Luca Sala & Antonella Trigari, 2008. "An Estimated Monetary DSGE Model with Unemployment and Staggered Nominal Wage Bargaining," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(8), pages 1713-1764, December.
    6. Diamond, Peter A, 1984. "Money in Search Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 1-20, January.
    7. Burnside, Craig & Eichenbaum, Martin & Fisher, Jonas D. M., 2004. "Fiscal shocks and their consequences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 89-117, March.
    8. Jean-Pascal Benassy, 1975. "Neo-Keynesian Disequilibrium Theory in a Monetary Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(4), pages 503-523.
    9. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    10. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2012. "Confidence, Crashes and Animal Spirits," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(559), pages 155-172, March.
    11. Roger E.A. Farmer (ed.), 2008. "Macroeconomics in the Small and the Large," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13236.
    12. Howitt, Peter & McAfee, R Preston, 1987. "Costly Search and Recruiting," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(1), pages 89-107, February.
    13. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    14. Robert E. Hall & Paul R. Milgrom, 2008. "The Limited Influence of Unemployment on the Wage Bargain," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1653-1674, September.
    15. Diamond, Peter A, 1982. "Aggregate Demand Management in Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 881-894, October.
    16. Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "When Is the Government Spending Multiplier Large?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(1), pages 78-121.
    17. Menahem E. Yaari, 1965. "Uncertain Lifetime, Life Insurance, and the Theory of the Consumer," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 32(2), pages 137-150.
    18. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    19. Mark Gertler & Antonella Trigari, 2009. "Unemployment Fluctuations with Staggered Nash Wage Bargaining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 38-86, February.
    20. Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Efficiency and Sticky Wages: Evidence from Flows in the Labor Market," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 397-407, August.
    21. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2008. "Aggregate demand and supply," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 4(1), pages 77-93, March.
    22. Long, John B, Jr & Plosser, Charles I, 1983. "Real Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(1), pages 39-69, February.
    23. Tommaso Monacelli & Roberto Perotti, 2008. "Fiscal Policy, Wealth Effects, and Markups," NBER Working Papers 14584, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Peter A. Diamond, 1982. "Wage Determination and Efficiency in Search Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(2), pages 217-227.
    25. Olivier Blanchard & Roberto Perotti, 2002. "An Empirical Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Changes in Government Spending and Taxes on Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1329-1368.
    26. Baxter, Marianne & King, Robert G, 1993. "Fiscal Policy in General Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 315-334, June.
    27. Ramey, Valerie A. & Shapiro, Matthew D., 1998. "Costly capital reallocation and the effects of government spending," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 145-194, June.
    28. Farmer, Roger, 2010. "Expectations, Employment and Prices," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195397901.
    29. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    30. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    31. Pissarides, Christopher A, 1984. "Search Intensity, Job Advertising, and Efficiency," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 128-143, January.
    32. Farmer, Roger, 2005. "Shooting the Auctioneer," CEPR Discussion Papers 4825, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    33. Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Fluctuations with Equilibrium Wage Stickiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 50-65, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shafik Hebous, 2011. "The Effects Of Discretionary Fiscal Policy On Macroeconomic Aggregates: A Reappraisal," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 674-707, September.
    2. Riccardo Magnani, 2015. "The Solow Growth Model Revisited. Introducing Keynesian Involuntary Unemployment," Working Papers hal-01203393, HAL.
    3. Marco Guerrazzi, 2012. "Expectations, Employment and Prices: A Suggested Interpretation of the New «Farmerian» Economics," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 369-395.
    4. Annalisa Cristini & Piero Ferri & Anna Maria Variato, 2015. "Search Theories and Aggregate Demand," Review of Economics & Finance, Better Advances Press, Canada, vol. 5, pages 55-65, August.
    5. repec:hal:cepnwp:hal-01203393 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jianjun Miao & Pengfei Wang & Lifang Xu, 2016. "Stock market bubbles and unemployment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(2), pages 273-307, February.
    7. Marco Guerrazzi, 2011. "Search And Stochastic Dynamics In The Old Keynesian Economics: A Rationale For The Shimer Puzzle," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 561-586, November.
    8. Matthieu Charpe & Peter Flaschel & Florian Hartmann & Roberto Veneziani, 2012. "Towards Keynesian DSGD (isequilibrium) Modelling: Real-Financial Market Interactions with Heterogeneous Expectations Dynamics," IMK Working Paper 93-2012, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    9. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2012. "Confidence, Crashes and Animal Spirits," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(559), pages 155-172, March.
    10. Phil Armstrong, 2020. "Can Heterodox Economics Make a Difference?," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 19964.
    11. Piero Ferri & Fabio Tramontana, 2018. "Debt Persistence in a Deflationary Environment: A Regime-Switching Model," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 52(2), pages 421-442, August.
