Research users of large administrative have to adjust their data for quirks, problems, and issues that are inevitable when working with these kinds of datasets. Not all solutions to these problems are identical, and how they differ may affect how the data is to be interpreted. Some elements of...

Why is unemployment higher for younger individuals? We address this question in a frictional model of the labor market that features learning about occupational fit. In order to learn the occupation in which they are most productive, workers sample occupations over their careers. Because young...

The U.S. labor market has become increasingly polarized since the 1980s, with the share of employment in middle-wage occupations shrinking over time. This job polarization process has been associated with the disappearance of per capita employment in occupations focused on routine tasks. We use...

This paper documents the abnormally slow recovery in the labor market during the Great Recession, and analyzes how mortgage modification policies contributed to delayed recovery. By making modifications means-tested by reducing mortgage payments based on a borrower's current income, these...

Which region(s) will come to dominate the world economy? This paper develops the Global Gaidar Model (GGM), a 17-region, 2-skills, 100-period OLG model, to address this and other questions. The model is carefully calibrated to 2017 UN demographic and IMF fiscal data. Productivity growth and its...

How do noncompete agreements between workers and firms affect wages and employment in equilibrium? We build a tractable framework of wage posting with on-the-job search and large employers that provides a natural laboratory to assess anti-competitive practices in the labor market. We...

In this short paper we show that progressive income taxes distort hiring and wages when firms have labor market power. From a firm's perspective, raising pre-tax wages increases employment by less when taxes are progressive as less of the pre-tax wage is paid to workers. Understanding this when...

We give an overview of the "German model" of industrial relations. We organize our review by focusing on the two pillars of the model: sectoral collective bargaining and firm-level codetermination. Relative to the United States, Germany outsources collective bargaining to the sectoral level,...

Job polarization refers to the recent shrinking concentration of employment in occupations in the middle of the skill distribution. Jobless recoveries refers to the slow rebound in aggregate employment following recent recessions, despite recoveries in aggregate output. We show how these two...

This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment...