Working Paper

On the cyclical behavior of employment, unemployment and labor force participation


Abstract: In this paper I evaluate to what extent a real business cycle (RBC) model that incorporates search and leisure decisions can simultaneously account for the observed behavior of employment, unemployment and out-of-the-labor-force. This contrasts with the previous RBC literature, which analyzed employment or hours fluctuations by either lumping together unemployment and out-of-the-labor-force into a single non-employment state or assuming a fixed labor force participation. Once the three employment states are explicitly introduced I find that the RBC model generates highly counterfactual labor market dynamics.

Keywords: Employment (Economic theory); Labor market; Labor supply; Unemployment;

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Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Part of Series: Working Paper Series

Publication Date: 2002

Number: WP-02-12