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Gang Gong

17 August 2006
WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 666
Details
Abstract
We estimate a dynamic, inter-temporal optimisation model that mimics features of European labour markets, such as sticky nominal wages and sluggish adjustment of employment to shocks for 15 OECD countries. The estimates include a measure for the degree of labour market sluggishness that compares well with standard indicators of product and labour market regulation. Calibration of the model on a selected country sample confirms its explanatory power in comparison with the standard competitive markets model. In a second step, the measure for labour market sluggishness is used as a policy variable and model variants are simulated in order to assess the extent to which the countries would have performed better with more flexible labour markets. These policy experiments show that an increase in labour market flexibility reduces the volatility of consumption relative to production, improves inter-temporal efficiency but entails higher employment risk.
JEL Code
E32 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Business Fluctuations, Cycles
C61 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Mathematical Methods, Programming Models, Mathematical and Simulation Modeling→Optimization Techniques, Programming Models, Dynamic Analysis