Contractual Fragility, Job Destruction, and Business Cycles
提出一个劳动合同理论，其中负面生产率冲击导致代价高昂的失业，尽管工资合同可以无限重新谈判。这种“脆弱合同”源于企业在激励稳健性与特定投资成本之间的权衡，并能放大生产率冲击对市场产出的影响。
We develop a theory of labor contracting in which negative productivity shocks lead to costly job loss, despite unlimited possibilities for renegotiating wage contracts. Such <it>fragile contracts</it> emerge from firms' trade-offs between robustness of incentives in ongoing employment relationships and costly specific investment. Contractual fragility can serve as a powerful mechanism for propagating underlying productivity shocks: in a simulated matching market equilibrium, i.i.d. shocks are greatly magnified in their effect on market output, and the effect is highly persistent. We also explore novel motivations for government policies that strengthen employment relationships.