Search Results
Working Paper
Aggregate real wages: macro fluctuations and micro drivers
Using data from the Current Population Survey from 1980 through 2010 we examine what drives variation and cyclicality in the growth rate of real wages over time. We employ a novel decomposition technique that allows us to divide the time series for median weekly earnings growth into the part associated with the wage growth of persons employed at the beginning and end of the period (the wage growth effect) and the part associated with changes in the composition of earners (the composition effect). The relative importance of these two effects varies widely over the business cycle. When the ...
Journal Article
Jobless recovery redux?
Although the pace of layoffs appears to be subsiding and the overall economy is showing hints of stabilization, most forecasters expect unemployment to continue to increase in coming months and to recede only gradually as recovery takes hold. In this Economic Letter, we evaluate this projection using data on three labor market indicators: worker flows into and out of unemployment; involuntary part-time employment; and temporary layoffs. We pay particular attention to how these indicators compare with data from previous episodes of recession and recovery. Our analysis generally supports ...
Report
Firms and flexibility
We study the effects of labor market rigidities and frictions on firm-size distributions and dynamics. We introduce a model of endogenous entrepreneurship, labor market frictions, and firm-size dynamics with many types of rigidities, such as hiring and firing costs, search frictions with vacancy costs, unemployment benefits, firm entry costs, and a tax wedge between wages and labor costs. We use the model to analyze how each rigidity explains firm-size differentials between the United States and France. We find that when we include all rigidities and frictions except hiring costs and search ...
Working Paper
The Outlook for U.S. Labor-Quality Growth
Over the past 15 years, labor-quality growth has been very strong?defying nearly all earlier projections?and has added around 0.5 percentage points to an otherwise modest U.S. productivity picture. Going forward, labor quality is likely to add considerably less and may even be a drag on productivity growth in the medium term. Using a variety of methods, we project that potential labor-quality growth in the longer run (7 to 10 years out) is likely to fall in the range of 0.1 to 0.25 percent per year. In the medium term, labor-quality growth could be lower or even negative, should employment ...
Journal Article
Cap rates and commercial property prices
Commercial real estate capitalization rates have been found to be good indicators of expected returns in commercial properties. Recent declines in these cap rates appear to be signaling a commercial real estate rebound, indicating improved investor expectations of price growth in the market. Movements in national cap rates are the predominant drivers of changes in cap rates in local markets. Therefore, the anticipated commercial real estate rebound is likely to be widespread across many metropolitan areas.
Journal Article
U.S. jobs gained and lost through trade: a net measure
Recent concerns about the transfer of U.S. services jobs to overseas workers have deepened long-standing fears about the effects of trade on the domestic labor market. But a balanced view of the impact of trade requires that we consider jobs created through the production of U.S. exports as well as jobs lost to imports. A new measure of the jobs gained and lost in international trade flows suggests that the net number of U.S. jobs lost is relatively small-2.4 percent of total U.S. employment as of 2003.
Report
CONDI: a cost-of-nominal-distortions index
We construct a price index with weights for the prices of different PCE (personal consumption expenditures) goods chosen to minimize the welfare costs of nominal distortions. In this cost-of-nominal-distortions index (CONDI), the weights are computed in a multi-sector New Keynesian model with time-dependent price setting. The model is calibrated using U.S. data on the dispersion of price stickiness and labor shares across sectors. We find that the CONDI weights depend mostly on price stickiness and are less affected by the dispersion in labor shares. Moreover, CONDI stabilization closely ...
Working Paper
Household inflation experiences in the U.S.: a comprehensive approach
We present new measures of household-specific inflation experiences based on comprehensive information from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX). We match households in the Interview and the Diary Surveys from the CEX to produce both complete and detailed pictures of household expenditures. The resulting household inflation measures are based on a more accurate and detailed description of household expenditures than those previously available. We find that our household-based inflation measures track aggregate measures such as the CPI-U quite well and that the addition of Diary Survey data ...
Journal Article
The path of wage growth and unemployment
After the Great Recession, the fraction of U.S. workers whose wages were frozen reached a record high. Many employers would have preferred to cut wages, but couldn?t do so because of the reluctance of workers to accept reduced compensation. These pent-up wage cuts initially propped up wage growth, reduced hiring, and pushed up unemployment. But, over the past 2 years, inflation has eroded the real value of frozen wages, slowing wage growth and reducing the unemployment rate. This is similar to, but more pronounced than, the pattern observed in past recessions.
Working Paper
Technology diffusion and postwar growth
In the aftermath of WorldWar II, the world's economies exhibited very different rates of economic recovery. We provide evidence that those countries that caught up the most with the U.S. in the postwar period are those that also saw an acceleration in the speed of adoption of new technologies. This acceleration is correlated with the incidence of U.S. economic aid and technical assistance in the same period. We interpret this as supportive of the interpretation that technology transfers from the U.S. to Western European countries and Japan were an important factor in driving growth in these ...