Search Results
Working Paper
Racial Gaps in Labor Market Outcomes in the Last Four Decades and over the Business Cycle
We examine racial disparities in key labor market outcomes for men and women over the past four decades, with a special emphasis on their evolution over the business cycle. Blacks have substantially higher and more cyclical unemployment rates than whites, and observable characteristics can explain very little of this differential, which is importantly driven by a comparatively higher risk of job loss. In contrast, the Hispanic-white unemployment rate gap is comparatively small and is largely explained by lower educational attainment of (mostly foreign-born) Hispanics. Regarding labor force ...
Working Paper
Customer Capital, Markup Cyclicality, and Amplification
This paper studies the importance of firm-level price markup dynamics for business cycle fluctuations. Using state-of-the-art IO techniques to measure the behavior of markups over the business cycle at the firm level, I find that markups are countercyclical with an average elasticity of -1.1 with respect to real GDP. Importantly, I find substantial heterogeneity in markup cyclicality across firms, with small firms having significantly more counter-cyclical markups than large firms. Then, I develop a general equilibrium model by embedding customer capital (due to deep habits as in Ravn, ...
Working Paper
The Ins and Outs of Self-Employment: An Estimate of Business Cycle and Trend Effects
We examine quarterly microlevel data on labor market transitions taken from the Current Population Survey from 1990 to 2014 to estimate how the business cycle affects transitions into and out of self-employment from other labor market states. We control for individual demographics and occupational influences in our analysis to better pinpoint the effect of demand growth on these transitions. We find that changes in demand conditions substantially influence the marginal rate of transition into and out of self-employment from other labor market states, after taking into account demographic and ...
Discussion Paper
Part II: Why Do Banks Keep All That “Fracking” Money?
In a recent post, I discussed the significant impact that ?fracking? and other unconventional energy development has had on bank deposits. Using this deposit windfall, I estimated how banks allocate these funds, finding that over the recent business cycle they reduced the portion used for loans. In this post, I will discuss what may have influenced the decision to lend these funds or to hold liquid assets like cash or securities.
Working Paper
Limited Participation in Equity Markets and Business Cycles
This paper studies how the rise in US households' participation in equity markets affects the transmission of macroeconomic shocks to the economy. I embed limited participation into a New Keynesian framework for the US economy to analyze the individual and aggregate effects of higher participation. I derive three main results. First, participants are relatively more responsive to shocks than nonparticipants. Second, higher participation reduces the effectiveness of monetary policy. Third, with higher participation the economy becomes less volatile. I contrast key predictions of my model with ...
Discussion Paper
What Do Banks Do with All That \\"Fracking\\" Money?
Banks play a crucial role in the economy by channeling funds from savers to borrowers. The ability of banks to accomplish this intermediation has become an important element in understanding the causes and consequences of business cycles. In a recent staff report, I investigate how a positive deposit windfall translates into investments by banks. This post, the first of two, shows how the development of new energy resources has led to deposit inflows to banks and how that can be used to estimate banks? investment decisions over the recent business cycle. The second post will look at factors ...