The History of Technological Anxiety and the Future of Economic Growth: Is This Time Different?

[Symposium: Automation and Labor Markets]

By Joel Mokyr, Chris Vickers, and Nicolas L. Ziebarth

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2015

Technology is widely considered the main source of economic progress, but it has also generated cultural anxiety throughout history. The developed world is now suffering from another bout of such angst. Anxieties over technology can take on several fo...

The Beveridge Curve: A Survey

By Michael W. L. Elsby, Ryan Michaels, and David Ratner

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2015

Important progress has been made in economists' understanding of the Beveridge curve, from its measurement to its expression in canonical labor market models. Yet enduring puzzles remain. Chief among these are the empirical role of vacancies in the recrui...

Labor Market Heterogeneity and the Aggregate Matching Function

By Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2015

We estimate an aggregate matching function and find that the regression residual, which captures movements in matching efficiency, displays procyclical fluctuations and a dramatic decline after 2007. Using a matching function framework that explicitly tak...

Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market

By Leo Kaas and Philipp Kircher

American Economic Review, October 2015

We develop and analyze a labor market model in which heterogeneous firms operate under decreasing returns and compete for labor by posting long-term contracts. Firms achieve faster growth by offering higher lifetime wages, which allows them to fill vacan...

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Understanding Pro-cyclical Mortality

By Ann H. Stevens, Douglas L. Miller, Marianne E. Page, and Mateusz Filipski

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2015

It is well-known that mortality rates are pro-cyclical. In this paper, we attempt to understand why. We find little evidence that cyclical changes in individuals' own employment-related behavior drives the relationship; own-group employment rates are not ...

Market Externalities of Large Unemployment Insurance Extension Programs

By Rafael Lalive, Camille Landais, and Josef Zweimüller

American Economic Review, December 2015

We provide evidence that unemployment insurance affects equilibrium conditions in the labor market, which creates significant "market externalities." We provide a framework for identification of such equilibrium effects and implement it using the Regional...

The Masking of the Decline in Manufacturing Employment by the Housing Bubble

By Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2016

The employment-to-population ratio among prime-aged adults aged 25–54 has fallen substantially since 2000. The explanations proposed for the decline in the employment-to-population ratio have been of two broad types. One set of explanations emphasizes c...

The Phillips Curve: Back to the '60s?

By Olivier Blanchard

American Economic Review, May 2016

This paper reexamines the behavior of inflation and unemployment and reaches four conclusions: 1) The U.S. Phillips curve is alive and well (at least as well as in the past). 2) Inflation expectations however have become steadily more anchored. 3) The slo...

Can We Restart the Recovery All Over Again?

By John B. Taylor

American Economic Review, May 2016

Many have argued that a deviation from good economic policy has been a cause of the poor U.S. economic performance of the past decade and that policy reforms are needed to restore strong growth. Yet others argue that the recent stagnation is secular or th...

Wage Posting and Business Cycles

By Giuseppe Moscarini and Fabien Postel-Vinay

American Economic Review, May 2016

The canonical model of job search and wage posting (Burdett and Mortensen, 1998) establishes a natural connection between the average wage growth in the economy and the pace of Employer-to-Employer (EE) transitions, predicting wage growth to be positively...

Determinants of Callbacks to Job Applications: An Audit Study

By Henry S. Farber, Dan Silverman, and Till von Wachter

American Economic Review, May 2016

We summarize findings from an audit study investigating how unemployment duration, age, and holding a low-level "interim" job affect the likelihood that experienced college-educated females applying for administrative support jobs receive a callback from ...

Debt Constraints and the Labor Wedge

By Patrick Kehoe, Virgiliu Midrigan, and Elena Pastorino

American Economic Review, May 2016

Changes in household debt and employment across regions of the U.S. during the Great Recession are highly correlated: regions where the decrease in household debt was most pronounced were also regions where the decline in employment was most severe. We sh...

A Lost Generation? Education Decisions and Employment Outcomes during the US Housing Boom-Bust Cycle of the 2000s

By Luc Laeven and Alexander Popov

American Economic Review, May 2016

We exploit regional variations in U.S. house price fluctuations during the boom-bust cycle of the 2000s to study the impact of the housing cycle on young Americans' choices related to education and employment. We find that in MSAs which experienced large ...

The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment

By Justin R. Pierce and Peter K. Schott

American Economic Review, July 2016

This paper links the sharp drop in US manufacturing employment after 2000 to a change in US trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries more exposed to the change experience greater employment loss, increased imp...

Entry, Exit, Firm Dynamics, and Aggregate Fluctuations

By Gian Luca Clementi and Berardino Palazzo

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2016

Firm entry and exit amplify and propagate the effects of aggregate shocks, leading to greater persistence and unconditional variation of aggregate quantities. Following a positive aggregate shock, entry rises. As in the data, entrants are small and their ...

Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time

By Charles I. Jones and Peter J. Klenow

American Economic Review, September 2016

We propose a summary statistic for the economic well-being of people in a country. Our measure incorporates consumption, leisure, mortality, and inequality, first for a narrow set of countries using detailed micro data, and then more broadly using multi-c...