Monetary Policy and Labor Supply

The first chapter gives an overview of the current literature on participation in the labor market. Special attention is paid to trends in participation since 2000. The role of demographic change in those trends is compared against other explanations. With the increasing focus on labor market participation at the United States Federal Reserve, the history of monetary policy changes and participation is also examined. The second chapter estimates a labor market matching model to get a more accurate measure of the market tightness elasticity of the job finding rate and unexplained residual. The estimation strategy in the second chapter follows the approach in Borowczyk-Martins et al. (2013) which models the autocorrelation structure of the unobserved component in the matching function to address simultaneity bias. This chapter then uses asset data present in the Survey of Income and Program Participation. This allows for the use of average household debt as an additional instrument to correct for measurement error. These results help characterize the recent shifts in the Beveridge curve and the decline of the matching rate between job seekers and job openings between 2008-2013. How important is labor supply for the ability of monetary policy to influence inflation and employment? Hiring costs alter the response of inflation to monetary policy. As shown in Kurozumi and Van Zandweghe (2010), adjustments in employment can make it difficult for monetary policy to reach its price stability and full employment targets. As the policy response is more vigorous in maintaining inflation around a target, that target becomes impossible to maintain. Recent fluctuations in the participation rate have led to a growing concern about the role of labor supply in monetary policy. This chapter shows that as labor supply becomes more elastic, the monetary authority is more likely to be able to stabilize the economy around its steady state targets. The central bank's response to cyclical unemployment is important for price level stability regardless of business cycle goals. Journal of Economic Literature codes: E12 E24 E31 E32 E52.