TY  - JOUR
AU  - Campbell,Jeffrey R.
AU  - Fisher,Jonas D.M.
TI  - Aggregate Employment Fluctuations with Microeconomic Asymmetries
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5767
PY  - 1996
Y2  - September 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5767
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5767.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jeffrey R. Campbell
Senior Economist
Economic Research Department
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
230 South LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL 60604-1413
Tel: 312/322-6156
Fax: 312/322-2357
E-Mail: jcampbell@frbchi.org

Jonas Fisher
Economic Research Department
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
230 South LaSalle Street
Chicago, IL  60604
Tel: 312/312-8177
Fax: NA
E-Mail: jfisher@frbchi.org
AB  - We provide a simple explanation for the observation that the variance of job destruction is greater than the variance of job creation: job creation is costlier at the margin than job destruction.  As Caballero [2] has argued, asymmetric employment adjustment costs at the establishment level need not imply asymmetric volatility of aggregate job flows.  We construct an equilibrium model in which (S,s)-type employment policies respond endogenously to aggregate shocks.   The microeconomic asymmetries in the model can dampen the response of total job creation to an aggregate shock and cause it to be less volatile than total job destruction.  This is so even though aggregate shocks are symmetrically distributed.
ER  -