Business fluctuations, job flows and trade unions : dynamics in the economy

This study was prepared by Beate Schirwitz while she was working at the Ifo Institute’s Dresden Branch. It was completed in February 2012 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Faculty of Law, Management, and Economics at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in July 2012. It focuses on a variety of economic aspects for which the dynamic character of underlying parameters is essential: How can we identify business cycle phases from aggregated data? Why do we observe ambiguous output dynamics in response to positive productivity shocks? Can we identify heterogeneous productivity shocks and the adaptation they induce in empirical data? What consequences has the explicit inclusion of membership dynamics for the optimal behaviour of trade unions? To approach these questions theoretical as well as empirical methods were used. The empirical methods include parametric and non-parametric techniques to date the business cycle in aggregate data as well as the compilation and analysis of a micro data set. The theoretical chapters are based on versions of search and matching as well as union labour market models. To find and evaluate their equilibrium solutions and the paths to get there, intertemporal optimization methods and comparative statics analyses are employed.