They Are Even Larger! More (on) Puzzling Labor Market Volatilities

Hermann Gartner, Christian Merkl and Thomas Rothe

No 4403, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper shows that the German labor market is more volatile than the US labor market. Specifically, the volatility of the cyclical component of several labor market variables (e.g., the job-finding rate, labor market tightness, and job vacancies) divided by the volatility of labor productivity is roughly twice as large as in the United States. We derive and simulate a simple dynamic labor market model with heterogeneous worker productivity. This model is able to explain the higher German labor market volatilities by a longer expected job duration.

Keywords: job-finding rate; labor market volatilities; unemployment; worker flows; vacancies; market tightness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E32 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2009-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dge and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published - revised version published as 'Sclerosis and Large Volatilities: Two Sides of the Same Coin' in: Economics Letters, 2012, 117 (1), 106–109

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4403.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sclerosis and large volatilities: Two sides of the same coin (2012)
Working Paper: They are even larger! More (on) puzzling labor market volatilities (2009)
Working Paper: They are even larger! More (on) puzzling labor market volatilities (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4403

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().