A Theory of Labor Markets with Inefficient Turnover

We develop a theory of labor markets with four features: search frictions, worker productivity shocks, wage rigidity, and two-sided lack of commitment. Inefficient job separations occur in the form of endogenous quits and layoffs that are unilaterally initiated whenever a worker's wage-to-productivity ratio moves outside an inaction region. We derive sufficient statistics for the labor market response to aggregate shocks based on the distribution of workers' wage-to-productivity ratios. These statistics depend on the incidence of inefficient job separations and are linked to readily available microdata on wage changes and worker flows between jobs