    12. Kumhof, Michael & Laxton, Douglas & Leigh, Daniel, 2014. "To starve or not to starve the beast?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 39(PA), pages 1-23.
    13. Farmer, Roger E.A., 2012. "The stock market crash of 2008 caused the Great Recession: Theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 693-707.
    14. Marco Guerrazzi, 2010. "How to Reduce Unemployment: Notes on Macro-Economic Stability and Dynamics," Discussion Papers 2010/106, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    15. Periklis Gogas & Theophilos Papadimitriou & Emmanouil Sofianos, 2022. "Forecasting unemployment in the euro area with machine learning," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(3), pages 551-566, April.
    16. Charpe, Matthieu & Flaschel, Peter & Hartmann, Florian & Proaño, Christian, 2011. "Stabilizing an unstable economy: Fiscal and monetary policy, stocks, and the term structure of interest rates," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 2129-2136, September.
    17. Roger E A Farmer, 2020. "The importance of beliefs in shaping macroeconomic outcomes," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 36(3), pages 675-711.
    18. Florian Hartmann & Matthieu Charpe & Peter Flaschel & Roberto Veneziani, 2016. "A Basic Model of Real-Financial Market Interactions with Heterogeneous Opinion Dynamics," IEER Working Papers 104, Institute of Empirical Economic Research, Osnabrueck University, revised 26 May 2016.
    19. Di Caro, Paolo, 2014. "Regional recessions and recoveries in theory and practice: a resilience-based overview," MPRA Paper 60300, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Thomas Habanabakize & Paul-Francois Muzindutsi, 2017. "Analysis of Government Expenditure and Sectoral Employment in the Post-apartheid South Africa: Application of ARDL Model," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 9(2), pages 224-233.
    21. Viktar Fedaseyeu & Vitaliy Strohush, 2012. "Loans from the Government, Overinvestment by Households, and Asset Bubbles," Working Papers 443, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Farmer, Roger, 2009. "Fiscal Policy Can Reduce Unemployment: But There is a Better Alternative," CEPR Discussion Papers 7526, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2009. "Fiscal Policy Can Reduce Unemployment: But There is a Less Costly and More Effective Alternative," NBER Working Papers 15021, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Monacelli, Tommaso & Perotti, Roberto & Trigari, Antonella, 2010. "Unemployment fiscal multipliers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 531-553, July.
    4. Roger E. A. Farmer, 2012. "Confidence, Crashes and Animal Spirits," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(559), pages 155-172, March.
    5. Tsasa, Jean-Paul K., 2022. "Labor market volatility in a fully specified RBC search model: An analytical investigation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    6. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin S. Eichenbaum & Mathias Trabandt, 2016. "Unemployment and Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84(4), pages 1523-1569, July.
    7. Rendahl, Pontus, 2014. "Fiscal Policy in an Unemployment Crisis," CEPR Discussion Papers 9992, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and macroeconomics," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 373-383.
    9. Sergio Rebelo, 2005. "Real Business Cycle Models: Past, Present, and Future," NBER Working Papers 11401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Markus Brückner & Evi Pappa, 2012. "Fiscal Expansions, Unemployment, And Labor Force Participation: Theory And Evidence," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 53(4), pages 1205-1228, November.
    11. Marco Guerrazzi, 2012. "Expectations, Employment and Prices: A Suggested Interpretation of the New «Farmerian» Economics," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 369-395.
    12. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    13. Farmer, Roger, 2013. "The Natural Rate Hypothesis: an idea past its sell-by date," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 53(3), pages 244-256.
    14. Chadha, Jagjit S. & Nolan, Charles, 2007. "Optimal simple rules for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 665-689, December.
    15. Marco Guerrazzi, 2011. "Search And Stochastic Dynamics In The Old Keynesian Economics: A Rationale For The Shimer Puzzle," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 561-586, November.
    16. Eric Leeper & Todd B. Walker & Susan Shu-Chun Yang, 2009. "Government Investment And Fiscal Stimulus In The Short And Long Runs," CAEPR Working Papers 2009-011, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    17. Hafedh Bouakez & Michel Guillard & Jordan Roulleau-Pasdeloup, 2017. "Public Investment, Time to Build, and the Zero Lower Bound," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 23, pages 60-79, January.
    18. Galí, Jordi, 2010. "Monetary Policy and Unemployment," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 10, pages 487-546, Elsevier.
    19. Slim Bridji & Matthieu Charpe, 2012. "Labour Market and Fiscal Policy," IHEID Working Papers 03-2012, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, revised 16 Feb 2012.
    20. Eusepi, Stefano & Preston, Bruce, 2015. "Consumption heterogeneity, employment dynamics and macroeconomic co-movement," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 13-32.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:moneco:v:57:y:2010:i:5:p:557-572. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505566 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.