IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmoi/0022.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cyclical Labor Income Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Makoto Nakajima
  • Vladimir Smirnyagin

Abstract

We investigate cyclicality of variance and skewness of household labor income risk using PSID data. There are five main findings. First, we find that head's labor income exhibits countercyclical variance and procyclical skewness. Second, the cyclicality of hourly wages is mutted, suggesting that head's labor income risk is mainly coming from the volatility of hours. Third, younger households face stronger cyclicality of income volatility than older ones, although the level of volatility is lower for the younger ones. Fourth, while a second earner helps lower the level of skewness, it does not mitigate the volatility of household labor income risk. Meanwhile, government taxes and transfers are found to mitigate the level and cyclicality of labor income risk volatility. Finally, among heads with strong labor market attachment, the cyclicality of labor income volatility becomes weaker, while the cyclicality of skewness remains.

Suggested Citation

  • Makoto Nakajima & Vladimir Smirnyagin, 2019. "Cyclical Labor Income Risk," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 22, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmoi:0022
    DOI: 10.21034/iwp.22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers-institute/iwp22.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.21034/iwp.22?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Constantinides, George M & Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 219-240, April.
    2. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2007. "Asset Pricing with Idiosyncratic Risk and Overlapping Generations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(4), pages 519-548, October.
    3. Lee, Yoonsoo & Mukoyama, Toshihiko, 2015. "Entry and exit of manufacturing plants over the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 20-27.
    4. Fatih Guvenen & Fatih Karahan & Serdar Ozkan & Jae Song, 2021. "What Do Data on Millions of U.S. Workers Reveal About Lifecycle Earnings Dynamics?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(5), pages 2303-2339, September.
    5. Hamish Low & Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1432-1467, September.
    6. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 15-51, January.
    7. Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2004. "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 1-32, January.
    8. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "The Macroeconomic Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 681-722, August.
    9. Abowd, John M & Card, David, 1989. "On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 411-445, March.
    10. Storesletten, Kjetil & Telmer, Chris I. & Yaron, Amir, 2001. "The welfare cost of business cycles revisited: Finite lives and cyclical variation in idiosyncratic risk," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(7), pages 1311-1339.
    11. Christopher Busch & David Domeij & Fatih Guvenen & Rocio Madera, 2018. "Asymmetric Business-Cycle Risk and Social Insurance," NBER Working Papers 24569, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "How Much Consumption Insurance beyond Self-Insurance?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 53-87, October.
    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. Sushant Acharya & Edouard Challe & Keshav Dogra, 2023. "Optimal Monetary Policy According to HANK," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(7), pages 1741-1782, July.
    2. Manuel Arellano & Stéphane Bonhomme, 2023. "Recovering Latent Variables by Matching," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 118(541), pages 693-706, January.
    3. Edouard Djeutem & Mario He & Abeer Reza & Yang Zhang, 2022. "Household Heterogeneity and the Performance of Monetary Policy Frameworks," Staff Working Papers 22-12, Bank of Canada.
    4. Rubén Domínguez Díaz, 2021. "Hiring Stimulus and Precautionary Savings in a Liquidity Trap," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 072, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.

    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. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "Consumption and Labor Supply with Partial Insurance: An Analytical Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2075-2126, July.
    2. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2009. "Quantitative Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Households," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 319-354, May.
    3. Hoffmann, Eran B. & Malacrino, Davide, 2019. "Employment time and the cyclicality of earnings growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 160-171.
    4. Theloudis, Alexandros, 2021. "Consumption inequality across heterogeneous families," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    5. Joseph Altonji & Disa Hynsjo & Ivan Vidangos, 2023. "Individual Earnings and Family Income: Dynamics and Distribution," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 225-250, July.
    6. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & Jim Malley, 2019. "Cyclical income risk in Great Britain," CESifo Working Paper Series 7594, CESifo.
    7. Manuel Sanchez & Felix Wellschmied, 2020. "Modeling Life-Cycle Earnings Risk with Positive and Negative Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 103-126, July.
    8. Fatih Guvenen, 2009. "An Empirical Investigation of Labor Income Processes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 58-79, January.
    9. Joseph G. Altonji & Anthony A. Smith Jr. & Ivan Vidangos, 2013. "Modeling Earnings Dynamics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(4), pages 1395-1454, July.
    10. Eran B. Hoffmann & Mr. Davide Malacrino, 2018. "Employment Time and the Cyclicality of Earnings Growth," IMF Working Papers 2018/115, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & Jim Malley, 2017. "Asymmetries in Earnings, Employment and Wage Risk in Great Britain," CESifo Working Paper Series 6400, CESifo.
    12. Tao Wang, 2023. "Perceived versus Calibrated Income Risks in Heterogeneous-Agent Consumption Models," Staff Working Papers 23-59, Bank of Canada.
    13. Alisdair McKay & Tamas Papp, 2011. "Accounting for Idiosyncratic Wage Risk Over the Business Cycle," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2011-028, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    14. Fatih Guvenen & Fatih Karahan & Serdar Ozkan & Jae Song, 2021. "What Do Data on Millions of U.S. Workers Reveal About Lifecycle Earnings Dynamics?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(5), pages 2303-2339, September.
    15. Wang, Chong & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2016. "Optimal consumption and savings with stochastic income and recursive utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 292-331.
    16. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & James Malley, 2019. "Cyclical income risk in Great Britain," Working Papers 2019-03, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    17. Fatih Karahan & Serdar Ozkan, 2013. "On the Persistence of Income Shocks over the Life Cycle: Evidence, Theory, and Implications," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(3), pages 452-476, July.
    18. Andrés Erosa & Luisa Fuster & Gueorgui Kambourov, 2016. "Towards a Micro-Founded Theory of Aggregate Labour Supply," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(3), pages 1001-1039.
    19. Dmytro Hryshko, 2012. "Labor income profiles are not heterogeneous: Evidence from income growth rates," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(2), pages 177-209, July.
    20. Carlos Madeira, 2015. "Identification of Earning Dynamics using Rotating Samples over Short Periods: The Case of Chile," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 754, Central Bank of Chile.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor income risk; Income inequality; Business cycles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • 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
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fedmoi:0022. 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: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.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.