Title

Employment Determination In Macroeconomic Models - Some Empirical-Evidence

Authors

Authors

R. A. Hofler;L. C. Spector

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Macroecon.

Keywords

Money Supply Rule; Rational Expectations; United-States; Labor-Market; Disequilibrium; Regression; Unemployment; Normality; Errors; Tests; Economics

Abstract

The specification of how employment is determined has important implications for short-run macroeconomic policy prescriptions. Heretofore, there have been two main methods for testing this specification: comparing an equilibrium model to a disequilibrium model and using a switching regression model. This paper introduces a new method which is based on the distribution of the error term and the sign and significance of the real wage coefficient in a reduced form equation for employment. It is found that for the years 1948-1984 inclusive, the United States labor market has been operating under a fixed wage regime in which employment is being determined by the short-side of the market. Furthermore, the tests also indicate that the real wage is as likely to be below the equilibrium real wage as it is to be above it. As such, one cannot even make the case that, even though employment is determined by the short-side of the market, it ''acts as if'' it was demand determined.

Journal Title

Journal of Macroeconomics

Volume

15

Issue/Number

1

Publication Date

1-1-1993

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

123

Last Page

138

WOS Identifier

WOS:A1993KG64300007

ISSN

0164-0704

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