Full Citation
Title: The Macroeconomic Causes and Consequences of Changing Labor Mobility and Unemployment
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2019
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Abstract: Every month 1.7 million workers in the US are laid off and an additional 3.3 million quit their job voluntarily.1 At the same time more than 5.5 million workers are newly hired every month, accounting for 3.8% of all employees in the US. Constant turnover is a fundamental feature of labor markets not only in the US but across developed economies. At the same time, the causes and consequences of worker mobility and its broader implications for labor market efficiency and welfare are complex and have been widely discussed in both the public debate and the academic literature. This thesis contributes to that discussion in three ways: The first chapter explores the drivers behind the secular decline in worker mobility in the US since the 1980s and puts forward a new explanation that has been overlooked in the literature so far. I argue that the specialization of firms and the outsourcing of non-core activities was a key determinant of declining reallocation rates and had more benign effects in terms of efficiency than conventional explanations suggest. Turning from secular trends to labor market policies, the second and third chapter investigate the role of unemployment insurance policies (UI) in shaping labor markets through their effects on job finding and job separation rates. While the second chapter focuses on the macroeconomic effects of structural reforms to the German UI system in the mid-2000s, the third chapter explores the merits and welfare . . .
Url: http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2019/5442/5442.pdf
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Authors: Hartung, Benjamin
Institution: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm University
Department: Economics
Advisor: Dr. Jürgen von Hagen
Degree: PhD
Publisher Location: Bonn
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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