The Quality-Adjusted Cyclical Price of Labor
利用1980-2019年美国青年纵向调查数据，研究发现衰退通过降低新雇员工资和后续工资、但增加后续离职率三个渠道影响劳动的使用成本，且劳动使用成本高度顺周期，失业率下降1个百分点时上升超过4%。
We estimate cyclicality in labor’s user cost allowing for cyclical fluctuations in the quality of worker-firm matches and wages that are smoothed within employment matches. To do so, we exploit a match’s long-run wage to control for its quality. Using 1980–2019 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, we identify three channels by which recessions affect user cost: they lower the new-hire wage and wages going forward in the match, but they also result in higher subsequent separations. We find that labor’s user cost is highly procyclical, increasing by more than 4% for a 1 percentage point decline in unemployment.