Search Results
Journal Article
Why Are Workers Staying Out of the U.S. Labor Force?
Shifts in retirement and people taking care of family or the home appear to be behind the drop in labor market participation.
Are Higher Child Care Wages Affecting the Labor Supply?
An analysis suggests that a rebound in labor force participation among women with a partner and child could have been stronger during the pandemic if not dampened by child care costs.
Working Paper
Subjective Earnings Risk
While earnings risk is essentially subjective, it is typically inferred from administrative data. We introduce a survey to measure subjective earnings risk, paying particular attention to the expected impacts of job transitions on earnings. Linking with administrative data provides multiple credibility checks. Subjective expectations about earnings growth and job transitions are consistent with actual realizations when appropriately aggregated. We also find subjective earnings risk is lower than risk inferred from administrative data because expected earnings growth is heterogeneous, even ...
Journal Article
Neighborhood Types and Intergenerational Mobility
Neighborhoods that differ demographically also exhibit differences in how intergenerational mobility relates to job growth.
Journal Article
Neighborhood Types and Demographics
U.S. neighborhoods can be organized into five types, which have very different demographics and geographical locations.
Working Paper
The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium
We incorporate race into an overlapping-generations spatial-equilibrium model with neighborhood spillovers. Race matters in two ways: (i) the Black-White wage gap and (ii) homophily—the preferences of individuals over the racial composition of their neighborhood. We find that these two forces generate a Black-White college gap of 22 percentage points, explaining about 80% of the college gap in the data for the St. Louis metro area. Counterfactual exercises show that the wage gap and homophily explain 7 and 18 percentage points of the college gap, respectively. A policy of equalizing school ...
Residential Segregation and the Black-White College Gap
Using an economic model, researchers find that racial wage disparities, the amenity externality and racial barriers to moving could help explain the Black-white gap in college attainment.
Working Paper
The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium
This paper seeks to understand the forces that maintain racial segregation and the Black-White gap in college attainment, as well as their interactions with place-based policy interventions. We incorporate race into an overlapping-generations spatial-equilibrium model with neighborhood spillovers. Race matters due to: (i) a Black-White wage gap, (ii) amenity externalities---households care about their neighborhood's racial composition---and (iii) additional barriers to moving for Black households. We find that these forces account for 71% of the racial segregation and 64% of the Black-White ...
Working Paper
The Alpha Beta Gamma of the Labor Market
We access a long panel dataset of US workers to document the extent to which individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their pattern of transitions across employment states. We find that heterogeneity is well approximated by three latent types: αs, βs and γs. Workers of type α leave unemployment quickly and, once they find a job, they are likely to keep it for more than 2 years. Workers of type γ find employment slowly and, once they do find a job, they are likely to leave it within 1 year. We use our empirical findings to calibrate a search-theoretic model in which workers are ...
Journal Article
Pandemic Recession: L- or V-Shaped?
We develop and calibrate a search-theoretic model of the labor market in order to forecast the evolution of the aggregate US labor market during and after the coronavirus pandemic. The model is designed to capture the heterogeneity of the transitions of individual workers across states of unemployment and employment and across different employers. The model is designed also to capture the trade-offs in the choice between temporary and permanent layoffs. Under reasonable parametrizations of the model, the lockdown instituted to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is shown to have ...