宏观经济学复习35题资料.pptVIP

Your students may get slightly different answers due to rounding differences. The objective of this exercise is to lead students to discover why the unemployment rate is not a perfect indicator of joblessness. It might be helpful to tell students to determine the impact on the u-rate – no matter how tiny. I.e., if one person becomes unemployed, the u-rate will rise – ignore the fact that, if this happened in the real world, the increase in the aggregate u-rate would be too small to matter. This would be a good exam question. Answering it correctly requires the following knowledge and skills: Knowing the definitions of “frictional unemployment” and “sectoral shifts” Knowing that minimum wage laws and labor unions affect structural, not frictional, unemployment Knowing that unemployment insurance increases frictional unemployment Being able to match policies and events to the various causes of unemployment discussed in the preceding slides and in the textbook The minimum wage and labor unions are two reasons why the actual wage might be above the equilibrium wage, which causes structural unemployment (as Mankiw defines it), not frictional unemployment. Unemployment insurance increases frictional unemployment by reducing the opportunity cost of being unemployed, and reducing the urgency of finding work. Because workers have different skills and jobs have different skill requirements, it takes time for workers displaced from declining industries to get jobs in the younger, growing industries. While they are searching, these workers are frictionally unemployed. If sectoral shifts become more frequent, then we would see more of this type of unemployment. This exercise makes the quantity theory more concrete for students. If you’re pressed for time, you can delete part b or ask students to do it on their own. Most principles-level students have difficulty the first time they are asked to calculate the after-tax real interest rate because the calculatio