Abstract

Many previous articles have studied the contribution of inflows and outflows to the cyclical variation in unemployment, but ignored the critical role of unobserved heterogeneity across workers. This article develops new estimates of unemployment inflows and outflows that allow for unobserved heterogeneity as well as direct effects of unemployment duration on unemployment-exit probabilities. With this approach, we can measure the contribution of different shocks to the short-run, medium-run, and long-run variance of unemployment as well as to specific historical episodes. We conclude that changes in the composition of new inflows into unemployment are the most important factor in economic recessions.

摘要

先前的许多文章都研究了流入和流出对失业的周期性变化的贡献，但忽略了工人之间未观察到的异质性的关键作用。本文对失业流入和流出进行了新的估计，这些估计允许出现未观察到的异质性以及失业持续时间对失业退出概率的直接影响。通过这种方法，我们可以衡量不同冲击对失业的短期，中期和长期差异以及特定历史事件的贡献。我们得出结论，失业的新流入构成的变化是经济衰退中最重要的因素。