Nir Jaimovich’s research examines macroeconomics questions with special emphasis on business cycles, labor markets, and the macroeconomic implications of micro pricing data.
In recent work, Jaimovich has studied the interaction between the evolving occupation structure of the economy and the dynamics of recovery from recessionary periods. This work highlighted the fact that the disappearance of “middle-class” occupations over the last four decades occured almost exclusively during recessionary periods. Moreover, it is this same phenomenon of occupations disappearance that has given rise to “jobless recoveries.” This work has importance for our understanding of the process by which the middle-class experiences changes in its occupation outlook and highlights that these lacklustre recoveries could become the new norm if this process were to continue.
In other related work he has shown how the age composition of the economy affects the economic volatility of an economy; economies that tend to be younger are more volatile, while economies populated with a middle age structure exhibit more stability. This work shows that (predicted) changes in the age composition of an economy are a tool by which policy makers can predict part of the magnitude of volatility changes.
In other work, Jaimovich has examined the empirical and theoretical plausibility of signals and uncertainty about future economic fundamentals functioning as important drivers of business cycles. He has shown empirically how various uncertainty measures covary negatively with the business cycle and evaluated theoretically their contribution to economic fluctuations. His work concludes that fluctuations in uncertainty (i.e. “second moments”) are an important driver of business cycle highlighting the importance of tracking such measures and calling the attention to policy makers to these measures.
In his micro pricing product level data, Jaimovich has shown how actual firms’ pricing strategies change the insights regarding the extent that monetary policy has an impact on the economy. In this work Jaimovich has shown that traditional measures of price stickiness can be potentially misleading with respect to the degree of price flexibility in the economy highlighting the importance of “price plans.” Based on this work Jaimovich has shown how monetary policy can have much more persistent effects than previously thought when using micro-level data.
Finally, recently in his micro-level pricing work he has emphasized how the quality of goods which consumers choose has important ramifications for the demand for labor and its composition across skilled and unskilled workers. This work shows how the quality composition of consumers baskets explains a significant part of the fall in the demand for labor during the Great Recession and can also explain the evolution of the college skill premium.
Nir Jaimovich’s research examines macroeconomics questions with special emphasis on business cycles, labor markets, and the macroeconomic implications of micro pricing data.
In recent work, Jaimovich has studied the interaction between the evolving occupation structure of the economy and the dynamics of recovery from recessionary periods. This work highlighted the fact that the disappearance of “middle-class” occupations over the last four decades occured almost exclusively during recessionary periods. Moreover, it is this same phenomenon of occupations disappearance that has given rise to “jobless recoveries.” This work has importance for our understanding of the process by which the middle-class experiences changes in its occupation outlook and highlights that these lacklustre recoveries could become the new norm if this process were to continue.