Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 80.
(refine search)
Journal Article
Why Are Life-Cycle Earnings Profiles Getting Flatter?
The authors present a simple, two-period model of human capital accumulation on the job and through college attainment. They use a calibrated version of the model to explain the observed flattening of the life-cycle earnings profiles of two cohorts of workers. The model accounts for more than 55 percent of the observed flattening for high school-educated and for college-educated workers. Two channels generate the flattening in the model: selection (or higher college attainment) and a higher skill price for the more recent cohort. Absent selection, the model would have accounted for no ...
Working Paper
Comparative Advantage and Moonlighting
We document three facts: (i) Higher educated workers are more likely to moonlight; (ii) conditional on education, workers with higher wages are less likely to moonlight; and (iii) the prevalence of moonlighting is declining over time for all education groups. We develop an equilibrium model of the labor market to explain these patterns. A dominating income effect explains the negative correlation of moonlighting with productivity in the cross section and the downward trend over time. A higher part-to-full time pay differential for skilled workers (a comparative advantage) explains the ...
Journal Article
The Lost Weeks of COVID-19 Testing in the United States: Part I
The weeks lost due to inaction in the U.S. during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in rationing of tests and a large number of confirmed cases.
Working Paper
Explaining Cross-Cohort Differences in Life Cycle Earnings
College-educated workers entering the labor market in 1940 experienced a 4-fold increase in their labor earnings between the ages of 25 and 55; in contrast, the increase was 2.6-fold for those entering the market in 1980. For workers without a college education these figures are 3.6-fold and 1.5-fold, respectively. Why are earnings profiles flatter for recent cohorts? We build a parsimonious model of schooling and human capital accumulation on the job and calibrate it to earnings statistics of workers from the 1940 cohort. The model accounts for 99 percent of the flattening of earnings ...
Working Paper
Technology adoption and mortality
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality trends and population dynamics. In our theory, individuals incur time and/or goods costs over their life cycle, to adopt a better health technology that increases their age-specific survival probability. Technology adoption is a source of a dynamic externality: As more individuals adopt the better technology, the marginal benefit of future adoption increases. The allocation of time and/or goods also depends on total factor productivity (TFP): As TFP grows, more resources are allocated to technology adoption. Both channels---the dynamic externality ...
Journal Article
Mortality and Economic Growth
Countries with higher economic growth had, on average, higher growth in their crude death rates.
Has the Growth in the Price of Education Outpaced Overall Inflation?
Historically, the price of education, such as for tuition and books, has risen faster than overall inflation. But that hasn’t been the case in recent years.
Working Paper
Gender Gap
We employ the Ben-Porath (1967) human capital model to study the evolution of the gender wage gap over the long run. We consider the effect of changing lifecycle profiles of female market hours. We find that the implied response in unobserved investment in human capital accumulation accounts for most of the long run gender wage gap dynamics. This finding is consistent with the labor economists’ view that changing selection on unobservables played a critical role in the gender wage gap dynamics. Our contribution is to make explicit and quantify the link between market hours and (unobserved) ...
Journal Article
Mixing the Melting Pot: The Impact of Immigration on Labor Markets
Some people argue that immigrants make life harder for workers who are already U.S. citizens. But the data don?t show much of a correlation between immigration and the unemployment rate or between immigration and wages.
Journal Article
Living Arrangements Matter Not Just to Your Parents but Also to Policymakers
The decision to look for a job, as well as some measures of income inequality, are closely connected with the living arrangements people choose and, therefore, are important to policymakers.