An Estimated New-Keynesian Model with Unemployment as Excess Supply of Labor

Abstract

Wage stickiness is incorporated to a New-Keynesian model with variable capital in a way that generates endogenous unemployment fluctuations as the log difference between aggregate labor supply and aggregate labor demand. After estimation with U.S. data, the implied second-moment statistics of the unemployment rate provide a reasonable match with those observed in the data. Our results also show that wagepush shocks, demand shifts and monetary policy shocks are the three major determinants of unemployment fluctuations. Compared to an estimated canonical DSGE model without unemployment: wage stickiness is higher, labor supply elasticity is lower, the slope of the New-Keynesian Phillips curve is flatter, and the importance of technology innovations on output growth variability increases.