Insurance and opportunities: A welfare analysis of labor market risk

Jonathan Heathcote, Kjetil Storesletten and Giovanni Violante

Journal of Monetary Economics, 2008, vol. 55, issue 3, 501-525

Abstract: Using a model with constant relative risk-aversion preferences, endogenous labor supply and partial insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk, this paper provides an analytical characterization of three welfare effects: (a) the welfare effect of a rise in wage dispersion, (b) the welfare gain from completing markets, and (c) the welfare effect from eliminating risk. The analysis reveals an important trade-off for these welfare calculations. On the one hand, higher wage uncertainty increases the cost associated with missing insurance markets. On the other hand, greater wage dispersion presents opportunities to raise aggregate productivity by concentrating market work among more productive workers. Welfare effects can be expressed in terms of the underlying parameters defining preferences and wage risk or, alternatively, in terms of changes in observable second moments of the joint distribution over individual wages, consumption and hours.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (104)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3932(08)00025-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Insurance and Opportunities: A Welfare Analysis of Labor Market Risk (2007)
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:eee:moneco:v:55:y:2008:i:3:p:501-525

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Monetary Economics is currently edited by R. G. King and C. I. Plosser

More articles in Journal of Monetary Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().