American Economic Journal:
Macroeconomics
ISSN 1945-7707 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7715 (Online)
The State-Dependent Effectiveness of Hiring Subsidies
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
vol. 15,
no. 2, April 2023
(pp. 229–53)
Abstract
The responsiveness of job creation to shocks is procyclical, while the responsiveness of job destruction is countercyclical. This new finding can be explained by a heterogeneous-firm model in which hiring costs lead to lumpy employment adjustment. The model predicts that policies that aim to stimulate employment by encouraging job creation, such as hiring subsidies, are significantly less effective in recessions: these are times when few firms are near their hiring thresholds and many firms are near their firing thresholds. Policies that target the job destruction margin, such as employment protection subsidies, are particularly effective at such times.Citation
Graves, Sebastian. 2023. "The State-Dependent Effectiveness of Hiring Subsidies." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 15 (2): 229–53. DOI: 10.1257/mac.20200402Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
- E32 Business Fluctuations; Cycles
- H25 Business Taxes and Subsidies including sales and value-added (VAT)
- J23 Labor Demand
- J64 Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search