IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed019/358.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Firm Wages in a Frictional Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Leena Rudanko

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)

Abstract

This paper studies a labor market with directed search, where multi-worker firms follow a firm wage policy: They pay equally productive workers the same. The policy reduces wages, due to the influence of firms’ existing workers on their wage setting problem, increasing the profitability of hiring. It also introduces a time-inconsistency into the dynamic firm problem, because firms face a less elastic labor supply in the short run. To consider outcomes when firms reoptimize each period, I study Markov perfect equilibria, proposing a tractable solution approach based on standard Euler equations. In two applications, I first show that firm wages dampen wage variation over the business cycle, amplifying that in unemployment, with quantitatively significant effects. Second, I show that firm wage firms may find it profitable to fix wages for a period of time, and that an equilibrium with fixed wages can be good for worker welfare, despite added volatility in the labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Leena Rudanko, 2019. "Firm Wages in a Frictional Labor Market," 2019 Meeting Papers 358, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed019:358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2019/paper_358.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emily Breza & Supreet Kaur & Yogita Shamdasani, 2018. "The Morale Effects of Pay Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 611-663.
    2. Christian Bayer & Moritz Kuhn, 2018. "Which Ladder to Climb? Decomposing Life Cycle Wage Dynamics," CESifo Working Paper Series 7236, CESifo.
    3. Taylor, J.B., 2016. "The Staying Power of Staggered Wage and Price Setting Models in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2009-2042, Elsevier.
    4. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1990. "The Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 255-283.
    5. repec:wop:calsdi:97-23 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Giuseppe Moscarini & Fabien Postel-Vinay, 2013. "Stochastic Search Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(4), pages 1545-1581.
    7. Eric Smith, 1999. "Search, Concave Production, and Optimal Firm Size," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 2(2), pages 456-471, April.
    8. Melvyn G. Coles & Dale T. Mortensen, 2016. "Equilibrium Labor Turnover, Firm Growth, and Unemployment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 347-363, January.
    9. Menzio, Guido & Moen, Espen R., 2010. "Worker replacement," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 623-636, September.
    10. Garey Ramey & Wouter J. den Haan & Joel Watson, 2000. "Job Destruction and Propagation of Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 482-498, June.
    11. Krusell, Per & Rudanko, Leena, 2016. "Unions in a frictional labor market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 35-50.
    12. Haefke, Christian & Sonntag, Marcus & van Rens, Thijs, 2013. "Wage rigidity and job creation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 887-899.
    13. Mark Gertler & Antonella Trigari, 2009. "Unemployment Fluctuations with Staggered Nash Wage Bargaining," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 38-86, February.
    14. Leo Kaas & Philipp Kircher, 2015. "Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3030-3060, October.
    15. Brown, Charles & Medoff, James, 1989. "The Employer Size-Wage Effect," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1027-1059, October.
    16. Alessandro Barattieri & Susanto Basu & Peter Gottschalk, 2014. "Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Wages," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 70-101, January.
    17. Edouard Schaal, 2011. "Uncertainty, Productivity and Unemployment in the Great Depression," 2011 Meeting Papers 1450, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Shigeru Fujita & Makoto Nakajima, 2016. "Worker Flows and Job Flows: A Quantitative Investigation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 1-20, October.
    19. David Card & Alexandre Mas & Enrico Moretti & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Inequality at Work: The Effect of Peer Salaries on Job Satisfaction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2981-3003, October.
    20. Cooper, Russell & Haltiwanger, John & Willis, Jonathan L., 2007. "Search frictions: Matching aggregate and establishment observations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(Supplemen), pages 56-78, September.
    21. J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), 2016. "Handbook of Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    22. Bils, Mark J, 1985. "Real Wages over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(4), pages 666-689, August.
    23. Edouard Schaal, 2017. "Uncertainty and Unemployment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1675-1721, November.
    24. Chamley, Christophe, 1986. "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income in General Equilibrium with Infinite Lives," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 607-622, May.
    25. Christian Bayer & Moritz Kuhn, 2018. "Which Ladder to Climb? Wages of workers by job, plant, and education," 2018 Meeting Papers 648, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    26. Anat Bracha & Uri Gneezy & George Loewenstein, 2015. "Relative Pay and Labor Supply," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 297-315.
    27. Moen, Espen R, 1997. "Competitive Search Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 385-411, April.
    28. Marcus Hagedorn & Iourii Manovskii, 2008. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1692-1706, September.
    29. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    30. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/22qd4iha9ql84kd2t534hdeb is not listed on IDEAS
    31. William B. Hawkins, 2013. "Competitive Search, Efficiency, And Multiworker Firms," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(1), pages 219-251, February.
    32. Michael W. L. Elsby & Ryan Michaels, 2013. "Marginal Jobs, Heterogeneous Firms, and Unemployment Flows," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 1-48, January.
    33. Judd, Kenneth L., 1985. "Redistributive taxation in a simple perfect foresight model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 59-83, October.
    34. Alan S. Blinder & Don H. Choi, 1990. "A Shred of Evidence on Theories of Wage Stickiness," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(4), pages 1003-1015.
    35. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 25-49, March.
    36. Taylor, John B, 1983. "Union Wage Settlements during a Disinflation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 981-993, December.
    37. Paul Klein & Per Krusell & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2008. "Time-Consistent Public Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 789-808.
    38. Burdett, Kenneth & Mortensen, Dale T, 1998. "Wage Differentials, Employer Size, and Unemployment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 257-273, May.
    39. Rudanko, Leena, 2009. "Labor market dynamics under long-term wage contracting," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 170-183, March.
    40. George Baker & Michael Gibbs & Bengt Holmstrom, 1994. "The Internal Economics of the Firm: Evidence from Personnel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 881-919.
    41. , & , B., 2014. "Search with multi-worker firms," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    42. Melvyn G. Coles, 2001. "Equilibrium Wage Dispersion, Firm Size and Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(1), pages 159-187, January.
    43. Robert E. Hall, 2005. "Employment Fluctuations with Equilibrium Wage Stickiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 50-65, March.
    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. Leo Kaas & Bihemo Kimasa, 2021. "Firm Dynamics With Frictional Product And Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1281-1317, August.

