NBER Working Papers · 2026 · Alex Clymo、Piotr Denderski、Yusuf Mercan、Benjamin Schoefer
中文摘要
工作流动具有风险，工人是风险厌恶的，且保险市场是不完全的。本文研究这些特征如何通过使工人过度谨慎——即相较于工资和生产率的提高，工人会过度看重工作安全——来抑制并扭曲工作间转换。我们通过一项定制的代表性调查，测度在职工人的工资—安全无差异曲线，以揭示这一权衡。平均而言，美国在职工人需要1.63%的加薪，才愿意接受新工作中每年失业风险每增加一个百分点的条件。我们将这一机制嵌入一般均衡搜寻模型，以评估其宏观经济后果。工作在工资（生产率）和失业风险两方面均存在差异；风险厌恶的工人在在职搜寻和离职搜寻期间，通过持有一种非状态依存债券对失业风险进行自我保险。我们发现，完全市场的反事实情景将使工作流动提高12%，生产率提高0.19%。我们还强调了失业保险的一项新作用：它鼓励在职工人接受风险较高但生产率也较高的工作机会，从而提高生产率（1.3%）和工作创造——同时也会增加工作流失和失业。
Abstract
Job mobility is risky, workers are risk averse, and insurance markets are incomplete. This paper studies how these features curb and distort job-to-job transitions by making workers excessively cautious: they place too much weight on job safety over wage and productivity gains. We demonstrate this tradeoff by eliciting employed workers’ wage-safety indifference curves in a custom, representative survey. On average, employed US workers require a 1.63% pay raise to accept each additional percentage point of annual unemployment risk in a new job. We assess the macroeconomic consequences of our mechanism by embedding it into a general equilibrium search model. Jobs differ in both wages (productivity) and unemployment risk, and risk-averse workers self-insure against unemployment risk through a non-state-contingent bond while searching on and off the job. We find that a complete markets counterfactual would boost job mobility by 12% and productivity by 0.19%. We also highlight a new role for unemployment insurance: it encourages employed workers to accept risky but high-productivity offers, thereby increasing productivity (by 1.3%) and job creation—as well as job loss and unemployment.