American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
The Limited Influence of Unemployment on the Wage Bargain
American Economic Review
vol. 98,
no. 4, September 2008
(pp. 1653–74)
Abstract
When a job-seeker and an employer meet, find a prospective joint surplus, and bargain over the wage, conditions in the outside labor market, including especially unemployment, may have limited influence. The job-seeker's only credible threat during bargaining is to hold out for a better deal. The employer's threat is to delay bargaining. Consequently, the outcome of the bargain depends on the relative costs of delays to the parties, rather than on the payoffs that result from exiting negotiations. Modeling bargaining in this way makes wages less responsive to unemployment. A stochastic model of the labor market with credible bargaining and reasonable parameter values yields larger employment fluctuations than does the standard Mortensen-Pissarides model. (JEL J22, J23, J31, J64)Citation
Hall, Robert E., and Paul R. Milgrom. 2008. "The Limited Influence of Unemployment on the Wage Bargain." American Economic Review, 98 (4): 1653–74. DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.4.1653Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
- J23 Labor Demand
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- J64 Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search