Disequilibrium Econometrics on Micro Data.

Estimation of macro-disequilibrium models is by now well developed (see R. Quandt (1982), J.J. Laffont (1983) for recent surveys). Though the empirical macro results are interesting, they suffer from an excessive aggregation which prevents a sufficiently precise discussion of the nature of unemployment. This paper brings some empirical evidence to the construction of a more disaggregated view of disequilibrium. Individual data on firms collected by INSEE through periodic Business Surveys is used to construct the distribution of firms over the four possible disequilibrium regimes. Then the behavior of this distribution over time is analyzed.