IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/corcae/03-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Optimal Volume of Labor Hoarding

Author

Listed:
  • Wen, Yi

    (Cornell U)

Abstract

Using a rational expectations model of profit maximizing firms facing demand uncertainty, this paper derives a closed-form relationship between the optimal volume of labor hoarding and other important economic variables such as profit, expected demand, interest rate, inventory level, output price and wage costs. An important insight gained from the analysis is that profit-seeking firms have incentives to enhance supply flexibility by holding not only goods inventories but also excess supplies of labor in reserve, so as to fully guard against demand uncertainty. The optimal target level of labor hoarding is shown to be a function of the variance of demand, the price level as well as the costs of production. The analysis confirms Blinder's (1982) conjecture regarding firms' strategic behavior under demand uncertainty. That is, inventories of labor are partial substitutes for inventories of goods as a means to cope with demand shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Wen, Yi, 2003. "On the Optimal Volume of Labor Hoarding," Working Papers 03-14, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:corcae:03-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cae.economics.cornell.edu/cae0314.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fay, Jon A & Medoff, James L, 1985. "Labor and Output over the Business Cycle: Some Direct Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 638-655, September.
    2. Fair, Ray C, 1985. "Excess Labor and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 239-245, March.
    3. Julio J. Rotemberg & Lawrence H. Summers, 1990. "Inflexible Prices and Procyclical Productivity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(4), pages 851-874.
    4. Bernanke, Ben S & Parkinson, Martin L, 1991. "Procyclical Labor Productivity and Competing Theories of the Business Cycle: Some Evidence from Interwar U.S. Manufacturing Industries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 439-459, June.
    5. Blinder, Alan S, 1982. "Inventories and Sticky Prices: More on the Microfoundations of Macroeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(3), pages 334-348, June.
    6. Miller, Roger LeRoy, 1971. "The Reserve Labour Hypothesis: Some Tests of its Implications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 81(321), pages 17-35, March.
    7. Kahn, James A, 1987. "Inventories and the Volatility of Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 667-679, September.
    8. Burnside, Craig & Eichenbaum, Martin & Rebelo, Sergio, 1993. "Labor Hoarding and the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 245-273, April.
    9. Wen Yi, 2004. "What Does It Take to Explain Procyclical Productivity?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-40, June.
    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. Yi Wen, 2005. "Labor hoarding and inventories," Working Papers 2005-040, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    2. Jordi Galí & Thijs van Rens, 2021. "The Vanishing Procyclicality of Labour Productivity [Why have business cycle fluctuations become less volatile?]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(633), pages 302-326.
    3. Galeotti, Marzio & Maccini, Louis J. & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 2005. "Inventories, employment and hours," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 575-600, April.
    4. Molina-Domene, Maria, 2018. "Labor specialization as a source of market frictions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91703, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Maarten Dossche & Andrea Gavazzi & Vivien Lewis, 2023. "Labor Adjustment and Productivity in the OECD," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 111-130, January.
    6. Sbordone, Argia M., 1996. "Cyclical productivity in a model of labor hoarding," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 331-361, October.
    7. Chirinko, Robert S., 1995. "Nonconvexities, labor hoarding, technology shocks, and procyclical productivity a structural econometric analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1-2), pages 61-98.
    8. Maarten Dossche & Andrea Gavazzi & Vivien Lewis, 2023. "Labor Adjustment and Productivity in the OECD," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 111-130, January.
    9. Gottfries, Nils & Mickelsson, Glenn & Stadin, Karolina, 2018. "Deep Dynamics," Working Paper Series 2018:10, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    10. Maria Molina-Domene, 2018. "Labor specialization as a source of market frictions," CEP Discussion Papers dp1580, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Nils Gottfries & Glenn Mickelsson & Karolina Stadin, 2021. "Deep Dynamics," CESifo Working Paper Series 8873, CESifo.
    12. Wen, Yi, 2007. "By force of demand: Explaining international comovements," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-23, January.
    13. Matthew S. Goldberg & Thomas P. Frazier, 1994. "Employment and utilization of engineers among defense contractors," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(7), pages 853-874, December.
    14. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1991. "Productive externalities and business cycles," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 53, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    15. Christopher L. House & Jing Zhang, 2012. "Layoffs, Lemons and Temps," NBER Working Papers 17962, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Lucas Navarro & Raimundo Soto, 2001. "Procyclical productivity : evidence from an emerging economy," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 109, Central Bank of Chile.
    17. Blalock, Garrick & Gertler, Paul J. & Levine, David I., 2008. "Financial constraints on investment in an emerging market crisis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 568-591, April.
    18. Martin Neil Baily & Eric J. Bartelsman & John Haltiwanger, 2001. "Labor Productivity: Structural Change And Cyclical Dynamics," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 420-433, August.
    19. Yongkyun Chung, 1997. "Labor Hoarding and SRIRL Pardox: Some Evidences from United Kingdom and United States," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 175-189, December.
    20. Robert A. Hart & J Malley (University of Glasgow), 1996. "Labor Productivity and the Cycle," Working Papers 9613, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • 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

    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:ecl:corcae:03-14. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cacorus.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.