Saman Darougheh

I am a research economist at the Danish central bank - Danmarks Nationalbank. I study labor markets and the macroeconomy using both administrative records and quantitative models.
Contact: sdma at nationalbanken.dk

Upcoming presentations

This is my personal website and does not represent the views of Danmarks Nationalbank. *: presented by co author.

Publications

Occupation-industry mismatch in the cross-section and the aggregate (accepted JPE Macro)

The construction sector is host to both specialized and broad occupations: a shock to this sector will affect these occupations differentially.
slides •

Recessions that generate more mismatch do not inherently generate more unemployment. I show this modelling "broad" occupations -- that are employable in many industries, and thus less at the risk of mismatch. The model also suggests the average broadness of the unemployed as a useful measure of mismatch.

Dispersed consumption versus compressed output: assessing the sectoral effects of a pandemic (Journal of Macroeconomics)

Consumption responses during the covid lockdown were much larger than the actual reduction in sectoral output (notice scale).

Credit-card transaction data are popular when sharp economic changes need to be monitored in real time. Yet, because of input-output linkages, sectoral output responses are very different from what the sectoral consumption data implies.

Working papers

Worker protection and screening

- with Gustaf Lundgren • draft •

Workers differ ex-ante in their ability to find a good match. Firm can either learn match quality during hiring, or on the job. A worker protection policy that makes layoffs more difficult makes hiring more risky. The model features a screening externality: the more firms screen, the worse the applicant pool, the more important screening.

Work in progress

Learning from Mistakes: Occupation Miscoding and Task Distance

- with Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and Ludo Visschers • draft coming soon! • EALE 2023

US surveys on occupations contain a lot of mistakes. We estimate these mistakes, provide a way to fix them, and learn about distances between occupations (closely-related occupations are more likely to be mistaken).

What determines unemployment: low productivity or high outside options?

Marginal workers are a small share of the Danish labor force. Yet, due to their large average unemployment rate, they make up a large share of total unemployment.
• 5th Dale T. Mortensen Conference

15% of Danes ("marginal workers") make up two thirds of unemployment. Are they less productive, or do they have better outside options (=enjoy unemployment more)? I answer this using both administrative records and a model calibration.

A supply-Side approach to manage inflation

- with Renato Faccini and Leonardo Melosi • Bank of Finland, Bundesbank Spring conference 2024

Job-to-job transitions drive wage inflation. Therefore, fiscal policy that disincentivizes on-the-job search can lower inflation without rising unemployment. We show that such fiscal policies have bite using changes in the Danish income tax brackets.

Non-homothetic preferences and relative price shocks

- with Tiago Bernardino, Pedro Brinca, and Marcia Silva-Pereira • PEJ 2023

In the aftermath of the pandemic, many countries subsidized prices of essential goods via lower VAT, arguing that subsidizing essential goods is an effective way to support low-income households. Is it? We answer this question taking seriously both non-homothetic preferences and an imperfect pass through of VAT.

Policy work

The pressure on the labour market has eased after a job-intensive expansion (Danmarks Nationalbank Analysis 6-2024)

Employment has increased significantly in Denmark, the euro area and the US during the post-pandemic expansion, with stronger growth relative to GDP than in previous expansions. Employment growth is due to several reasons. One of them is a fall in real wages: when labor is cheap, more of it is employed -- especially less-skilled workers.

The role of marginal workers in Danish unemployment (Danmarks Nationalbank Memo 7-2023)

Unemployment risk is highly heterogeneous in Denmark: a group of marginal workers constitutes 15 per cent of the labour force but makes up roughly 60% of the unemployed in Denmark. These marginal workers cycle more through jobs, have longer and more frequent spells of unemployment and leave their jobs at higher pace. Empirical evidence suggests that they are less productive, and more dependent on labor income.

The impact of digitalisation on Danish companies and workers (Danmarks Nationalbank Memo 1-2022)

Using micro-level data from the period 2001-2018, we document the increased digitalisation of the Danish economy and analyse the effect of digitalisation on sectoral and firm performance measured by sales. Within sectors, large firms that increased their usage of digital goods on average grew faster in terms of sales. We examine the evolution of the workforce in the IT sector and we find that workers have become more specialised over the last decade. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that this higher specialisation is associated with higher productivity; however, it might reduce the resilience of the IT labour market against economic shocks.

Three lessons from the Danish wage compensation scheme (Danmarks Nationalbank Memo 5-2021)

The three lessons: First, less educated workers have in general been more affected by the crisis. This is mainly driven by the type of firms that are affected by the crisis, and not the decisions of individual firms. Second, a firm's choice to keep, lay off or furlough workers is also driven by the worker's attachment to the workplace. Firms lay off workers with fewer hours and employees with short employment spells, while workers with high seniority are furloughed. Third, workers earning more than peers face a greater risk of being laid off, while firms furlough workers that are less expensive.