We use a mix of new and existing data to develop the Aggregate Hours Gap (AHG), a novel measure of labor market underutilization. Our measure differentiates individuals by detailed categories of labor market participation and uses data on their desired work hours as a measure of their potential...

We propose a new business cycle theory. Firms need to randomize over firing or keeping workers who have performed poorly in the past, in order to give them an ex-ante incentive to exert effort. Firms have an incentive to coordinate the outcome of their randomizations, as coordination allows them...

The flow opportunity cost of moving from unemployment to employment consists of foregone public benefits and the foregone value of non-working time in units of consumption. We construct a time series of the opportunity cost of employment using detailed microdata and administrative or national...

We document the consequences of losing a job across countries using a harmonized research design. Workers in Denmark and Sweden experience the lowest earnings declines following job displacement, while workers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal experience losses three times as high. French and...

Alternative work arrangements, including temporary and contract work, have become more widespread. There is interest in understanding the effects of these types of arrangements on employment and earnings risk for workers and the potential for existing social insurance programs to address this...

We use employer-employee matched administrative data from Ohio to study the role of firm pay premiums in explaining the large, persistent earnings losses of displaced workers. We estimate that earnings for displaced workers from the mid-2000s are depressed by 22 percent after four years,...

We model worker heterogeneity in the rents from being employed in a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model of matching and unemployment. We show that heterogeneity, reflecting differences in match quality and worker assets, reduces the extent of fluctuations in separations and unemployment. We find...

Does attracting or losing jobs in high paying sectors have important spill-over effects on wages in other sectors? The answer to this question is central to a proper assessment of many trade and industrial policies. In this paper, we explore this question by examining how predictable changes in...

As of 2004 California employed almost 30% of all foreign born workers in the U.S. and was the state with the largest percentage of immigrants in the labor force. It received a very large number of uneducated immigrants so that two thirds of workers with no schooling degree in California were...

This paper argues that a risk-averse worker's after-tax reservation wage encodes all the relevant information about her welfare. This insight leads to a novel test for the optimality of unemployment insurance based on the responsiveness of reservation wages to unemployment benefits. Some...