J - Labor and Demographic Economics
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Trade and Market Power in Product and Labor Markets
Trade liberalizations increase the sales and input purchases of productive firms relative to their less productive domestic competitors. This reallocation affects firms’ market power in their product and input markets. I quantify how the labour market power of employers affects the distribution and size of the gains from trade. -
Labor Demand Response to Labor Supply Incentives: Lessons from the German Mini-Job Reform
How do firms change their employment decisions when tax benefits for low-earning workers are expanded? Some firms increase employment overall, whereas others replace high-earning workers with low-earning workers, according to German linked employer-employee data. -
Labor Market Policies During an Epidemic
We study the labour market and welfare effects of expanding unemployment insurance benefits and introducing payroll subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that both policies are complementary and are beneficial to different types of workers. Payroll subsidies preserve the employment of workers in highly productive jobs, while unemployment insurance replaces lost income for workers who experience inevitable job loss. -
Towards a HANK Model for Canada: Estimating a Canadian Income Process
How might one simulate a million realistic income paths and compute their statistical moments in under a second? Using CUDA-based methods to estimate the Canadian earnings process, I find that the distribution of labour income growth is sharply peaked with heavy tails—similar to that in the United States. -
How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary over the Business Cycle?
Should unemployment benefits be more generous during economic downturns? The optimal amount and duration of benefit payments ultimately depend on the demographic and wealth characteristics of benefit recipients. -
Earnings Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission of Skill
How are your past, current and future earnings related to those of your parents? We explore this by using 37 years of Canadian tax data on two generations. -
Cyclicality of Schooling: New Evidence from Unobserved Components Models
What is the time-varying impact of economic cycles on decisions to invest in human capital? -
Child Skill Production: Accounting for Parental and Market-Based Time and Goods Investments
Can daycare replace parents’ time spent with children? We explore this by using data on how parents spend time and money on children and how this spending is related to their child’s development. -
Optimal Taxation in Asset Markets with Adverse Selection
What is the optimal tax schedule in over-the-counter markets, e.g., those for corporate bonds? I find that an optimal tax schedule is often non-monotonic. For example, trading of some high-price assets should be subsidized, and trading of some low-price assets should be taxed.