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Working Paper
Home production technology and time allocation: empirics, theory, and implications
We document a set of time use patterns in both time series and cross sections. To explain these facts, we propose and estimate a model of time allocation that emphasizes the role of home production technology. We find it necessary to consider both labor-augmenting technology and total factor productivity in home production. Based on the estimated model, we study the effects of proportional tax and lump-sum transfer on time allocation and labor supply, with the roles of home production technology and wage heterogeneity highlighted.
Working Paper
Product market regulation and market work: a benchmark analysis
Recent empirical work finds a negative correlation between product market regulation and aggregate employment. We examine the effect of product market regulations on hours worked in a benchmark aggregate model of time allocation as well as in a standard dynamic model of entry and exit. We find that product market regulations affect time devoted to market work in effectively the same fashion that taxes on labor income or consumption do. In particular, if product market regulations are to affect aggregate market work in this model, the key driving force is the size of income transfers ...
Working Paper
High-Skilled Services and Development in China
We document that the employment share of high-skill-intensive services is much lower in China than in countries with similar gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We build a model of structural change with goods and low- and high-skill-intensive services to account for this observation. We find that large distortions limit the size of high-skill-intensive services in China. If they were removed, both high-skill-intensive services and GDP per capita would increase considerably. We document a strong presence of state-owned enterprises in high-skill-intensive services and argue that this ...
Working Paper
Bundling Time and Goods: Implications for Hours Dispersion
We document the large dispersion in hours worked in the cross-section. We account for this fact using a model in which households combine market inputs and time to produce a set of nonmarket activities. To estimate the model, we create a novel data set that pairs market expenditures and time use at the activity level using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the American Time Use Survey, respectively. The estimated model can account for a large fraction of the dispersion of hours worked in the data. The substitutability between market inputs and time within an activity and across a ...
Working Paper
Entry cost, financial friction, and cross-country differences in income and TFP
This paper develops a model to assess the quantitative effect of entry cost and financial friction on cross-country income and total factor productivity (TFP) differences. The main focus is on the interaction between entry cost and financial friction. The model is calibrated to match establishment-level statistics for the U.S. economy assuming a perfect financial market. The quantitative analysis shows that entry costs and financial frictions together can generate a factor ten of the differences in income per capita and a factor five of the differences in TFP, and a large part of the ...
Working Paper
Taxes and Market Hours: The Role of Gender and Skill
Cross-country differences of market hours in 17 countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are mainly due to the hours of women, especially low-skilled women. This paper develops a model to account for the gender-skill differences in market hours across countries. The model explains a substantial fraction of the differences in hours by taxes, which reduce market hours in favor of leisure and home production, and by subsidized care, which frees (mostly) women from home care in favor of their market hours. Low-skilled women are more responsive to policy ...
Working Paper
Entry barriers, competition, and technology adoption
There are large differences in income per capita across countries. Growth accounting finds that a large part of the differences comes from the differences in total factor productivity (TFP). This paper explores whether barrier to entry is an important factor for the cross-country differences in TFP. The paper develops a new model to link entry barriers and technology adoption. In the model, higher barriers to entry effectively reduce entry threat, and lower entry threat leads to adoption of less productive technologies. The paper demonstrates that technology adopted in the economy with entry ...
Working Paper
Wages and unemployment across business cycles: a high-frequency investigation
This paper investigates the change in wages associated with a spell of unemployment. The novelty lies in using monthly data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to analyze the dynamics of those wage changes across different business cycles. The level of education or the sector of re-employment affects the change in wages following an unemployment spell differently across different downturns. The degree of wage rigidity varies across recessions; wage changes pre- and post-unemployment are sometimes procyclical and sometimes countercyclical. These results may be useful for ...
Working Paper
Home Hours in the United States and Europe
Using data from the Multinational Time Use Study, this paper documents the trends and levels of time allocation, with a focus on home hours, for a relatively large set of industrialized countries during the past 50 years. Three patterns emerge. First, home hours have decreased in both the United States and European countries. Second, female time allocation contributes more to the cross-country difference in both the trends and the levels of market hours and home hours per person. Third, time allocations between the United States and Europe are more similar for the prime-age group than for the ...
Working Paper
Human Capital Dynamics and the U.S. Labor Market
The high U.S. unemployment rate after the Great Recession is usually considered to be a result of changes in factors influencing either the demand side or the supply side of the labor market. However, no matter what factors have caused the changes in the unemployment rate, these factors should have influenced workers' and firms' decisions. Therefore, it is important to take into account workers' endogenous responses to changes in various factors when seeking to understand how these factors affect the unemployment rate. To address this issue, we estimate a Mortensen-Pissarides style of ...