    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. Leo Kaas & Philipp Kircher, 2015. "Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3030-3060, October.
    2. Ryan Michaels & David Ratner & Michael Elsby, 2016. "Vacancy Chains," 2016 Meeting Papers 753, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Shigeru Fujita & Makoto Nakajima, 2016. "Worker Flows and Job Flows: A Quantitative Investigation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 1-20, October.
    4. Yicheng Wang, 2015. "Can Wage Dynamics in Long-term Employment Relationships Help Mitigate Financial Shocks?," 2015 Meeting Papers 1189, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Jonathon Hazell & Bledi Taska, 2020. "Downward Rigidity in the Wage for New Hires," Discussion Papers 2028, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    6. Leena Rudanko, 2008. "Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Risk in a Frictional Labor Market," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2008-009, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    7. Kudlyak, Marianna, 2014. "The cyclicality of the user cost of labor," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 53-67.
    8. Rogerson, Richard & Shimer, Robert, 2011. "Search in Macroeconomic Models of the Labor Market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 7, pages Pages: 61, Elsevier.
    9. Faccini, Renato & Rosazza Bondibene, Chiara, 2012. "Labour market institutions and unemployment volatility: evidence from OECD countries," Bank of England working papers 461, Bank of England.
    10. Leo Kaas & Bihemo Kimasa, 2021. "Firm Dynamics With Frictional Product And Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(3), pages 1281-1317, August.
    11. Basu, S. & House, C.L., 2016. "Allocative and Remitted Wages," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 297-354, Elsevier.
    12. Pontus Rendahl, 2014. "Fiscal Policy in an Unemployment Crisis," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1456, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Andrew Snell & Heiko Stuber & Jonathan Thomas, 2018. "Downward Real Wage Rigidity and Equal Treatment Wage Contracts: Theory and Evidence," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 30, pages 265-284, October.
    14. Di Pace, F. & Faccini, R., 2012. "Deep habits and the cyclical behaviour of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 183-200.
    15. Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Wasmer, Etienne, 2015. "Macroeconomic dynamics in a model of goods, labor, and credit market frictions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 97-113.
    16. Bauer, Anja & Lochner, Benjamin, 2020. "History dependence in wages and cyclical selection: Evidence from Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Andreas I. Mueller, 2017. "Separations, Sorting, and Cyclical Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(7), pages 2081-2107, July.
    18. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/1787nsa6d1927a90u4bkkombn4 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Menzio, Guido & Moen, Espen R., 2010. "Worker replacement," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 623-636, September.
    20. Leena Rudanko, 2005. "Labor Market Dynamics under Long Term Wage Contracting," 2005 Meeting Papers 876, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    21. Martins, Pedro S. & Solon, Gary & Thomas, Jonathan P., 2010. "Measuring What Employers Really Do about Entry Wages over the Business Cycle," IZA Discussion Papers 4757, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity

    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:sed019:358. 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.