The Evolution of Regional Beveridge Curves

RePEc Short ID: pso604
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1414-1560

Owyang, Michael T.; Shell, Hannah; Soques, Daniel

doi:10.20955/wp.2022.037

Working Paper

The Evolution of Regional Beveridge Curves

Abstract: The slow recovery of the labor market in the aftermath of the Great Recession highlighted mismatch, the misallocation of workers across space or across industries. We consider the historical evolution of regional mismatch. We construct MSA-level unemployment rates and vacancy data using techniques similar to Barnichon (2010) and a new dataset of online help-wanted ads by MSA. We estimate regional Beveridge curves, identifying the slopes by restricting them to be equal across locations with similar labor market characteristics. We find that the 51 U.S. cities in our sample have four groupings which are influenced by industry classification, union membership, and geographic proximity. Additionally, allowing for a structural break suggests match efficiency increased across regions after adoption of the internet.

Keywords: mismatch; vacancies; clustering;

JEL Classification: C33; J63;

https://doi.org/10.20955/wp.2022.037