Marcello M. Estevão

Has the Great Recession Raised U.S. Structural Unemployment

The recent crisis has had differential effects across U.S. states and industries causing a wide geographic dispersion in skill mismatches and housing market performance. We document these facts and, using data from the 50 states plus D.C from 1991 to 2008, we present econometric evidence that supports that changes in state-level unemployment rates are linked to skill mismatches and housing market performance even after controlling for cyclical effects. This result suggests some causality going from mismatches and housing conditions to unemployment rates. The numerical estimates imply that the structural unemployment rate in 2010 was about 1¾ percentage points higher than before the onset of the housing market meltdown at end-2006. Reversing this increase may require targeted active labor market policies and measures to expedite the adjustment in housing markets, as our results suggest weak housing market conditions interact negatively with skill mismatches to produce higher unemployment rates in the United States.

Why Is Productivity Growth in the Euro Area So Sluggish

Slow productivity growth has plagued the euro area since the mid-1990s. That is particularly striking in view of the large productivity gains in the United States during the same period. This paper shows that the deceleration in labor productivity in the euro area was caused by structural changes in wage formation that have affected the relative price of labor, increased the labor intensity of growth and, thus, reduced the rate of capital deepening. Technological shocks seem to have played a minor role in explaining slower productivity growth in the euro area. In addition, a surge in capital deepening and, mainly, TFP growth in key service industries in the United States explain a large part of the productivity growth gap between the two regions in the second half of the 1990s.

Do Active Labor Market Policies Increase Employment

Using panel data for 15 industrial countries, active labor market policies (ALMPs) are shown to have raised employment rates in the business sector in the 1990s, after controlling for many institutions, country-specific effects, and economic variables. Among such policies, direct subsidies to job creation were the most effective. ALMPs also affected employment rates by reducing real wages below levels allowed by technological growth, changes in the unemployment rate, and institutional and other economic factors. However, part of this wage moderation may be linked to a composition effect because policies were targeted to low-paid individuals. Whether ALMPs are cost-effective from a budgetary perspective remains to be determined, but they are certainly not substitutes for comprehensive institutional reforms.

The Economic Effects of Fiscal Consolidation with Debt Feedback

The past several years of recession and slow recovery have raised much interest on the effect of fiscal stimulus on economic activity, even as high public debts in many countries would call for fiscal consolidation. To evaluate the delicate balance between stimulus and consolidation requires measuring the size of fiscal multipliers, which often depends on having quarterly data so that exogenous fiscal policy shocks can be identified. We estimate fiscal multipliers using a novel methodology for identifying fiscal shocks within a structural vector autoregressive approach using annual data while controling for debt feedback effects. The estimation focuses on regions with scarce quarterly data (mostly low-income countries), and uses results for advanced economies, emerging market countries, and other broad groupings for which alternative estimates are available to validate the methodology. Differently from advanced and emerging market economies, fiscal consolidation in low-income countries has only a small temporary negative effect on growth while raising medium-term output. Shifting the composition of public spending toward capital expenditure further supports long-run growth.

Productivity or Employment; Is It a Choice?

Traditionally, shocks to total factor productivity (TFP) are considered exogenous and the employment response depends on their effect on aggregate demand. We raise the possibility that in response to labor supply shocks firms adjust efficiency, rendering TFP endogenous to firms’ production decisions. We present robust cross-country evidence of a strong negative correlation between growth in TFP and labor inputs over the medium to long run. In addition, when using instruments to capture changes in hours worked that are independent of TFP shocks, we find that cross-country increases in labor input cause reductions in TFP growth. These results have important policy implications, including that low productivity growth in some countries may partly be a side effect of strong labor market performance. By the same token, countries facing a declining workforce, say, because of aging, may see accelerating TFP as firms find better ways of employing workers.

Institutions, Informality, and Wage Flexibility: Evidence from Brazil

Even though institutions are created to protect workers, they may interfere with labor market functioning, raise unemployment, and end up being circumvented by informal contracts. This paper uses Brazilian microeconomic data to show that the institutional changes introduced by the 1988 Constitution lowered the sensitivity of real wages to changes in labor market slack and could have contributed to the ensuing higher rates of unemployment in the country. Moreover, the paper shows that states that faced higher increases in informality (i.e., illegal work contracts) following the introduction of the new Constitution tended to have smaller drops in wage responsiveness to macroeconomic conditions, thus suggesting that informality serves as a escape valve to an over-regulated environment.

Growth and Employment in the Dominican Republic : Options for a Job-Rich Growth

The Dominican Republic has posted high rates of output and productivity growth, but labor market indicators have remained weak during the past 20 years. This paper documents these trends, showing that the rapid productivity growth originates in a few sectors, while the bulk of job creation is concentrated elsewhere. The speed of job creation has not been enough to raise employment rates, and lackluster real earnings along with still-rampant labor market informality suggest that most of the new jobs are of low quality. Low real wages and low labor force participation suggest the need of raising market wages above fallback incomes to attract individuals to the labor force. For that, measures to improve education and reduce product market distortions would be helpful.

Nominal Wage Rigidity and Real Wage Cyclicality

We discuss the ability of standard estimates of the correlation of wages and employment to measure the relative strength of aggregate demand and supply shocks, given that the choice of time period, deflator, and explanatory variables inherently biases the estimated cyclical coefficients toward identifying labor supply or demand. We determine that a closer look at the standard wage/labor correlation shows that it can neither provide information on the relative strength of supply and demand shocks, nor give an indication of the response of wages to aggregate demand shocks. Following this, we test the predictions of a neo-Keynesian model for the correlation of employment and wages using restrictions generated by the model to identify movements along or shifts in labor demand. Our results are consistent with the theory of nominal wage rigidity and we find no reason to reject the neo-Keynesian model based on the correlation of wages and employment.

Crecimiento y empleo en la República Dominicana : Opciones para un crecimiento generador de empleo

La Republica Dominicana ha registrado altas tasas de crecimiento del producto y la productividad, pero los indicadores del mercado laboral han sido deficientes durante los ultimos 20 anos. En este estudio se documentan esas tendencias, mostrandose que el rapido crecimiento de la productividad corresponde solo a unos pocos sectores, mientras que otros sectores han generado la mayor parte del empleo. La velocidad de creacion de puestos de trabajo no ha sido suficiente para elevar las tasas de ocupacion, y de los mediocres niveles de ingresos reales junto con una informalidad del mercado laboral todavia de grandes proporciones cabe inferir que la mayoria de los nuevos empleos son de baja calidad. Los bajos niveles del salario real y de participacion en la fuerza laboral senalan la necesidad de elevar los salarios de mercado por encima de los ingresos alternativos para inducir a las personas a incorporarse a la fuerza de trabajo. Para ello se requieren medidas que mejoren la educacion y reduzcan las distorsiones de los mercados de productos.

Shocks, financial dependence and efficiency: Evidence from U.S. and Canadian industries

This paper investigates how changes in industries funding costs affect total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Based on panel regressions using data for U.S. and Canadian industries and industries dependence on external funding as an identification mechanism, we show that increases in the cost of funds affect TFP growth negatively. The effect is nonmonotonic depending on a sectors external finance need. This paper presents a theoretical model that produces the observed nonmonotonic effect of financial shocks on TFP growth and suggests that financial shocks distort the allocation of factors across firms even within an industry, thus reducing TFP growth.