André Kurmann

The Great Increase in Relative Volatility of Real Wages in the United States

This paper documents that over the past 25 years, aggregate hourly real wages in the United States have become substantially more volatile relative to output. We use micro-data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to show that this increase in relative volatility is predominantly due to increases in the relative volatility of hourly wages across different groups of workers. Compositional changes, by contrast, account for at most 12% of the increase in relative wage volatility. Using a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, we show that the observed increase in relative wage volatility is unlikely to come from changes outside of the labor market (e.g. smaller exogenous shocks or more aggressive monetary policy). By contrast, increased flexibility in wage setting is capable of accounting for a large fraction of the observed increase in relative wage volatility. At the same time, increased wage flexibility generates a substantial decrease in the magnitude of business cycle fluctuations, which suggests a promising new explanation for the Great Moderation.

Search Frictions in Physical Capital Markets as a Propagation Mechanism

We build a Dynamic General Equilibrium model with search frictions for the allocation of physical capital and investigate its implications for the business cycle. While the model is in principle capable of generating substantial internal propagation to small exogenous shocks, the quantitative effects are modest once we calibrate the model to fit firm-level capital flows. We then extend the model with credit market frictions that lead to countercyclical default and countercyclical risk premia as in the data. Countercyclical default directly affects capital reallocation and has important general equilibrium income effects on labor supply. Yet, for calibrations in line with observed consumption dynamics, we find that even in this extended model, search frictions in physical capital markets play only a small role for business cycle fluctuations.

Stock Prices, News, and Economic Fluctuations: Comment †

Beaudry and Portier (American Economoc Review, 2006) propose an identification scheme to study the effects of news shocks about future productivity in Vector Error Correction Models (VECM). This comment shows that their methodology does not have a unique solution, when applied to their VECMs with more than two variables. The problem arises from the interplay of cointegration assumptions and long-run restrictions imposed by Beaudry and Portier (2006).

Holdups and overinvestment in capital markets

This paper considers a decentralized capital market characterized by trading frictions in which firms and suppliers need to make investment decisions before meeting with each other and bargaining over the price of capital. The resulting holdup problem provides firms with a strategic incentive to overaccumulate capital so as to reduce their marginal productivity and thus the bargained price. In equilibrium, this strategic incentive can outweigh the usual distortionary effects of holdup problems that on their own would lead to underinvestment, thus resulting in the economy to overinvest. In a setting with both capital and labor, the holdup problem in capital markets interacts with holdup problems in labor markets. This presents firms with a trade-off that has non-trivial equilibrium effects and that – depending on the substitutability of capital and labor and the firms bargaining power in each market – can mitigate or exacerbate the overinvestment result.

Reciprocity in Labor Relations: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Long-Term Relationships

We followed field workers administering a household survey over a 12-week period and examined how their reciprocal behavior towards the employer responded to a sequence of exogenous wage increases and wage cuts. To disentangle the effects of reciprocal behavior from other explicit incentives that occur naturally in long-term employment relationships, we devised a novel measure of effort that not only captures the notion of work morale but that field workers perceived as unmonitored. While wage increases had no significant effect, wage cuts led to a strong and significant decline in unmonitored effort. This finding provides clear evidence of a highly asymmetric reciprocity response to wage changes. Our estimates further imply that field workers quickly adapted to higher wages and revised their reference point accordingly when deciding on reciprocity. Finally, we consider a second measure of effort that was explicitly monitored and found no significant effect to any of the wage changes. This lack of impact illustrates that explicit incentives can easily outweigh the effects of reciprocity and highlights the importance of having a measure of effort that workers perceive as unmonitored when testing for reciprocity in long-term relationships.

Quantifying the Uncertainty about the Fit of a New Keynesian Pricing Model: Extended Version

Recent studies by Gali and Gertler (1999) and Sbordone (2002) conclude that a theoretical inflation series implied by the forward-looking New Keynesian pricing model of Calvo (1983) fits post-1960 U.S. inflation closely. Their theoretical inflation series is conditional on (i) a reduced-form forecasting process for real marginal cost; and (ii) the calibration of the structural pricing equation implied by the Calvo model. The present paper shows that both of these determinants are surrounded by considerable uncertainty. When quantifying the impact of this uncertainty on theoretical inflation, I find that we can no longer say whether the Calvo model explains observed inflation dynamics very well or very poorly.

Holdups and Overinvestment in Physical Capital Markets

Firms in many situations must make investment decisions long before they meet with new capital suppliers. In addition, most physical capital is specific to a task or location, thus implying potentially important switching costs in case negotiations between a firm and a supplier break down. The present paper analyzes the implications of these frictions. The sequentiality of investment makes it impossible to write binding ex-ante contracts. Together with the rents arising from switching costs, this implies a holdup problem. In partial equilibrium, firms react strategically by overinvesting so as to reduce their marginal productivity and thus the price of capital they negotiate with their suppliers upon matching. In general equilibrium, the holdup problem interacts with externalities from switching costs, resulting in inefficient allocations. In a more general macroeconomic context, the holdup problem in physical capital markets interacts with holdup problems in labor markets that typically lead to underinvestment. As long as capital and labor are complements, this presents the firm with a trade-off between overinvestment and overemployment that neutralizes, at least partially, the distortionary effects of each of the two holdup problems.

Dynamic inefficiency in decentralized capital markets

We study the efficiency implications of bargaining in frictional capital markets in which firms match bilaterally with dealers in order to buy or sell capital. We show how two of the distinguishing characteristics of capital – ownership and the intertemporal nature of investment – give rise to a dynamic inefficiency. Firms that anticipate buying capital in the future overinvest because this increases their outside option of no trade in negotiations with dealers in the future, thereby lowering the bargained purchase price. Vice versa, firms that anticipate selling capital in the future strategically underinvest because this increases the bargained sale price. If the only motive for trade is capital depreciation, there is overinvestment in capital. With stochastic productivity, there is insufficient dispersion of capital across firms and investment is insufficiently responsive to shocks. A regressive tax on capital can restore the efficient capital allocation.

Asset Value Contsraints in Models of Incomplete Factor Taxation

This paper clarifies the role of initial asset value constraints in Ramsey models of incomplete factor taxation. We show that the optimal long-run capital tax is zero in the long run if and only if there is no binding constraint on the initial capital tax rate. This finding contrasts with Armenter (2008) who argues that zero long-run capital taxes reappear in models of incomplete factor taxation as long as the government is barred from manipulating initial asset wealth. The reason for this difference is that the two constraints cannot both be binding at the same time. Hence, in Armenter’s (2008) analysis, the initial asset value constraint is necessarily more restrictive than the constraint on the initial capital tax rate.