What Drives Firm's Hiring Decisions? An Asset Pricing Perspective

The authors document that the aggregate hiring rate of publicly traded firms in the U.S. economy negatively predicts stock market returns and long-term cash flows, and positively predicts short-term cash flows. In addition, through a variance decomposition, the authors show that the time-series variation in the aggregate hiring rate is mainly driven by changes in discount rates and short-term expected cash flows, with no contribution from variation in long-term expected cash flows. The authors estimate a neoclassical dynamic model with labor market frictions and show that labor adjustment costs and time-varying risk are essential for the model to replicate the empirical patterns.