Search Results
Working Paper
Search Frictions, Labor Supply, and the Asymmetric Business Cycle
We develop a business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and a labor supply decision along the extensive margin that yields cyclical asymmetry between peaks and troughs of the unemployment rate and symmetric fluctuations of the labor force participation rate as in the U.S. data. We calibrate the model and find that cyclical changes in the extent of search frictions are solely responsible for the peak-trough asymmetry. Participation decisions do not generate asymmetry but contribute to the fluctuations in search frictions by changing the size and composition of the pool of ...
Working Paper
Non-Linear Employment Effects of Tax Policy
We study the non-linear propagation mechanism of tax policy in a heterogeneous agent equilibrium business cycle model with search frictions in the labor market and an extensive margin of employment adjustment. The model exhibits endogenous job destruction and endogenous hiring standards in the form of occasionally-binding zero-surplus constraints. After parameterizing the model using U.S. data, we find that the dynamic response of employment to a temporary change in the labor income tax is highly non-linear, displaying sizable asymmetries and state-dependence. Notably, the response to a tax ...
Working Paper
Can oil prices forecast exchange rates?
This paper investigates whether oil prices have a reliable and stable out-of-sample relationship with the Canadian/U.S. dollar nominal exchange rate. Despite state-of-the-art methodologies, the authors find little systematic relation between oil prices and the exchange rate at the monthly and quarterly frequencies. In contrast, the main contribution is to show the existence of a very short-term relationship at the daily frequency, which is rather robust and holds no matter whether the authors use contemporaneous (realized) or lagged oil prices in their regression. However, in the latter case ...