The surge in U.S. wage inequality over the past several decades is now commonly attributed to an increase in the returns paid to skill. Although theories differ with respect to why, specifically, this increase has come about, many agree that it is strongly tied to the increase in the relative...

Estimates of the natural rate of unemployment are important in many macroeconomic models used by economists and policy advisors. This paper shows how such estimates might benefit from closer attention to regional developments. Regional business cycles do not move in lockstep and greater...

Using a regional VAR, we find large differences in the effects of monetary policy shocks across regions of the United States. We also find that the region-level effects of monetary policy differ a great deal between the pre-Volcker and Volcker-Greenspan periods in terms of their depth and...

This paper provides new estimates of the effects of ethnic networks on U.S. exports. In line with recent research, our dataset is a panel of exports from U.S. states to 29 foreign countries. Our analysis departs from the literature in two ways, both of which show that previous estimates of the...

Empirically, large employers have been shown to devote greater resources to filling vacancies than small employers. Following this evidence, this paper offers a theory of producer size based on labor market search, whereby a key factor in the determination of producer's total employment is the...

This paper presents new evidence of spatial correlation in U.S. state income growth. We extend the basic spatial econometric model used in the growth literature by allowing spatial correlation in state income growth to vary across geographic regions. We find positive spatial correlation in...

A school’s quality is often inferred from the premium a parent must pay to buy a house associated with a better school. Isolating this effect, however, is difficult because better schools also tend to be located in nicer neighborhoods and, therefore, cost more for reasons other than school...

One of the most robust findings emerging from studies of industrial agglomeration is the rise in productivity that tends to accompany it. What most studies have not addressed, however, is the potential role played by human capital externalities in driving this relationship. This paper seeks to...

We implement a spatial probit model to differentiate states with a lottery from those without a lottery. Our analysis extends the basic spatial probit model by allowing spatial dependence to vary across geographic regions. We also separate the spatial effects of neighbors versus non-neighbors....