Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 23.
(refine search)
Working Paper
The Disappointing Recovery of Output after 2009
U.S. output has expanded only slowly since the recession trough in 2009, even though the unemployment rate has essentially returned to a precrisis, normal level. We use a growth-accounting decomposition to explore explanations for the output shortfall, giving full treatment to cyclical effects that, given the depth of the recession, should have implied unusually fast growth. We find that the growth shortfall has almost entirely reflected two factors: the slow growth of total factor productivity, and the decline in labor force participation. Both factors reflect powerful adverse forces that ...
Journal Article
The Disappointing Recovery in U.S. Output after 2009
U.S. output has expanded only slowly since the recession trough in 2009, counter to normal expectations of a rapid cyclical recovery. Removing cyclical effects reveals that the deep recession was superimposed on a sharply slowing trend in underlying growth. The slowing trend reflects two factors: slow growth of innovation and declining labor force participation. Both of these powerful adverse forces were in place before the recession and, thus, were not the result of the financial crisis or policy changes since 2009.
Conference Paper
Business volatility, job destruction and unemployment - discussion
Conference Paper
Cyclical movements along the labor supply function
A consensus in macroeconomics holds that the observed higher-frequency movements in employment and hours of work are movements along a labor-supply function caused by shifts of the labor demand function. Recent theoretical thinking has extended this view to include fluctuations in unemployment, so that macroeconomists can speak coherently of movements along an unemployment function caused by shifts in labor demand.
Conference Paper
The labor market and macro volatility: a nonstationary general-equilibrium analysis
The evolution of the aggregate labor market is far from smooth. I investigate the success of a macro model in replicating the observed levels of volatility of unemployment and other key variables. I take variations in productivity growth and in exogenous product demand (government purchases plus net exports) as the primary exogenous sources of fluctuations. The macro model embodies new ideas about the labor market, all based on equilibrium?the models I consider do not rest on inefficiency in the use of labor caused by an inappropriate wage. I find that non-standard features of the labor ...
Conference Paper
Macroeconomic policy under structural change
Conference Paper
The value of life and the rise in health spending
Health care extends life. Over the past half century, Americans spent a rising share of total economic resources on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. Debate on health policy often focuses on limiting the growth of health spending. We investigate an issue central to this debate: Is the growth of health spending the rational response to changing economic conditions - notably the growth of income per person? We develop a model based on standard economic assumptions and argue that this is indeed the case. Standard preferences - of the kind used widely in economics to ...
Journal Article
Comparing Pandemic Unemployment to Past U.S. Recoveries
Unemployment fell at a slow and steady rate in the 10 cyclical recoveries from 1949 through 2019. These historical patterns also apply to the recovery from the pandemic recession after accounting for the unprecedented burst of temporary layoffs early in the pandemic followed by their rapid reversal from April to November 2020. Unemployment for other reasons—which has been most important in other recent recoveries—did not start declining until November 2020. Since then, unemployment for other reasons has declined at a faster pace than its historical average.
Working Paper
Why Has the US Economy Recovered So Consistently from Every Recession in the Past 70 Years?
It is a remarkable fact about the historical US business cycle that, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery began, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate was stable at around 0.55 percentage points per year. The economy seems to have had an irresistible force toward restoring full employment. There was high variation in monetary and fiscal policy, and in productivity and labor-force growth, but little variation in the rate of decline of unemployment. We explore models of the labor market's self-recovery that imply gradual working off of unemployment ...
Monograph
Cyclical movements along the labor supply function
A consensus in macroeconomics holds that the observed higher-frequency movements in employment and hours of work are movements along a labor-supply function caused by shifts of the labor demand function. Recent theoretical thinking has extended this view to include fluctuations in unemployment, so that macroeconomists can speak coherently of movements along an unemployment function caused by shifts in labor demand.