IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed017/1314.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Asymmetries in Earnings, Employment and Wage Risk in Great Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Spyridon Lazarakis

    (University of Glasgow)

  • James Malley

    (University of Glasgow and CESifo)

  • Konstantinos Angelopoulos

    (University of Glasgow)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between idiosyncratic earnings, employment and wage risk and fluctuations in aggregate labour market quantities for Great Britain. We use data from the British Household Panel Survey(BHPS) for 1991-2008 and from the BHPS sub-sample of Understanding Society for 2010-2014. We measure idiosyncratic risk by the relevant moments of the distribution of earnings, employment and wage shocks across individuals. Our main finding is that each of these measures of idiosyncratic labour income risk responds symmetrically to fluctuations in the labour market aggregates. Furthermore, we find evidence of insurance, both within the household and in the form of public insurance. However, household disposable income risk still increases with negative changes in mean earnings, implying that private and public of insurance do not eliminate the increase in risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Spyridon Lazarakis & James Malley & Konstantinos Angelopoulos, 2017. "Asymmetries in Earnings, Employment and Wage Risk in Great Britain," 2017 Meeting Papers 1314, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed017:1314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2017/paper_1314.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. tom krebs, 2004. "welfare cost of business cycles when markets are incomplete," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 283, Econometric Society.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Tom Krebs, 2007. "Job Displacement Risk and the Cost of Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 664-686, June.
    6. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Introduction to "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings"," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 1-4, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Alon Brav & George M. Constantinides & Christopher C. Geczy, 2002. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and Limited Participation: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 793-824, August.
    8. Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1986. "The equity premium and the concentration of aggregate shocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 211-219, September.
    9. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2014. "Earnings and labour market volatility in Britain, with a transatlantic comparison," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 201-211.
    10. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2011. "Has the Instability of Personal Incomes been Increasing?," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 218(1), pages 33-43, October.
    11. Bayer, Christian & Juessen, Falko, 2012. "The life-cycle and the business-cycle of wage risk — Cross-country comparisons," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 831-833.
    12. Meghir, Costas & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2011. "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 9, pages 773-854, Elsevier.
    13. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc74-1.
    14. George M. Constantinides & Anisha Ghosh, 2017. "Asset Pricing with Countercyclical Household Consumption Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 415-460, February.
    15. 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.
    16. repec:bla:econom:v:70:y:2003:i:278:p:353-374 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Rocio Madera & Fatih Guvenen & David Domeij & Christopher Busch, 2016. "Asymmetric Business Cycle Risk and Government Policy," 2016 Meeting Papers 1567, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2014. "Earnings and labour market volatility in Britain, with a transatlantic comparison," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 201-211.
    19. Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2004. "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 1-32, January.
    20. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris I. Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2004. "Cyclical Dynamics in Idiosyncratic Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 695-717, June.
    21. Richard Blundell & Ben Etheridge, 2010. "Consumption, Income and Earnings Inequality in Britain," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 76-102, January.
    22. P. Jenkins, Stephen, 2010. "The British Household Panel Survey and its income data," ISER Working Paper Series 2010-33, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    23. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling and Earnings," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 41-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. 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.
    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. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & James Malley, 2017. "Wealth inequality and externalities from ex ante skill heterogeneity," Working Papers 2017_07, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    2. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & Jim Malley, 2017. "Wealth Inequality and Externalities from Ex Ante Skill Heterogeneity," CESifo Working Paper Series 6572, CESifo.
    3. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Andrea Benecchi & Jim Malley, 2017. "Can Subsidising Job-Related Training Reduce Inequality?," CESifo Working Paper Series 6605, CESifo.
    4. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Andrea Benecchi & James Malley, 2017. "Can subsidising job-related training reduce inequality?," Working Papers 2017_10, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.

    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. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & Jim Malley, 2019. "Cyclical income risk in Great Britain," CESifo Working Paper Series 7594, CESifo.
    2. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & James Malley, 2019. "Cyclical income risk in Great Britain," Working Papers 2019-03, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    3. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Spyridon Lazarakis & James Malley, 2022. "Cyclical labour income risk in Great Britain," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(1), pages 116-130, January.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Krebs, Tom & Yao, Yao, 2016. "Labor Market Risk in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 9869, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Eran B. Hoffmann & Mr. Davide Malacrino, 2018. "Employment Time and the Cyclicality of Earnings Growth," IMF Working Papers 2018/115, International Monetary Fund.
    8. 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.
    9. Bayer, Christian & Kuhn, Moritz, 2018. "Which Ladder to Climb? Decomposing Life Cycle Wage Dynamics," CEPR Discussion Papers 13158, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Bayer, Christian & Kuhn, Moritz, 2018. "Which Ladder to Climb? Wages of Workers by Job, Plant, and Education," IZA Discussion Papers 11827, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Christopher Busch & Alexander Ludwig, 2024. "Higher‐Order Income Risk Over The Business Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 65(3), pages 1105-1131, August.
    12. Daniel Harenberg & Alexander Ludwig, "undated". "Social Security and the Interactions Between Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Risk," Working Papers ETH-RC-14-002, ETH Zurich, Chair of Systems Design.
    13. Magnac, Thierry & Roux, Sébastien, 2021. "Heterogeneity and wage inequalities over the life cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    14. Daniel Harenberg & Alexander Ludwig, 2015. "Social security in an analytically tractable overlapping generations model with aggregate and idiosyncratic risks," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(4), pages 579-603, August.
    15. 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.
    16. Gustavsson, Magnus & Österholm, Pär, 2014. "Does the labor-income process contain a unit root? Evidence from individual-specific time series," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 152-167.
    17. Fatih Guvenen & Serdar Ozkan & Jae Song, 2014. "The Nature of Countercyclical Income Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(3), pages 621-660.
    18. Daniel Harenberg & Alexander Ludwig, 2019. "Idiosyncratic Risk, Aggregate Risk, And The Welfare Effects Of Social Security," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(2), pages 661-692, May.
    19. Angelopoulos, Konstantinos & Lazarakis, Spyridon & Malley, James, 2020. "The distributional implications of asymmetric income dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    20. Panageas, Stavros, 2020. "The Implications of Heterogeneity and Inequality for Asset Pricing," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 12(3), pages 199-275, November.

    More about this item

    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
    • 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:red:sed017:1314. 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 Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.