IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedreq/00046.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Generalized Matching Functions and Resource Utilization Indices for the Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Andreas Hornstein
  • Marianna Kudlyak

Abstract

In the U.S. labor market, unemployed individuals who are actively looking for work are more than three times as likely to become employed than those individuals who are not actively looking for work and are considered to be out of the labor force (OLF). Yet, on average, every month twice as many people make the transition from OLF to employment than make the transition from unemployment to employment. Based on these observations, we have argued in Hornstein, Kudlyak, and Lange (2014) for an alternative measure of resource utilization in the labor market, a nonemployment index (NEI), that is more comprehensive than the standard unemployment rate. In this article, we show how the NEI fits into recent extensions of the matching function (which is a standard macroeconomic approach to model labor markets with frictions), how it affects estimates of the extent of labor market frictions, and how these frictions have changed in the Great Recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Hornstein & Marianna Kudlyak, 2016. "Generalized Matching Functions and Resource Utilization Indices for the Labor Market," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue 2Q, pages 105-126.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedreq:00046
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/economic_quarterly/2016/q2/hornstein.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2000. "Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262161877, April.
    2. Kudlyak, Marianna & Lange, Fabian, 2014. "Measuring Heterogeneity in Job Finding Rates Among the Nonemployed Using Labor Force Status Histories," IZA Discussion Papers 8663, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Flinn, Christopher J & Heckman, James J, 1983. "Are Unemployment and Out of the Labor Force Behaviorally Distinct Labor Force States?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 28-42, January.
    4. Regis Barnichon & Andrew Figura, 2015. "Labor Market Heterogeneity and the Aggregate Matching Function," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 222-249, October.
    5. Christopher A. Pissarides & Barbara Petrongolo, 2001. "Looking into the Black Box: A Survey of the Matching Function," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(2), pages 390-431, June.
    6. Andreas Hornstein & Marianna Kudlyak & Fabian Lange & Timothy Sablik, 2014. "Does the Unemployment Rate Really Overstate Labor Market Recovery?," Richmond Fed Economic Brief, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue June.
    7. Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Is Seasonal Adjustment a Linear or Nonlinear Data-Filtering Process? Comment," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(3), pages 394-396, July.
    8. Andreas Hornstein & Marianna Kudlyak & Fabian Lange, 2014. "Measuring Resource Utilization in the Labor Market," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue 1Q, pages 1-21.
    9. Robert Shimer, 2012. "Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 127-148, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Domenico Ferraro, 2018. "The Asymmetric Cyclical Behavior of the U.S. Labor Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 145-162, October.
    2. Andreas Hornstein & Marianna Kudlyak, 2015. "Estimating Matching Efficiency with Variable Search Effort," Working Paper Series 2016-24, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    3. Régis Barnichon & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2002. "Phillips Meets Beveridge," Working Paper Series 2024-22, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    4. Kohlbrecher, Britta & Merkl, Christian & Nordmeier, Daniela, 2016. "Revisiting the matching function," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 350-374.
    5. Kohlbrecher, Britta & Merkl, Christian, 2022. "Business cycle asymmetries and the labor market," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    6. Lange, Fabian & Papageorgiou, Theodore, 2020. "Beyond Cobb-Douglas: Flexibly Estimating Matching Functions with Unobserved Matching Efficiency," IZA Discussion Papers 13177, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Benedikt Herz & Thijs van Rens, 2020. "Accounting for Mismatch Unemployment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 1619-1654.
    8. Alfonso Arpaia & Aron Kiss & Alessandro Turrini, 2014. "Is unemployment structural or cyclical? Main features of job matching in the EU after the crisis," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 527, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    9. Gehrke, Britta & Weber, Enzo, 2018. "Identifying asymmetric effects of labor market reforms," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 18-40.
    10. Régis Barnichon & Andrew Figura, 2013. "Declining labor force attachment and downward trends in unemployment and participation," Economics Working Papers 1397, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    11. Suguru Otani, 2024. "Nonparametric Estimation of Matching Efficiency and Mismatch in Labor Markets via Public Employment Security Offices in Japan, 1972-2024," Papers 2407.20931, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2024.
    12. Jochen Mankart & Rigas Oikonomou, 2017. "Household Search and the Aggregate Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1735-1788.
    13. Federico Di Pace & Matthias Hertweck, 2019. "Labor Market Frictions, Monetary Policy, and Durable Goods," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 32, pages 274-304, April.
    14. Pizzinelli, Carlo & Speigner, Bradley, 2017. "Matching efficiency and labour market heterogeneity in the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 667, Bank of England.
    15. Matthias S. Hertweck & Vivien Lewis & Stefania Villa, 2021. "Going the Extra Mile: Effort by Workers and Job‐Seekers," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 53(8), pages 2099-2127, December.
    16. Regis Barnichon & Andrew Figura, 2015. "Labor Market Heterogeneity and the Aggregate Matching Function," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 222-249, October.
    17. Krause, Michael U. & Lopez-Salido, David J. & Lubik, Thomas A., 2008. "Do search frictions matter for inflation dynamics?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1464-1479, November.
    18. Merkl, Christian & van Rens, Thijs, 2019. "Selective hiring and welfare analysis in labor market models," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 117-130.
    19. Philip Jung & Moritz Kuhn, 2019. "Earnings Losses and Labor Mobility Over the Life Cycle," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 678-724.
    20. David M. Arseneau & Brendan Epstein, 2018. "Efficient Mismatch," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-037, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    utilization; nonemployment index; Labor market;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    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:fip:fedreq:00046. 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: Christian Pascasio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbrius.html .

    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.