انباشت دارایی و استخدام کوتاه مدت

If access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but “bad” jobs are easy to come by, then job seekers might use short term employment in undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during subsequent unemployed search for a “good” job. In this paper we explore this idea by building a theoretical model of job search by risk averse, debt constrained agents. In this model we characterise analytically conditions under which voluntary planned separations occur as agents cycle between accumulating assets in short term employment and unemployed search for more desirable employment.

Economists have long known that entrants to the labour market exhibit high turnover (for example, Topel andWard, 1992, and Neal, 1999). A growing literature documents the propensity of workers who lose jobs to move to temporary employment, to have subsequent separations, and to move into part-time or otherwise unsatisfactory empshows that displaced workers commonly take up temporary jobs and “involuntary” part-time jobs, and Boheim and Taylor (2002) show that jobs that follow an unemployment spell have shorter average durations than other jobs. Farber further shows that the probability of temporary or part-time work falls with time since displacement, suggesting that these arrangements are partof a transitional process back to desirable employment.1 How can apparently unsatisfactory employment aid the transition to more desirable jobs? One explanation for rapid turnover on labour market entry or after a job displacement is that jobs are experience goods (e.g. Topel and Ward, 1992). In this paper, we propose an alternative mechanism with different dynamics and distinct implications. Suppose access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but that “bad” jobs are easy to come by. In such an environment, job seekers might use short term employment in undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during periods of search for a “good” job. To explore this idea we construct a theoretical model of job search by risk averse, debt constrained agents in an environment where “bad” jobs are readily available. In this model we characterise (analytically) conditions under which voluntary, planned separations can occur as agents cycle between accumulating assets in short term employment and unemployed search for more desirable employment. We refer to these separations as “planned” to emphasise that they occur without shocks to productivity or the arrival of new information (about match quality, for example). The outline of the rest of the paper is as follows. Section 2 presents some empirical observations from an unusual survey of job losers. Section 3 introduces our theoretical approach, and places it in the context of related literature. The formal details of the model are presented in Section 4, along with our key results concerning the possibility of endogenous cycles of search and temporary employment, and the conditions under which these can occur. Section 5 presents some additional comparative statistics and Section 6 concludes.loyment. For example, Farber (1999)

