Search Results
Journal Article
Student Loans Under the Risk of Youth Unemployment
While most college graduates eventually find jobs that match their qualifications, the possibility of long spells of unemployment and/or underemployment?combined with ensuing difficulties in repaying student loans?may limit and even dissuade productive investments in human capital. The author explores the optimal design of student loans when young college graduates can be unemployed and reaches three main conclusions. First, the optimal student loan program must incorporate an unemployment compensation mechanism as a key element, even if unemployment probabilities are endogenous and subject ...
Working Paper
Foreign firms and the diffusion of knowledge
This paper constructs a model to examine the impact of foreign firms on a developing Country?s own accumulation of entrepreneurial knowledge. In the model, entrepreneurial skills are built up on the basis of productive ideas that diffuse internally (at the inside of firms) and externally (spillovers.) Openness to foreign firms enhances the aggregate exposure to ideas but also reduces the returns to investing in entrepreneurial skills. When externalities are present, openness can be welfare reducing. However, regardless of the relative importance of externalities, simple quantitative exercises ...
Journal Article
Hispanics and Their Contribution to America’s Human Capital
In this article, we explore the transformation in the human capital of Hispanics and how these shifts have impacted their occupations and integration into the American workplace. We describe not only the substantial increase in the numbers but also the significant diversity and assimilation of Hispanic workers in the U.S., how they compare with their peers in terms of education, and their participation in different occupations. We also put emphasis on the presence of Hispanics in the higher-earning occupations and describe the increased role of Hispanic women in those occupations.
Working Paper
Markets, Externalities, and the Dynamic Gains of Openness
Inflows of foreign knowledge are the key for developing countries to catch up with the world technology frontier. In this paper, I construct a simple tractable model to analyze (a) the incentives of foreign firms to bring their know-how to a developing country and (b) the incentives of domestic firms to invest in their own know-how, given the exposure to foreign ideas and competition. The model embeds two diffusion mechanisms typically considered separately in the literature: externalities and markets. The dynamic gains of openness can be substantial under either mechanism, but their relative ...
Working Paper
Natural Resources and Global Misallocation
Are production factors allocated efficiently across countries? To differentiate misallocation from factor intensity differences, we provide a new methodology to estimate output shares of natural resources based solely on current rent flows data. With this methodology, we construct a new dataset of estimates for the output shares of natural resources for a large panel of countries. In sharp contrast with Caselli and Feyrer (2007), we find a significant and persistent degree of misallocation of physical capital. We also find a remarkable movement toward efficiency during last 35 years, ...
Journal Article
Will Tech Improvements for Trading Services Switch the U.S. into a Net Exporter?
Innovations gave the U.S. a trade advantage in goods many years ago. Can innovations do the same for trade in services for the U.S.?
Journal Article
Major U.S. trading partners before and after the great recession
One of the most interesting features of the Great Recession is that?contrary to other global recessions?it was mostly a rich-country phenomenon.
Journal Article
Recent trends in student loans: more loans and higher balances
Student loan borrowing accelerated during the Great Recession and now outranks any non-mortgage debt, including auto loans and credit card debt.
Journal Article
The Composition of Long-term Unemployment Is Changing toward Older Workers
The Great Recession has been officially over for more than six years, but the rate of long-term unemployment (26 weeks or longer) remains elevated. Two age groups have been hurt the most: those 25-44 and, even more so, those 55 and older.
Are We Really in This Together? The Divided Nature of the COVID-19 Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge economic shock, but certain demographic groups have faced even greater challenges.