Search Results
Working Paper
Product market regulation and market work: a benchmark analysis
Recent empirical work finds a negative correlation between product market regulation and aggregate employment. We examine the effect of product market regulations on hours worked in a benchmark aggregate model of time allocation as well as in a standard dynamic model of entry and exit. We find that product market regulations affect time devoted to market work in effectively the same fashion that taxes on labor income or consumption do. In particular, if product market regulations are to affect aggregate market work in this model, the key driving force is the size of income transfers ...
Working Paper
Entry barriers, competition, and technology adoption
There are large differences in income per capita across countries. Growth accounting finds that a large part of the differences comes from the differences in total factor productivity (TFP). This paper explores whether barrier to entry is an important factor for the cross-country differences in TFP. The paper develops a new model to link entry barriers and technology adoption. In the model, higher barriers to entry effectively reduce entry threat, and lower entry threat leads to adoption of less productive technologies. The paper demonstrates that technology adopted in the economy with entry ...
Working Paper
The Short and the Long of It: Stock-Flow Matching in the US Housing Market
This paper investigates the US housing market from just before the Great Recession onward (2006–19) and assesses the viability of stock-flow matching in generating the observed outcomes. The paper documents that the probability that a house sells declines sharply after listing for two weeks. Moreover, the probability and associated price of a fast sale recover from the housing slump sooner, faster, and more prominently than slower sales. The simulated stock-flow matching model can mimic not only sales, prices, listings, and time-on-market but also capture the distinctions in quick and ...
Working Paper
Consumption and Hours in the United States and Europe
We document large differences between the United States and Europe in allocations of expenditures and time for both market and home activities. Using a life-cycle model with home production and endogenous retirement, we find that the cross-country differences in consumption tax, social security system, income tax and TFP together can account for 68-95 percent of the cross-country variations and more than half of the average differences between Europe and the United States in aggregate hours and expenditures. These factors can also account well for the cross-country differences in allocations ...
Working Paper
Wages and unemployment across business cycles: a high-frequency investigation
This paper investigates the change in wages associated with a spell of unemployment. The novelty lies in using monthly data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to analyze the dynamics of those wage changes across different business cycles. The level of education or the sector of re-employment affects the change in wages following an unemployment spell differently across different downturns. The degree of wage rigidity varies across recessions; wage changes pre- and post-unemployment are sometimes procyclical and sometimes countercyclical. These results may be useful for ...
Journal Article
Wage Growth over Unemployment Spells
This article looks at the wage growth associated with a spell of unemployment during the past three recessions. Our main findings are threefold. First, half of all unemployed workers experience a lower hourly wage once they regain employment. Second, after an unemployment spell, older workers and those without a college degree experience lower wage rowth. Third, workers who regain employment in a different industry than they were in previously tend to experience a substantial wage decline. The analysis suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic not only led to unprecedented job losses, but it could ...
Working Paper
Consumption and Hours between the United States and France
We document large differences between the United States and France in allocations of consumption expenditures and time by age. Using a life-cycle model, we quantify to what extent tax and transfer programs and market and home productivity can account for the differences. We find that while labor efficiency by age and home-production productivity are crucial in accounting for the differences in the allocation of time, the consumption tax and social security are more important regarding allocation of expenditures. Adopting the U.S. consumption tax decreases welfare in France, and adopting the ...
Discussion Paper
The CARES Act Unemployment Insurance Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic
The outbreak of COVID-19 led to widespread shutdowns in March and April 2020 and an historically unprecedented increase in the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) through the CARES Act. This article summarizes the key policy-relevant results from Fang, Nie, and Xie (2020), whose research examines the interactions of virus infection risk, shutdown policy, and increased UI generosity.
Working Paper
Impact of the business environment on output and productivity in Africa
We develop a general equilibrium model to assess the quantitative impact of distorting institutions and policies related to the poor business environment in 30 sub-Saharan African countries. A subset of the distortions?namely, regulation, crime, corruption, and poor infrastructure?is modeled as a tax on output. From the data, we find that, on average, firms in Africa lose a fifth of their sales as a result of those distortions. On the other hand, low access to credit affects the reallocation of resources across firms and capital formation. We find that the quantitative effects of these areas ...