缓冲衰退：劳动力市场不对称与自雇的作用

Policy Research Working Paper Buffering Recessions Labor Market Asymmetriesand the Role of Self-Employment Prakash LounganiEmiliano LuttiniHayley Pallan Policy Research Working Paper11089 Abstract The employment structure in emerging markets and devel-oping economies (EMDEs) differs markedly from that inadvanced economies, which has implications for adjustmentto cyclical conditions. This paper examines the cyclical-ity of employment in advanced economies and EMDEs. an employment composition that is more biased towardself-employment, which is less cyclical, explains about 70percent of these differences, while in the medium-term itaccounts for about 40 percent. These characteristics explain BufferingR ecessions:LaborMarketAsymmetriesand PrakashLoungani,EmilianoLuttini,andHayleyPallan Keywords:Unemployment,Employment,Outputfluctuations,Informality JELCodes:E24,E26,E32 1Introduction The structure of employment in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) dif-fers markedly from that in advanced economies.In EMDEs self-employment is a largerproportion of jobs and this feature tends to be inversely related to the level of economicdevelopment (Figure 1). For example, the share of self-employment in total employment isnearly three times as large in EMDEs compared to advanced economies. This fact reflects This paper examines the cyclicality of employment using a sample of 28 advanced economiesand 30 EMDEs. We revisit the empirical fact that labor markets in advanced economies tendto respond more strongly to output fluctuations. We empirically test the employment, wage,and self-employment response and find differences in their cyclical properties. Our results Although EMDEs exhibit a more violent GDP cycle than advanced economies, withsimilar asymmetry across both groups, these features do not necessarily translate into com-parable patterns for employment. The differences between the adjustment of GDP expan- more rapidly than recoveries in GDP for both country groups. Surprisingly, none of theseproperties holds for employment. Employment adjustment is more violent during economiccontractions in advanced economies than in EMDEs. Moreover, advanced economies show amore pronounced skewness in employment compared to GDP, while the opposite is true forEMDEs.These facts have implications for the average response of employment to output We explain the more nuanced adjustment in headline employment in EMDEs comparedto advanced economies by examining the statistical properties of wage and self-employmentthroughout the business cycle, emphasizing self-employment’s larger role in EMDEs. Wageemployment in advanced economies exhibits a more pronounced asymmetric cyclical pattern, contracting sharply during recessions and recovering more gradually during expansions, while less robust employment recoveries compared to EMDEs. Differences in sectoral composition account for a substantial portion of the difference inthe headline employment elasticity in the short term, though its explanatory power decreasesover time. When placing together employment and output fluctuations, Okun’s coefficientsfor wage and self-employment show that the elasticities for both types of employment tend tobe lower in EMDEs than in advanced economies. In general, the differences are smaller when Allowing economic expansions and contractions to affect employment and unemploy-ment differently, we trace the difference in Okun’s coefficient between advanced economiesand EMDEs to a greater sensitivity of labor markets in advanced economies during re-cessions.Different elasticities between recessions and expansions are incorporated in theempirical strategy due to the asymmetric patterns noted previously. The employment- and Although these results generally hold across financial and non-financial recessions, theCOVID-19 pandemic recession provides an important lesson about what can happen whenself-employment does not provide its buffering role. GDP contractions are more pronouncedin EMDEs during non-financial and COVID-19 recessions but comparable across EMDEs andadvanced economies during financial recessions.Employment indicators reveal that whilefinancial and non-financial recessions are economically and statistically harsher in advanced Additional exercises focused on the response of employment by demographic groups pro-vide further support for the finding that labor market adjustments are stronger during reces-sions in advanced economies than in EMDEs.However, employment-to-output elasticitiestend to be largest for youth and those with only a basic level of education, compared to Related literature:The view that labor market outcomes reflect an interaction ofshocks and institutions has been prevalent since the work of Nickell and Layard (1999) andBlanchard and Wolfers (2000), which compared labor adjustment in the United States and We extend prior empirical work and provide an explanation for previous findings (Boz,Durdu and Li (