Search and rest unemployment
By: Fernando Alvarez, Robert Shimer.
Contributors: Shimer, Robert.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 13772; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 13772.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "This paper extends Lucas and Prescott's (1974) search model to develop a notion of rest unemployment.  The economy consists of a continuum of labor markets, each of which produces a heterogeneous good.  There is a constant returns to scale production technology in each labor market, but labor productivity is continually hit by idiosyncratic shocks, inducing the costly reallocation of workers across labor markets.  Under some conditions, some workers may be rest-unemployed, waiting for local labor market conditions to improve, rather than engaged in time consuming search.  The model has distinct notions of unemployment (moving to a new labor market or waiting for labor market conditions to improve) and inactivity (enjoying leisure while disconnected from the labor market).  We obtain closed-form expressions for key aggregate variables and use them to evaluate the model.  Quantitatively, we find that in the U.S.  economy many more people may be in rest unemployment than in search unemployment"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 6/12/2008.

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