Market power arises in the case where a seller is aware that raising output will depress price. In the profit-maximizing equilibrium with market power, price exceeds marginal cost. The Lerner index---the ratio of price less marginal cost to the price---is a widely accepted measure of market...

It is a remarkable fact about the historical US business cycle that, after unemployment reached its peak in a recession, and a recovery began, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate was stable at around 0.55 percentage points per year. The economy seems to have had an irresistible force...

New data compel a new view of events in the labor market during a recession. Unemployment rises almost entirely because jobs become harder to find. Recessions involve little increase in the flow of workers out of jobs. Another important finding from new data is that a large fraction of workers...