earticle

영어

Recently, job creation problem is one of most challenging tasks in both developing and developed countries. It is often argued that job creation by economic growth is not so large as in the past. To understand this issues, so far, many papers looked at data of GDP and employment growth to estimate the so called “employment elasticity” or “employment intensity” of growth, which is defined as growth rate of employment divided by growth rate of GDP. They find indeed that the measured value of elasticity has decreased in most countries. While there have been many empirical studies about that issue, no study has identified the structural determinants of employment elasticity. That is, while most studies estimate the empirical elasticity, they did not look upon the question of what determines the employment elasticity. This paper aims to address the question. This paper’s goal is to employ an equilibrium labor market model and to find the structural determinants of employment elasticity. This paper shows theoretically that employment elasticity is determined by the structure of technology and preference, thus, the labor demand and supply. The theoretically derived formula of employment elasticity allows us to identify its determinants. In testing and applying the theoretical result, first, some calibrated values of parameters and estimated values of labor supply structure found in other studies are applied to the theoretically derived formula to calculate the employment elasticity. And we compare the empirically estimated elasticities and theoretically calculated ones. Secondly, we try to identify which determinant has contributed to change (allegedly, decrease in most empirical studies) in the employment elasticity.

한국어

본 연구는 경제성장에 따른 고용증가의 정도를 측정하는 고용탄력성에 대하여 이론적 및 실증적인 분석을 한다. 균형노동시장 모형을 이용하여 고용탄력성의 크기를 결정하는 경제구조적인 요인이 무엇인지를 분석하고자 한다. 분석결과는 고용탄력성은 자본계수와 노동생산성의 노동탄력성(=ζNN)과는 역의 관계가 있고 노동공급의 임금탄력성과 노동생산성의 자본탄력성과는 정의 관계를 보이고 있다. 중요한 점은 고용탄력성의 크기는 노동수요측면의 요인만이 아니라 노동공급측면의 요인에 의해서도 영향을 받는다는 것이다. 실증적으로는 먼저, 추정된 고용탄력성의 값이 경제구조의 특징에 기초하여 계산한 이론적 추정치와 일치하는지를 검증하고, 다음으로는 콥더글라스 생산함수를 전제하고 70년대 이후 고용탄력성의 장기적 변화를 분석하여 그 변화의 원인을 추정한다.