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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 117 No. 1 2009

Unemployment Fluctuations with Staggered Nash Wage Bargaining

Mark Gertler1; Antonella Trigari2,3

1 New York University · 2 Institute for Economic Research · 3 Bocconi University

Abstract

A number of authors have argued that the conventional model of unemployment dynamics due to Mortensen and Pissarides has difficulty accounting for the relatively volatile behavior of labor market activity over the business cycle. We address this issue by modifying the Mortensen‐Pissarides framework to allow for staggered multiperiod wage contracting. What emerges is a tractable relation for wage dynamics that is a natural generalization of the period‐by‐period Nash bargaining outcome in the conventional formulation. We then show that a reasonable calibration of the model can account for the cyclical behavior of wages and labor market activity observed in the data.

DOI
10.1086/597302
Volume
117
Issue
1
Pages
38-86
Language
en
Sources
crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex

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