Unemployment Fluctuations, Match Quality, and the Wage Cyclicality of New Hires
研究发现，在控制匹配质量随周期改善的构成效应后，新雇员工资的周期性并不比现有工人更强，这意味着现有工人工资的缓慢变化更能反映劳动边际成本的周期性。
Abstract We revisit the issue of the high cyclicality of wages of new hires. We show that after controlling for composition effects likely involving procyclical upgrading of job match quality, the wages of new hires are no more cyclical than those of existing workers. The key implication is that the sluggish behaviour of wages for existing workers is a better guide to the cyclicality of the marginal cost of labour than is the high measured cyclicality of new hires wages unadjusted for composition effects. Key to our identification is distinguishing between new hires from unemployment versus those who are job changers. We argue that to a reasonable approximation, the wages of the former provide a composition-free estimate of the wage flexibility, while the same is not true for the latter. We then develop a quantitative general equilibrium model with sticky wages via staggered contracting, on-the-job search, and heterogeneous match quality, and show that it can account for both the panel data evidence and aggregate evidence on labour market volatility.