Improper Churn: Social Costs and Macroeconomic Consequences / Ricardo J. Caballero, Mohamad L. Hammour.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caballero, Ricardo J.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hammour, Mohamad L.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w6717.

NBER working paper series no. w6717

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Improper Churn

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1998.

Summary:

This paper assembles elements that are essential in forming an integral picture of the way a churning' economy functions and of the disruptions caused by transactional difficulties in labor and financial markets. We couch our analysis in a stochastic equilibrium model anchored with US evidence on gross factor flows and on rents in worker and firm income. We develop a social accounting framework to measure the costs of transactional impediments. We calculate the average social loss associated with structural unemployment and low productivity -- due to technological sclerosis' and a scrambling' of productivity rankings in entry and exit decisions. We also estimate the loss from a recession. An additional forty percent to the traditional unemployment cost is due to reduced productivity and is determined by the recession's cumulative effect on the economy's churn rate. Although a recessionary shock increases the economy's turbulence' at impact, semi-structural VAR evidence from US manufacturing indicates that, cumulatively, it results in a chill' -- which is costly in an economy that suffers from sclerosis.

Notes:

Print version record

September 1998.