The distribution of job satisfaction widened across cohorts of young men in the United States between 1978 and 1988, and between 1978 and 1996, in ways correlated with changing wage inequality. Satisfaction among workers in upper earnings quantiles rose relative to that of workers in lower...

This paper presents some empirical results on the dynamic relationship between fiscal policy and the real exchange rate in the G3 countries since advent of floating exchange rates. This subject is of some interest given the recent shift to fiscal surpluses in the US, the annual announcement of...

With the American Time Use Survey of 2003 and 2004 we first examine whether additional market work has neutral impacts on the mix of non-market activities. The estimates indicate that fixed time costs of market work alter patterns of non-market activities, reducing leisure time and mostly...

By age 77 a plurality of women in wealthy Western societies are widows. Comparing older (aged 70+) married women to widows in the American Time Use Survey 2003-18 and linking the data to the Current Population Survey allow inferring the short- and longer-term effects of an arguably exogenous...

This paper implements a novel empirical approach for estimating the importance of structural factors in explaining the recent behavior of G3 current account positions. Following the contribution of Sims (1982), we employ a tractable econometric framework that can be used to answer the following...

This paper analyzes German monetary policy in the post-Bretton Woods era. Despite the public focus on monetary targeting, in practice, German monetary policy involves the management of short term interest rates, as it does in the United States. Except during the mid to late 1970s, the Bundesbank...

This study uses data for the U.S. from the May 1991 CPS and for Germany from the 1990 wave of the Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) to analyze when people work during the day and week. The evidence shows: 1) Work in the evenings or at night is quite common in both countries, with around 7 percent of...

I develop a model with the path of labor-market outcomes exhibiting hysteresis depending on prior labor-market policy. The results suggest that attempts to transfer policies across economies lead to surprising results even if current economic outcomes in the countries appear similar. Examples of...

Recent studies have documented the growth of earnings inequality in the United States during the 1980s. In contrast to these studies' findings, our analysis of micro data for the former West Germany yields virtually no evidence of growth in earnings inequality over the same period. Between 1978...

Like most Western European countries, Germany stringently regulates dismissals and layoffs. Critics contend that this regulation raises the costs of employment adjustment and hence impedes employers' ability to respond to fluctuations in demand. Other German labor policies, however, most...