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Discussion Paper
Weekly Hours, Overtime, and Employment of Manufacturing Production Workers: Fluctuations over the Business Cycle
This note analyzes how weekly hours, overtime, and employment of production workers move over the business cycle.
Discussion Paper
Unraveling the Oil Conundrum : Productivity Improvements and Cost Declines in the U.S. Shale Oil Industry
Why have large declines in oil prices and in the rig count not triggered a more dramatic decline in production? At what price level would a large share of U.S. shale oil production lose economic viability? In this note, we explore these questions with a focus on the U.S. shale oil industry in the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian Basin regions.
Working Paper
Are Manufacturing Jobs Still Good Jobs? An Exploration of the Manufacturing Wage Premium
This paper explores the factors behind differences in wages between manufacturing and other sectors. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find that the manufacturing wage premium--the additional pay a manufacturing worker earns relative to a comparable nonmanufacturing worker--disappeared in recent years and that the erosion of the premium has primarily affected workers employed in production occupations, who experienced a wage decline of 2.5 percentage points since the 1990s relative to other workers in production occupations. While the demographic composition and other worker ...
Working Paper
The Vaccine Boost: Quantifying the Impact of the COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout on Measures of Activity
This paper investigates the impact of vaccine administration on three main dimensions of activity: spending, mobility, and employment. Our investigation combines two parts. First, we exploit the variation in vaccine administration across states. In panel regressions that include a large set of controls, we find that the rollout has a significant impact on spending, while the results on mobility and employment are mixed. Second, to address concerns of endogeneity, we look at the impact of vaccine lotteries on spending. Using a dynamic event design setting, we find that lotteries have ...
Discussion Paper
Maternity Leave and the Gender Wage Gap : An Analysis of New Jersey Family Leave Insurance
Women, on average, are paid less than men. According to the 2015 report prepared by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), female full-time workers in the United States received only 81 cents for every dollar earned by men; this difference amounts to a gender wage gap of 19 percent.
Working Paper
Looking Inside the Magic 8 Ball : An Analysis of Sales Forecasts using Italian Firm-Level Data
This paper explores firm forecasting strategies. Using Italian data, we focus on two aspects of the forecasting process: how firms forecast sales and how accurate their predictions are. We relate both outcomes to current conditions, firm experience, global factors, and other firm characteristics. We find that current conditions tend to explain most of the variability in the sales forecast. While past projection errors tend to account for cross-firm differences in models of expectation formation, they are a key explanatory variable in models of forecast accuracy. Among other controls, firm ...
Working Paper
Welfare Evaluation in a Heterogeneous Agent Model: How Representative is the CES Representative Consumer?
The present paper investigates the impact of asymmetric price changes on welfare in a model with heterogeneous consumers. I consider consumer heterogeneity a la Anderson et al. (1992). The standard welfare equivalence between the CES representative consumer and the discrete choice model breaks down in presence of asymmetric price changes. In fact, asymmetric variation in prices produce differential gains among heterogeneous consumers. I show that there exists no feasible Kaldor-Hicks income transfer such that the gains are equally redistributed. Intuitively, in presence of decreasing marginal ...
Discussion Paper
International Trade in Services: Stylized Facts about Exporters in the Service Sector
This note contributes to expand the knowledge on foreign trade in services by presenting a series of stylized facts about exporters of services.
Working Paper
Misallocation in Open Economy
This paper estimates the impact of reducing export and import tariffs on firm input choices. In presence of borrowing constraints, lower export tariffs facilitate the reallocation of capital and labor inputs across firms, while a decline in import tariffs either tightens import competition or increases the availability of imported inputs; all three mechanisms suggest that a higher degree of openness should be associated with lower misallocation. To analyze the empirical relationship between openness and input misallocation, we draw on the annual surveys conducted by the Chinese National ...
Discussion Paper
Help Wanted : Evaluating Labor Shortages in Manufacturing
In this note, we examine the extent of labor shortages for the manufacturing sector.