Search Results
Working Paper
The Geography of Business Dynamism and Skill-Biased Technical Change
This paper shows that the growing disparities between big and small cities in the U.S. since 1980 can be explained by firms endogenously responding to a skill-biased technology shock. With the introduction of a new skill-biased technology that is high fixed cost but low marginal cost, firms endogenously adopt more in big cities, cities that offer abundant amenities for high-skilled workers, and cities that are more productive in using high-skilled labor. In cities with more adoption, small and unproductive firms are more likely to exit the market, increasing the equilibrium rate of turnover ...
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 implications for the Black-White gap in college attainment. We incorporate race into an overlapping-generations spatial-equilibrium model with neighborhood spillovers. The model incorporates race in three ways: (i) a Black-White wage gap, (ii) an amenity externality---households care about the racial composition of their neighbors---and (iii) an additional barrier to moving for Black households. These forces quantitatively account for all of the racial segregation and 80% of the Black-White gap in college ...
Journal Article
Income Volatility as a Barrier to Food Stamp Takeup
Families with greater volatility in their incomes had more switches in food stamp eligibility and lower rates of food stamp usage when they were eligible.
Journal Article
School District Expenditures and Race
On average, spending per student is very similar for Black and White students, yet schools with a higher share of Black students spend less per student on instruction.
Working Paper
Inequality in the Welfare Costs of Disinflation
We use an incomplete markets economy to quantify the distribution of welfare gains and losses of the US "Volcker" disinflation. In the long run households prefer low inflation, but disinflation requires a transition period and a redistribution from net nominal borrowers to net nominal savers. Even with perfectly flexible prices, welfare costs may be significant for households with nominal liabilities. When calibrated to match the micro and macro moments of the early 1980s high inflation environment, almost half of all borrowers (14 percent of all households) would prefer to avoid the ...
How Income Volatility Affects Food Volatility
Family income volatility can affect children negatively in the long term, but it can also determine how much parents are able to spend on food.
Journal Article
Information and Communications Technology Spending and City Size
Firms in big cities are spending more on information and communications technology than firms in small cities, a likely cause of the growing economic divide between big and small U.S. cities.
The Geography of the Startup Surge during the Pandemic
After declining from high levels in the late 1970s, the firm startup rate began to rise in the 2010s, with a shift toward larger cities. Did this trend change during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Journal Article
City Segregation and the College Degree Gap
For a 0.1 increase in the dissimilarity index, the average racial gap in college attainment increases by 1.64 percentage points.
Journal Article
Where Are Labor Markets the Tightest? A Tale of the 100 Largest US Cities
How does labor market tightness vary across the US, and how have labor markets changed since the pandemic? The vacancy-to-unemployment ratio is a common measure.