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The Unemployment Accelerator

Author

Listed:
  • Julio Blanco
  • Gaston Navarro

Abstract

This paper studies the unemployment accelerator, a mechanism where workers directly affect the firms’ financial conditions, and, in turn, firms’ financial conditions feedback again to the real economy. The unemployment accelerator builds on two key assumptions: search frictions in the labor market and firms’ default risk. The former assumption implies a positive relation between the firm’s value and its number of workers; the latter assumption entails a tight connection between the value of the workers and the firm’s incentives to default. We develop and estimate a model with these two frictions together with firm-level heterogeneity; and show the model matches firm-level statistics as well as business cycle fluctuations in labor and financial markets. We provide compelling micro-evidence of the unemployment accelerator: a 10% increase in a firm’s number of workers is associated with a 4% increase in its market value and a 6% decline in its probability of default. We show that our model can account for these facts, and that the two key assumptions we make are essential for this.

Suggested Citation

  • Julio Blanco & Gaston Navarro, 2016. "The Unemployment Accelerator," CESifo Working Paper Series 6248, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6248
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Dr. Gregor Bäurle & Sarah M. Lein & Elizabeth Steiner, 2017. "Employment Adjustment and Financial Constraints - Evidence from Firm-level Data," Working Papers 2017-18, Swiss National Bank.
    2. Deng, Minjie & Fang, Min, 2022. "Debt maturity heterogeneity and investment responses to monetary policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment; default risk; credit market frictions; search frictions; wage bargaining;
    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
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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