UPDATE: The talk is in Steitz 102.
The first Economics Colloquium of the year is our own Professor Marty Finkler talking about some of his recent work on the U.S. employment situation. He will give a 30-40 minute talk, after which we will adjourn for Econ Tea in Briggs 217 at 5:15.
Please join us for Professor Finkler’s talk, and to meet our visiting faculty, Satis Devkota and M. Taylor Rhodes.
The abstract is below:
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Employment and Monetary Policy: The Role of Relative Price Distortions
Merton D. Finkler
Professor of Economics
Lawrence University
The economic recovery from the recession of December 2007 to June 2009 featured real GDP returning to its pre-recession level while employment continues to lag behind to its pre-recession level. One possible reason is that employment patterns contain both cyclical and structural components. In this paper, changes in the price of labor, unit labor costs, and the cost of equipment and software are studied as key structural components. Separate regressions with changes in employment as the dependent variable are performed for goods producing, service producing, and manufacturing sectors. In each case, explanatory power is increased with the inclusion of a representation of the cost of labor; thus, macroeconomic policy that seeks to stimulate employment growth should consider the effects of the chosen policy on the relative cost of labor and not just on aggregate demand.