Abstract
I propose a new mechanism for sluggish wages based on workers' noisy information about the state of the economy. Wages do not respond immediately to a positive aggregate shock because workers do not (yet) have enough information to demand higher wages. This increases firms' incentives to post more vacancies, which makes unemployment volatile and sensitive to aggregate shocks. The model is robust to two major criticisms of existing theories of sluggish wages and volatile unemployment: flexibility of wages for new hires and pro-cyclicality of the opportunity cost of employment. Calibrated to U.S. data, the model explains 70% of unemployment volatility.
Acerca del expositor
Camilo Morales Jiménez es Economista de la Unidad de Investigacion y Estadísticas de la Reserva Federal de los Estados Unidos. Doctor en economía de la Universidad de Maryland-College Park. Economista de la Universidad de Antioquia con Maestría en Economía de la Universidad de los Andes. Sus temas de investigación se enfocan en Economía Monetaria, Macro-Laboral y Problemas de Información.