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Briefing
How Female Labor Supply Shapes Aggregate Labor Market Dynamics
In this article, we detail key aspects of female labor supply and how it shapes aggregate labor market dynamics. We start by documenting several important features of female labor supply including labor market participation, business cycle volatility, responsiveness to the underlying economic environment and its role for insurance within the household. For this article, we relied on Michele Tertilt and Matthias Doepke's excellent survey "Families in Macroeconomics."
Report
Using home maintenance and repairs to smooth variable earnings
Recent research indicates that the marked increase in U.S. income inequality over the last twenty-five years has not been matched by a similar increase in consumption inequality. This paper examines the role of saving/dissaving in a house as a vehicle for consumption smoothing. Data from the American Housing Survey show that expenditures on home maintenance and repairs are economically significant, amounting to roughly $1,750 per household each year. This figure is comparable to the labor literature estimates that put households' average annual transitory income variance at about $2,200. Our ...