Thepthida Sopraseuth

Business Cycle Comovement and Labor Market Institutions: An Empirical Investigation

This paper examines the empirical link between labor market institutions and international business cycle synchronization. Using a data panel of 20 OECD countries over the 1964–2003 period, we evaluate how cross-country labor market heterogeneity affects business cycle comovement. Our estimation strategy controls for a large set of possible factors influencing cross-country GDP correlation, which allows a comparison of our results with those found in previous studies. We find that bilateral trade, trade similarity, monetary and fiscal convergence, as well as EMU membership lead to more synchronized cycles. Our results show that labor market regulations affect the extent of business cycle synchronization. Disparities in employment protection laws and direct taxation tend to lower international comovement while divergence in union density, unemployment benefits, and indirect taxation enhance cross-country correlations. The level of labor market regulations also matters. Heavier employment taxes are found to raise GDP comovement.

Job polarization in aging economies

The progressive diffusion of ICT explains the raise in the number of highly paid jobs but has difficulties in justifying that of low-paid jobs. Classifying occupations according to their median wage in 1993, we analyze their employment growth until 2010, which is highest both in the top and in the bottom of the distribution, and lowest in the middle. Low-paid personnel services arise as the main factor responsible for the increase in the proportion of employment at the bottom of the wage distribution. We argue that population aging can explain the increased demand for personal services and thus the rise of employment in low-paid positions. Our argument goes as follows: goods and personal services are complementary for seniors. The decrease in the relative price of goods, induced by the progressive replacement of labor input in routine tasks by machines, is then associated with an increased demand for personal services if the proportion of seniors is increasing. We thus complement the existing literature on employment polarization by showing that demographic trends also play first order role.

Divergence in Labor Market Institutions and International Business Cycles

This paper investigates the sources of business cycle comovement within the New Open Economy Macroeconomy framework. It sheds new light on the business cycle comovement issue by examining the role of cross-country divergence in labor market institutions. The authors first document stylized facts supporting that heterogeneous labor market institutions are associated with lower cross-country GDP correlations among OECD countries. They then investigate this fact within a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model with frictions on the good and labor markets. On the good-market side, they model monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity. Labor market frictions are introduced through a matching function a la Mortensen and Pissarides (1999). Their conclusions disclose that heterogenous labor market institutions amplify the crosscountry GDP differential in response to aggregate shocks. In quantitative terms, they contribute to reduce cross-country output correlation, when the model is subject to real and/or monetary shocks. Their overall results show that taking into account labor market heterogeneity improves their understanding of the quantity puzzle.

QUANTIFYING THE LAFFER CURVE ON THE CONTINUED ACTIVITY TAX IN A DYNASTIC FRAMEWORK

It is argued that the tax on continued activity should be removed by implementing actuarially fair schemes. However, these schemes cannot fund the expected Social Security (SS) deficit. This article proposes to give individuals a fraction of the actuarially fair incentives in the case of postponed retirement. SS faces a trade-off between giving enough incentives to make individuals delay retirement and giving little increase in pensions in order to help finance its expected deficit. This trade-off is captured by a Laffer curve. Finally, when the SS system aims to maximize welfare, the optimal tax on postponed retirement is still strictly positive. (ERRATUM Vol. 49, Issue 4, 1539)

Fiscal Devaluation and Structural Gaps

The paper characterizes the optimal tax scheme in an open economy with structural inefficiencies on the labor market and on government size. On analytical grounds first, we show that the economy can use fiscal revaluation to exploit the terms of trade externality and to dampen the impact of an excessive public spending. However, if real labor market rigidities are large enough, fiscal devaluation may be desirable. Second, we provide a quantitative assessment of the optimal tax reform using France as the benchmark economy. Our results show that France would benefit more from fiscal devaluation than a economy where the labor market is more flexible, as the US. We also show that the welfare gains from the optimal tax reform crucially depend on the ability of the government to target its optimal size.

Monetary Shocks and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics: A Reappraisal

This paper proposes a two-country general-equilibrium model incorporating a tradable sector with pricing-to-market as well as a nontradable sector. In that case, real exchange rate fluctuations arise from two sources: changes in the relative price of traded goods, that exemplify deviations from the law of one price, and movements in the relative price of traded to nontraded goods across countries. Our framework sheds light on the propagation mechanisms through which monetary shocks affect the real exchange rate. More specifically, the two components respond in opposite directions to monetary disturbances, which is consistent with data. Besides, the introduction of nontraded goods does not alter the predictive power of monetary shocks because the presence of nontraded goods magnifies the response of the deviation from the law of one price.

Exchange Rate Dynamics: A New Open Economy Macroeconomics Perspectives

Part 1: Exchange Rate Volatility and Persistence Part 2: Exchange Rate Regimes and Monetary Policy

Frictions or deadlocks? Job polarization with search and matching frictions

This paper extends Pissarides (1990)’s matching model by considering two sectors (routine and manual) and workers’ occupational choices, in the context of skill-biased demand shifts, to the detriment of routine jobs and in favour of manual jobs because of technological changes. The theoretical challenge is to investigate the reallocation process from the middle towards the bottom of the wage distribution. By using this framework, we shed light on the way in which labour market institutions affect the job polarization observed in the United States and Europe. The results of our quantitative experiments suggest that search frictions have non-trivial effects on the reallocation process and transitional dynamics of aggregate employment.

Fluctuations et Régimes de Change

This paper investigates the consequences of the Bretton Woods system and the EMS on business cycle properties. For both exchange rate regimes, we observe a disconnect between the volatility of the exchange rate and that of its fundamentals. EMS members exhibit higher synchronization as far as GDP, consumption and investment are concerned. In contrast, there is no systematic relationship between interdependence and the fall of the Bretton Woods system.

The US “Twin Deficits”. A Reappraisal

Since the mid-1980s, an extensive empirical literature has investegated the relationship between the US fiscal and trade deficits without reaching any consensus. Two elements may account for these conflicting results. First, considering data in levels versus stationarized data has an impact on conclusions. Moreover, the link between the US next exports and govenment balance, whether stationarized or not, is unsteady. This lack of robustness may stem from changes in the relative contribution of demand and supply shocks in the US economy : demand shocks generate a positive correlation between trade and fiscal deficits while supply shocks imply a negative relationship between both series. In order to check empirical relevance of this intuition, I use a standard Real Business Cycle model. With varying estimated volatility ratios of supply and demand shocks, the model succeeds in matching the switching magnitude of the correlation between the US balance of trade and fiscal deficits over each sub-sample except the 1990s.