International Finance Discussion Papers (IFDP)
September 2013 (Revised June 2015)
Unemployment and Business Cycles
Lawrence J. Christiano, Martin S. Eichenbaum, and Mathias Trabandt
Abstract:
We develop and estimate a general equilibrium model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates, including labor market variables. In sharp contrast to leading New Keynesian models, wages are not subject to exogenous nominal rigidities. Instead we derive wage inertia from our specification of how firms and workers interact when negotiating wages. Our model outperforms the standard Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model both statistically and in terms of the plausibility of the estimated structural parameter values. Our model also outperforms an estimated sticky wage model.
Original paper (PDF)
Revised paper accessible materials (.zip)
Keywords: Unemployment, business cycles, wage inertia, Bayesian estimation
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