Search Results
Working Paper
Unemployment Risk, Portfolio Choice, and the Racial Wealth Gap
Black Americans face higher cyclical unemployment risk than white Americans: job-finding rates during recessions are lower and the risk of becoming long-term unemployed is higher. Differences in unemployment risk across Black and white Americans imply that Black Americans optimally invest less in risky assets. We show that differences in unemployment risk can explain up to 90% of the gap in the stock market shares of Black and white portfolios, resulting in lower returns on wealth for Black Americans. Through this portfolio channel, adverse labor market conditions for Black Americans ...
Working Paper
Does Unemployment Risk Affect Business Cycle Dynamics?
In this paper, I show that the decline in household consumption during unemployment spells depends on both liquid and illiquid asset positions. I also provide evidence that unemployment spells predict the withdrawal of illiquid assets, particularly when households have few liquid assets. Motivated by these findings, I embed endogenous unemployment risk in a two-asset heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian model. The model is consistent with the above evidence and provides a new propagation mechanism for aggregate shocks due to a flight-to-liquidity that occurs when unemployment risk rises. This ...
How Job Risk and Human Capital Shape Male Lifetime Earnings Disparities
Higher unemployment risk and fewer outside job offers appear to be key reasons why some men end up at the bottom of the lifetime earnings distribution for male workers.
Working Paper
Impact of Occupational Unemployment Risk on Household Spending
The life-cycle consumption and permanent income hypotheses predict that if workers face greater likelihood of unemployment in the future that lowers expected future income, they will save more today. In this paper, we test this hypothesis by looking at the expenditure response of workers to the change in unemployment risk measured at the occupational level. We find that occupational unemployment risk does not have a large impact on consumption expenditure. However, despite investigating multiple forms of occupational unemployment risk for multiple expenditure categories in two expenditure ...
Speech
Beyond the macroeconomy
Remarks at the Economic Press Briefing, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City.
Working Paper
Consumption Heterogeneity by Occupation: Understanding the Impact of Occupation on Personal Consumption during the COVID-19 Pandemic
This paper exploits the variation in the unemployment rate of different occupations in the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic to analyze the response of consumption spending to unemployment risk. We find that earlier in the pandemic, higher unemployment risk did not reduce relative spending. However, as the pandemic proceeded, higher unemployment risk reduced relative spending. This pattern held across both essential and nonessential spending categories. We find that “high-risk” occupations had three common characteristics: lower ability to be performed from home, higher physical ...