Dynamism Diminished: The Role of Housing Markets and Credit Conditions

By Steven J. Davis and John Haltiwanger

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2024

We estimate the effects of house price changes on young-firm employment shares and industry-level employment growth in local economies. A novel test shows that house price effects on local economies work through wealth, liquidity, and collateral effects o...

The Heterogeneous Effects of Social Assistance and Unemployment Insurance: Evidence from a Life Cycle Model of Family Labor Supply and Savings

By Peter Haan and Victoria Prowse

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, April 2024

We empirically analyze the heterogeneous welfare effects of unemployment insurance and social assistance. We estimate a structural life cycle model of singles' and married couples' labor supply and savings decisions. The model includes heterogeneity by ag...

The Gender Application Gap: Do Men and Women Apply for the Same Jobs?

By Jonas Fluchtmann, Anita M. Glenny, Nikolaj A. Harmon, and Jonas Maibom

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

Men and women tend to hold different jobs. Are these differences present already in the types of jobs men and women apply for? Using administrative data on job applications made by the universe of Danish unemployment insurance recipients, we provide evide...

Opposing Firm-Level Responses to the China Shock: Output Competition versus Input Supply

By Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Matthieu Lequien, Marc J. Melitz, and Thomas Zuber

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

We decompose the "China shock" into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and an input supply shock affecting ...

Public Pensions and Private Savings

By Esteban García-Miralles and Jonathan M. Leganza

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

How does the provision of public pension benefits impact private savings? We answer this question in the context of a Danish reform that increased social security eligibility ages. Using administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, we identi...

Refugee Benefit Cuts

By Christian Dustmann, Rasmus Landersø, and Lars Højsgaard Andersen

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2024

This paper analyzes the effects of Denmark's Start Aid welfare reform that targets refugees. Implemented in 2002, it enables us to study not only the reform's immediate effects but also its longer-term consequences and its repeal a decade later. The refor...

How Cyclical Is the User Cost of Labor?

[Symposium: Labor Market and Macroeconomics]

By Marianna Kudlyak

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2024

In employment relationships, a wage is an installment payment on an implicit long-term agreement between a worker and a firm. The price of labor that impacts firm's hiring decisions, instead, reflects the hiring wage as well as the impact of economic cond...

The Shifting Reasons for Beveridge Curve Shifts

[Symposium: Labor Market and Macroeconomics]

By Gadi Barlevy, R. Jason Faberman, Bart Hobijn, and Ayşegül Şahin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2024

We discuss how the relative importance of factors that contribute to movements of the US Beveridge curve has changed from 1959 to 2023. We review these factors in the context of a simple flow analogy used to capture the main insights of search and match...

Urban Public Works in Spatial Equilibrium: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

By Simon Franklin, Clément Imbert, Girum Abebe, and Carolina Mejia-Mantilla

American Economic Review, May 2024

This paper evaluates a large urban public works program randomly rolled out across neighborhoods of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We find the program increased public employment and reduced private labor supply among beneficiaries and improved local amenities in...

Public works in the city

[Research Highlight]

May 16, 2024

Do government employment programs boost the welfare of the urban poor in developing countries?

Employment and Earnings of Men at High Risk of Gun Violence

By Max Kapustin, Monica P. Bhatt, Sara B. Heller, Marianne Bertrand, and Christopher Blattman

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

Since Becker (1968), economists have modeled crime as resulting from higher returns to criminal activity than legal work. Yet contemporary employment data for people engaged in crime is scarce. We surveyed men at extreme risk of gun violence in Chicago ab...

The Effects of Unemployment Insurance Caseworkers on Job Search Effort

By Amelie Schiprowski, Julia Schmidtke, Johannes Schmieder, and Simon Trenkle

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

We combine a high-frequency survey on job search effort with administrative data on caseworker interactions from the German unemployment insurance system to estimate how the dynamics of search effort respond to caseworker meetings and vacancy referrals. M...

Risk Scores for Long-Term Unemployment and the Assignment to Job Search Counseling

By Sebastian Ernst, Andreas I. Mueller, and Johannes Spinnewijn

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

This paper analyses how risk profiling is used to assign unemployed job seekers to job search counseling in Flanders, Belgium. We compare algorithmic selection to self-selection and selection by job search counselors. We discuss practical challenges for t...

Employment Effects of Job Search Assistance for the Long-Term Unemployed

By Lionel Cottier, Yves Flückiger, Pierre Kempeneers, and Rafael Lalive

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

We analyze the effects of a job search assistance (JSA) program for the long-term unemployed. JSA increases employment in the first year after assignment by about 4 percentage points. However, averaged over five years, JSA decreases employment, albeit ins...

Heterogeneity in Corporate Tax Incidence by Worker Characteristics

By Patrick J. Kennedy, Christine L. Dobridge, Paul Landefeld, and Jacob Mortenson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

We study how corporate tax incidence on worker earnings varies across worker characteristics: gender, age, and employment tenure. To do so, we examine effects of the corporate tax cuts introduced by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), using data from federa...

A Simple Model of Corporate Tax Incidence

By Dustin Swonder and Damián Vergara

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

We analyze the incidence of a linear corporate tax using a simple and portable competitive general equilibrium model in which capital owners choose to invest either in domestic production or a foreign investment opportunity and workers make extensive marg...

The Influence of COVID-19 on Young Women's Labor Market Aspirations and Expectations in India

By S Anukriti, Catalina Herrera-Almanza, and Sophie Ochmann

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

Youth unemployment and gender gaps in labor market outcomes are key policy challenges across developing countries. Young job seekers may struggle to find jobs because of their biased beliefs and unrealistic aspirations about the labor market. We study whe...

What Explains Black Employment Dynamics?

By Karl David Boulware and Kenneth N. Kuttner

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

This paper investigates the proximate causes of excessively cyclical employment growth and persistently high unemployment among Black workers, relative to White workers. Using data from the Quarterly Workforce Indicators and Job-to-Job Flows, we find that...

The Slanted-L Phillips Curve

By Pierpaolo Benigno and Gauti B. Eggertsson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

A slanted-L curve is well suited to represent the nonlinearity of the celebrated Phillips curve. We show this using cross-country data of major industrialized economies since 2009, including the inflationary surge of the 2020s. At high unemployment rates,...

Financial Access and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Credit Lotteries

By Bernardus Van Doornik, Armando Gomes, David Schoenherr, and Janis Skrastins

American Economic Review, June 2024

We assess the employment and income effects of access to credit dedicated to investment in individual mobility by exploiting time-series variation in access to credit through lotteries for participants in a group-lending mechanism in Brazil. We find that ...