We revisit the hypothesis that cyclical fluctuations in unemployment are caused by shocks to the discount rate. We use … in the EU rate. The response of the unemployment rate is minuscule. These findings are at odds with the actual behavior … large unemployment fluctuations. We show that aggregate productivity shocks generate the correct comovement between the UE …

We propose a novel theory of self-fulfilling unemployment fluctuations. According to this theory, a firm hiring an …