We study how labor market conditions affect unionization decisions. Tight labor markets might spur unionization, e.g., by reducing the threat of unemployment after management opposition or employer retaliation in response to a unionization attempt. Tightness might also weaken unionization by...

We expand the analysis of cyclical changes in labor demand by decomposing changes along the intensive margin into those in days/week and in hours/day. Using large cross sections of U.S. data, 1985-2018, we observe around 1/4 of the adjustment in weekly hours occurring through changing days/week....

This paper introduces contemporaneously available monetary data into an "equilibrium" model that combines rational expectations, market clearing, and incomplete information about monetary disturbances. Data on the current money stock involve a preliminary estimate that is subject to a subsequent...

In his papers during the lead up to the birth of the European Monetary Union, Obstfeld considered whether the countries forming the EMU were sufficiently similar to survive a single monetary policy--and more importantly, whether they had the capacity to adjust to asymmetric shocks given a single...

Various types of uncertainty shocks can explain many phenomena in macroeconomics and finance. But does this just amount to inventing new, exogenous, unobserved shocks to explain challenging features of business cycles? This paper argues that three conceptually distinct fluctuations, all called...

The basic New Keynesian model predicts that positive supply shocks are less expansionary at the zero lower bound (ZLB) compared to periods of active monetary policy. We test this prediction empirically using Fernald's (2014) utilization-adjusted total factor productivity series, which we take as...

This paper constructs a general equilibrium model with two types of people where asset price fluctuations are caused by random shocks to the price level that reallocate consumption across generations. In this model, asset prices are volatile, and price-earnings ratios are persistent, even though...

We study how an economy's production structure determines the response of aggregate output and employment to sectoral financial shocks. In our framework, economic production is organized in an input-output network in which firms face financial constraints on their working capital. We show how...

This paper documents large differences across vintages in the properties of the widely-used quarterly utilization-adjusted TFP series produced by Fernald (2014), who provides updated data each quarter on his website. The most recent vintage of the adjusted TFP series has correlations with...