The wage premium for high-skilled workers in the United States, measured as the ratio of the 90th-to-10th percentiles from the wage distribution, increased by 20 percent from the 1970s to the late 1980s. A large literature has emerged to explain this phenomenon. A leading explanation is that...

We provide cross-country evidence on the relative importance of cyclical and structural factors in explaining unemployment, including the sharp rise in U.S. long-term unemployment during the Great Recession of 2007-09. About 75% of the forecast error variance of unemployment is accounted for by...

Although it is generally recognized that the equilibrium real interest rate (ERR) varies over time, most recent work on policy analysis has been carried out under the assumption that this rate is constant. We show how this assumption can affect inferences about the conduct of policy in two...

This paper attempts to determine the extent to which common external shocks explain simultaneous currency crises. We define crises on a country by country basis using a new criterion that takes into account variations in the volatility of exchange rates over time and across countries. Using a...

This paper derives a closed-form solution for the optimal discretionary monetary policy in a small macroeconomic model that allows for varying degrees of forward-looking behavior. We show that a more forward-looking aggregate demand equation serves to attenuate the response to inflation and the...

We construct a 2 sector growth model with sector specific technology shocks where one sector produces intermediate goods while the other produces final goods. Theoretical restrictions from this model are used to compute the time series for sector-specific TFPs based solely on factor prices and...

The share of employment in manufacturing as well as the relative price of manufactures has declined sharply over the postwar period, while the share of manufacturing output relative to GDP has remained roughly constant. Household preferences turn out to play a key role in reconciling this...

We examine how the economy responds to both disembodied and embodied technology shocks in a model with vintage capital. We focus on what happens when there is a change in the number of vintages of capital that are in use at any one time and on what happens when there is a change in the...

Although it is generally recognized that the equilibrium real interest rate (ERR) varies over time, most recent work on policy analysis has been carried out under the assumption that this rate is constant. We show how this assumption can affect inferences about the conduct of policy in two...

The share of employment in manufacturing as well as the relative price of manufactures has declined sharply over the postwar period, while the share of manufacturing output relative to GDP has remained roughly constant. Household preferences turn out to play a key role in reconciling this...