Search Frictions, Financial Frictions and Labour Market Fluctuations in Emerging Markets

Sumru Altug and Serdar Kabaca

Staff Working Papers from Bank of Canada

Abstract: This paper examines the role of the extensive and intensive margins of labour input in the context of a business cycle model with a financial friction. We document significant variation in the hours worked per worker for many emerging-market economies. Both employment and hours worked per worker are positively correlated with each other and with output. We show that a search-theoretic context in a small open-economy model requires a small income effect to explain these regularities at the expense of a smaller wage response. On the other hand, introducing a financial friction in the form of a working capital requirement can explain the observed movements of labour market variables such as employment and hours worked per worker, as well as other distinguishable business cycle characteristics of emerging economies. These include highly volatile and cyclical real wages, labour share, and consumption.

Keywords: Business fluctuations and cycles; Labour markets; Development economics; International topics; Interest rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E44 F41 J40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Search Frictions, Financial Frictions, and Labor Market Fluctuations in Emerging Markets (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bca:bocawp:14-35

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