How the West "Invented" Fertility Restriction

By Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth

American Economic Review, October 2013

We analyze the emergence of the first socioeconomic institution in history limiting fertility: west of a line from St. Petersburg to Trieste, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) reduced childbirths by approximately one-third between the fourteenth and ...

The Economic Impact of Syrian Refugees on Host Countries: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Turkey

By Semih Tumen

American Economic Review, May 2016

The Syrian Conflict generated forced immigration from northern Syria to southeastern Turkey. Arrival of refugees resembles a natural experiment, which offers good opportunities to study the economic impact of immigration. I study three main outcomes: labo...

The Effect of Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits: Evidence from the 2012-2013 Phase-Out

By Henry S. Farber, Jesse Rothstein, and Robert G. Valletta

American Economic Review, May 2015

Unemployment Insurance benefit durations were extended during the Great Recession, reaching 99 weeks for most recipients. The extensions were rolled back and eventually terminated by the end of 2013. Using matched CPS data from 2008-2014, we estimate the ...

The Effect of Unemployment Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment Insurance Receipt: New Evidence from a Regression Kink Design in Missouri, 2003-2013

By David Card, Andrew Johnston, Pauline Leung, Alexandre Mas, and Zhuan Pei

American Economic Review, May 2015

We provide new evidence on the effect of the unemployment insurance (UI) weekly benefit amount on unemployment insurance spells based on administrative data from the state of Missouri covering the period 2003-2013. Identification comes from a regression k...

Education and Catch-Up in the Industrial Revolution

By Sascha O. Becker, Erik Hornung, and Ludger Woessmann

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2011

Research increasingly stresses the role of human capital in modern economic development. Existing historical evidence -- mostly from British textile industries -- however, rejects that formal education was important for the Industrial Revolution. Our new ...

Heterogeneity and Aggregation: Implications for Labor-Market Fluctuations

By Yongsung Chang and Sun-Bin Kim

American Economic Review, December 2007

We demonstrate that aggregate employment and consumption can increase without a corresponding movement in productivity in a model with heterogeneous agents where the only aggregate disturbance is a productivity shock. The interaction between incomplete ca...

Recall and Unemployment

By Shigeru Fujita and Giuseppe Moscarini

American Economic Review, December 2017

We document in the Survey of Income and Program Participation covering the period 1990–2013 that a surprisingly large share of workers return to their previous employer after a jobless spell, and experience very different unemployment and employment...

Teaching the Tax Code: Earnings Responses to an Experiment with EITC Recipients

By Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2013

We conducted a randomized experiment with 43,000 EITC recipients at H&R Block. Tax preparers gave simple, personalized information about the EITC schedule to half of their clients. We find no significant effects of information provision on earnings in the...

Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity and the Case for Temporary Inflation in the Eurozone

[Symposium: The Euro]

By Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martin Uribe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2013

Since the onset of the Great Recession in peripheral Europe, nominal hourly wages have not fallen from the high levels they had reached during the boom years -- this in spite of widespread increases in unemployment. This observation evokes a well-known ...

The Impact of Temporary Protected Status on Immigrants' Labor Market Outcomes

By Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

American Economic Review, May 2015

The United States currently provides Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to more than 300,000 immigrants. TPS is typically granted if dangerous conditions prevail in migrants' home countries. Individuals with TPS are allowed to stay and work in the United St...

Offshoring and Volatility: Evidence from Mexico's Maquiladora Industry

By Paul R. Bergin, Robert C. Feenstra, and Gordon H. Hanson

American Economic Review, September 2009

This paper studies the second-moment properties of offshoring, the arrangement whereby firms carry out particular stages of production abroad. It documents a new empirical regularity: maquiladora industries in Mexico that are associated with US offshoring...

A Contribution to the Empirics of Reservation Wages

By Alan B. Krueger and Andreas I. Mueller

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2016

This paper provides evidence on the behavior of reservation wages over the spell of unemployment, using high-frequency longitudinal data on unemployed workers in New Jersey. In comparison to a calibrated job search model, the reservation wage starts out t...

Longer-Term Impacts of Mentoring, Educational Services, and Learning Incentives: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in the United States

By Núria Rodríguez-Planas

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2012

This paper reports on a randomized evaluation of a program designed to improve high school graduation and postsecondary education enrollment among low-performing high school students. Treated youths were offered mentoring, educational services, and financ...

Interpreting the Great Moderation: Changes in the Volatility of Economic Activity at the Macro and Micro Levels

By Steven J. Davis and James A. Kahn

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2008

Most advanced economies have experienced a striking decline in the volatility of aggregate economic activity since the early 1980s. Volatility reductions are evident for output and employment at the aggregate level and across most industrial sectors and e...

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...

Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood

By Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, and Benjamin Scuderi

American Economic Review, May 2016

We show that differences in childhood environments shape gender gaps in adulthood by documenting three facts using population tax records for children born in the 1980s. First, gender gaps in employment rates, earnings, and college attendance vary substan...

Preferences over Inflation and Unemployment: Evidence from Surveys of Happiness

By Rafael Di Tella, Robert J. MacCulloch, and Andrew J. Oswald

American Economic Review, March 2001

Land and Power: Theory and Evidence from Chile

By Jean-Marie Baland and James A. Robinson

American Economic Review, December 2008

Many employment relationships concede rents to workers. Depending on the political institutions, the presence of such rents allows employers to use the threat of withdrawing them to control their workers' political behavior, such as their votes in the ...

Deregulation and the Labor Market

[Symposium: Legacy of Deregulation]

By James Peoples

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1998

This paper examines the earnings and employment effect of deregulation in the trucking, railroad, airlines, and telecommunications industries. Findings on nonmanagement workers suggest labor earnings fell sharply in trucking, somewhat in airlines, slightl...

Some Lasting Effects of Undergraduate Economics on Retirement Planning

By William Bosshardt and William B. Walstad

American Economic Review, May 2017

This study investigated the likely effects of undergraduate economics on whether a college graduate has opened a retirement account four years after graduation. Economic education is measured by the number of economics credit hours or whether a college gr...