Structural Change in a Multisector Model of Growth

By L. Rachel Ngai and Christopher A. Pissarides

American Economic Review, March 2007

We study a multisector model of growth with differences in TFP growth rates across sectors and derive sufficient conditions for the coexistence of structural change, characterized by sectoral labor reallocation and balanced aggregate growth. The condition...

Disaster Risk and Business Cycles

By François Gourio

American Economic Review, October 2012

Motivated by the evidence that risk premia are large and countercyclical, this paper studies a tractable real business cycle model with a small risk of economic disaster, such as the Great Depression. An increase in disaster risk leads to a decline of em...

Immigrants, Productivity, and Labor Markets

[Symposium: Immigration and Labor Markets]

By Giovanni Peri

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2016

Immigration has been a steady force acting on population and employment within countries throughout human history. Focusing on the last four decades, we show that the mix of immigrants to rich countries has been, overall, rather balanced between college a...

Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling

By Melvin Stephens Jr. and Dou-Yan Yang

American Economic Review, June 2014

Causal estimates of the benefits of increased schooling using U.S. state schooling laws as instruments typically rely on specifications which assume common trends across states in the factors affecting different birth cohorts. Differential changes acro...

Public Finance Principles and National Health Care Reform

[Symposium: Health Care Reform]

By Richard Zeckhauser

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1994

Public finance principles, though usually treated as a minor consideration, lie at the heart of effective national health care reform. Four principles are discussed: charge for a service where its cost is created; distinguish rents, resources, and transfe...

Tackling the European Migration Problems

[Symposium: Immigration]

By Klaus F. Zimmermann

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1995

A fortress Europe immigration policy is currently observed throughout the European Union. The European migration problem seems to be that, in the face of high and persistent unemployment rates, additional immigration implies further unemployment. This mig...

A Review of Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell, and Richard Jackman's Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market

By Olivier Blanchard

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2007

Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market by Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell, and Richard Jackman (Oxford University Press 2005) is the second edition of a book first published in 1991. The second edition is identical to the fi...

Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone

By Philippe Martin and Thomas Philippon

American Economic Review, July 2017

We provide a comprehensive account of the dynamics of eurozone countries from 2000 to 2012. We analyze private leverage, fiscal policy, labor costs, and spreads, and we propose a model and an identification strategy to separate the impact of credit cycles...

General versus Specific Skills in Labor Markets with Search Frictions and Firing Costs

By Etienne Wasmer

American Economic Review, June 2006

Human capital investments are not independent of the aggregate state of labor markets: frictions and slackness of the labor market raise the returns to specific human capital investments relative to general investments. We build a macroeconomic model with...

When and Why Incentives (Don't) Work to Modify Behavior

By Uri Gneezy, Stephan Meier, and Pedro Rey-Biel

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2011

First we discuss how extrinsic incentives may come into conflict with other motivations. For example, monetary incentives from principals may change how tasks are perceived by agents, with negative effects on behavior. In other cases, incentives might hav...

The School-to-Work Transition: A Cross-National Perspective

By Paul Ryan

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2001

School-to-work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies (France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position ...

Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply

By David Card and Alan B. Krueger

American Economic Review, December 2000

Shocks and Government Beliefs: The Rise and Fall of American Inflation

By Thomas Sargent, Noah Williams, and Tao Zha

American Economic Review, September 2006

We use a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to estimate the parameters of a “true” data-generating mechanism and those of a sequence of approximating models that a monetary authority uses to guide its decisions. Gaps between a true expectati...

Income Smoothing and Consumption Smoothing

[Symposium: Consumption Smoothing in Developing Countries]

By Jonathan Morduch

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1995

One way that risk-averse households protect consumption levels is to borrow and use insurance mechanisms. Another way, common in low-income economies, is to diversify economic activities and make conservative production and employment choices. Households ...

Is There a Link between Foreclosure and Health?

By Janet Currie and Erdal Tekin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2015

We investigate the relationship between foreclosures and hospital visits using data on all foreclosures and all hospital and emergency room visits from four states that were among the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. We find that living in a neighbo...

New and Old Keynesians

[Symposium: Keynesian Economics Today]

By Bruce Greenwald and Joseph E. Stiglitz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1993

The purpose of this paper is to describe one strand of New Keynesian literature which explores how increased flexibility of wages and prices might exacerbate the economy's downturn, and to contrast it with other strands of New Keynesian literature. This s...

The Labor Market Impact of Mandated Employment Verification Systems

By Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Cynthia Bansak

American Economic Review, May 2012

Employment verification systems covered about one out of four people hired in the United States in 2010. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of state-level employment verification mandates on the employment and wages of likely unauthorized workers acros...

Politics and Local Economic Growth: Evidence from India

By Sam Asher and Paul Novosad

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2017

Political favoritism affects the allocation of government resources, but is it consequential for growth? Using a close election regression discontinuity design and data from India, we measure the local economic impact of being represented by a politician ...

Do Temporary-Help Jobs Improve Labor Market Outcomes for Low-Skilled Workers? Evidence from "Work First"

By David H. Autor and Susan N. Houseman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2010

Temporary-help jobs offer rapid entry into paid employment, but they are typically brief and it is unknown whether they foster longer term employment. We utilize the unique structure of Detroit's welfare-to- work program to identify the effect of tempor...

The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

By Britta Augsburg, Ralph De Haas, Heike Harmgart, and Costas Meghir

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2015

We use an RCT to analyze the impacts of microcredit. The study population consists of loan applicants who were marginally rejected by an MFI in Bosnia. A random subset of these were offered a loan. We provide evidence of higher self-employment, increases ...