J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor
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Trends in U.S. Hours and the Labor Wedge
From 1980 until 2007, U.S. average hours worked increased by thirteen percent, due to a large increase in female hours. At the same time, the U.S. labor wedge, measured as the discrepancy between a representative household's marginal rate of substitution between consumption and leisure and the marginal product of labor, declined substantially. -
What Accounts for the U.S.-Canada Education-Premium Difference?
This paper analyzes the differences in wage ratios of university graduates to less than university graduates, the education premium, in Canada and the United States from 1980 to 2000. Both countries experienced a similar increase in the fraction of university graduates and a similar increase in skill biased technological change based on capital-embodied technological progress, but only the United States had a large increase in the education premium. -
Human Capital Risk and the Firmsize Wage Premium
Why do employed persons in large firms earn more than employed persons in small firms, even after controlling for observable characteristics? Complementary to previous results, this paper proposes a mechanism that gives an answer to this question. -
Unsecured Debt, Consumer Bankruptcy, and Small Business
In this paper we develop a quantitative model of entrepreneurial activity (risk-taking) and consumer bankruptcy choices and use the model to study the effects of bankruptcy regulations on entrepreneurial activity, bankruptcy rate and welfare. -
Uncertainty and the Specificity of Human Capital
This paper studies the choice between general and specific human capital. A trade-off arises because general human capital, while less productive, can easily be reallocated across firms. -
Education and Self-Employment: Changes in Earnings and Wealth Inequality
The author quantitatively studies the interaction between education and occupation choices and its implication for the relationship between the changes in earnings inequality and the changes in wealth inequality in the United States over the 1983–2001 period. -
Intertemporal Substitution in Macroeconomics: Evidence from a Two-Dimensional Labour Supply Model with Money
The hypothesis of intertemporal substitution in labour supply has a history of empirical failure when confronted with aggregate time-series data. -
Learning-by-Doing or Habit Formation?
In a recent paper, Chang, Gomes, and Schorfheide (2002) extend the standard real business cycle (RBC) model to allow for a learning-by-doing (LBD) mechanism whereby current labour supply affects future productivity. -
Educational Spillovers: Does One Size Fit All?
In a search model of production, where agents accumulate heterogeneous amounts of human capital, an individual worker's wage depends on average human capital in the searching population.