In an economy in which access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but “bad” jobs are easy to come by, job seekers can use short term employment in such undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during subsequent unemployed search for “good” jobs. This paper develops and analyses a model that captures this idea. Workers in this economy, of course, prefer high wage employment but to secure one of these good jobs they must first engage in uncertain search. To finance consumption during this search, job seekers eat into assets—full insurance is not available. To some extent workers can overcome the debt ceiling by accepting low paying jobs. Such employment is readily available but hinders the ability to search for high pay work. Low wage jobs therefore become temporary positions that fund subsequent job search. If the ensuing search is unsuccessful, workers repeat their asset accumulation in low wage employment. As a result, voluntary planned separations occur in a cyclical pattern that provides an explanation for a series of short job durations (at low wages) followed by employment at high wages. The turnover generated by the model provides an alternative explanation for the propensity of recent job losers to take temporary work. In this model, episodes of temporary work provide a kind of insurance. However, these episodes detract from time spent searching for a “good” job, and hence provide a partial explanation for the persistence of earnings losses after displacement that have been documented by Jacobson et al. (1993) and others. Although the fundamental contribution of the model is to demonstrate, analytically, a mechanism for planned (endogenous) separations, the cyclical migration between sectors also provides insights into Harris and Todaro (1970) economies. While looking for good jobs, workers trade off the benefits of immediately available low wage work against those of unemployment. Here, however, there are explicit flows between sectors as workers move in and out of low wage employment. Wages and the costs of moving across sectors determine the size of these flows. LowIn an economy in which access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but “bad” jobs are easy to come by, job seekers can use short term employment in such undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during subsequent unemployed search for “good” jobs. This paper develops and analyses a model that captures this idea. Workers in this economy, of course, prefer high wage employment but to secure one of these good jobs they must first engage in uncertain search. To finance consumption during this search, job seekers eat into assets—full insurance is not available. To some extent workers can overcome the debt ceiling by accepting low paying jobs. Such employment is readily available but hinders the ability to search for high pay work. Low wage jobs therefore become temporary positions that fund subsequent job search. If the ensuing search is unsuccessful, workers repeat their asset accumulation in low wage employment. As a result, voluntary planned separations occur in a cyclical pattern that provides an explanation for a series of short job durations (at low wages) followed by employment at high wages. The turnover generated by the model provides an alternative explanation for the propensity of recent job losers to take temporary work. In this model, episodes of temporary work provide a kind of insurance. However, these episodes detract from time spent searching for a “good” job, and hence provide a partial explanation for the persistence of earnings losses after displacement that have been documented by Jacobson et al. (1993) and others. Although the fundamental contribution of the model is to demonstrate, analytically, a mechanism for planned (endogenous) separations, the cyclical migration between sectors also provides insights into Harris and Todaro (1970) economies. While looking for good jobs, workers trade off the benefits of immediately available low wage work against those of unemployment. Here, however, there are explicit flows between sectors as workers move in and out of low wage employment. Wages and the costs of moving across sectors determine the size of these flows. LowIn an economy in which access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but “bad” jobs are easy to come by, job seekers can use short term employment in such undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during subsequent unemployed search for “good” jobs. This paper develops and analyses a model that captures this idea. Workers in this economy, of course, prefer high wage employment but to secure one of these good jobs they must first engage in uncertain search. To finance consumption during this search, job seekers eat into assets—full insurance is not available. To some extent workers can overcome the debt ceiling by accepting low paying jobs. Such employment is readily available but hinders the ability to search for high pay work. Low wage jobs therefore become temporary positions that fund subsequent job search. If the ensuing search is unsuccessful, workers repeat their asset accumulation in low wage employment. As a result, voluntary planned separations occur in a cyclical pattern that provides an explanation for a series of short job durations (at low wages) followed by employment at high wages. The turnover generated by the model provides an alternative explanation for the propensity of recent job losers to take temporary work. In this model, episodes of temporary work provide a kind of insurance. However, these episodes detract from time spent searching for a “good” job, and hence provide a partial explanation for the persistence of earnings losses after displacement that have been documented by Jacobson et al. (1993) and others. Although the fundamental contribution of the model is to demonstrate, analytically, a mechanism for planned (endogenous) separations, the cyclical migration between sectors also provides insights into Harris and Todaro (1970) economies. While looking for good jobs, workers trade off the benefits of immediately available low wage work against those of unemployment. Here, however, there are explicit flows between sectors as workers move in and out of low wage employment. Wages and the costs of moving across sectors determine the size of these flows. LowIn an economy in which access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but “bad” jobs are easy to come by, job seekers can use short term employment in such undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during subsequent unemployed search for “good” jobs. This paper develops and analyses a model that captures this idea. Workers in this economy, of course, prefer high wage employment but to secure one of these good jobs they must first engage in uncertain search. To finance consumption during this search, job seekers eat into assets—full insurance is not available. To some extent workers can overcome the debt ceiling by accepting low paying jobs. Such employment is readily available but hinders the ability to search for high pay work. Low wage jobs therefore become temporary positions that fund subsequent job search. If the ensuing search is unsuccessful, workers repeat their asset accumulation in low wage employment. As a result, voluntary planned separations occur in a cyclical pattern that provides an explanation for a series of short job durations (at low wages) followed by employment at high wages. The turnover generated by the model provides an alternative explanation for the propensity of recent job losers to take temporary work. In this model, episodes of temporary work provide a kind of insurance. However, these episodes detract from time spent searching for a “good” job, and hence provide a partial explanation for the persistence of earnings losses after displacement that have been documented by Jacobson et al. (1993) and others. Although the fundamental contribution of the model is to demonstrate, analytically, a mechanism for planned (endogenous) separations, the cyclical migration between sectors also provides insights into Harris and Todaro (1970) economies. While looking for good jobs, workers trade off the benefits of immediately available low wage work against those of unemployment. Here, however, there are explicit flows between sectors as workers move in and out of low wage employment. Wages and the costs of moving across sectors determine the size of these flows. Lowturnover costs generate rapid movements between high wage job search and low wage employment. Job turnover crucially relies on a financial market imperfection, the borrowing limit, or more fundamentally, the absence of full insurance. This imperfection thus has new implications for the distribution of income. In the literature, it has been shown that borrowing limits can affect the distribution of income by restricting human capital investment choices. Here, financial market imperfections have further implications for the distribution of income as they alter job flows.