This paper studies the dynamics of labor demand at the firm level. Recent studies emphasize the importance of non-convex components in the structure of hiring and firing costs in the form of either fixed or linear adjustment costs. Building from Cooper al. (2005) model and Rota (2004)...

This paper quantitatively studies the interaction of education and occupation choices and its implication in accounting for changes in the relative wealth of households over 1983-2001 in the United States. Among households whose head is a college graduate, the ratio of the average household...

Precautionary saving has engendered much interest, both because of the possibility that it can explain why, contrary to the basic Lifecycle/Permanent-Income Hypothesis, consumption roughly tracks income over the lifecycle and because of speculation that precautionary saving might account for a...

This paper develops a real business cycle model characterized by a large number of agents facing idiosyncratic employment shocks and borrowing constraints. In particular, I use numerical methods to study the statistical properties of aggregate variables in equilibrium under both complete and...

There is now considerable evidence that business cycle variation in output and employment in the U.S. differs in expansions and contractions. We present nonparametric evidence that asymmetries are strongest in durable goods manufacturing. In a Markov switching framework, we find two leading...

We quantitatively assess the role of on-the-job search for labor market dynamics in a fully specified, real DSGE model with endogenous job creation and destruction. The model features heterogeneity of the productivity of firms, across which workers search, as well as heterogeneity of jobs within...

Existing models of equilibrium unemployment with endogenous labor market participation are complex, generate procyclical unemployment rates, and suffer from the usual defects of matching models. We embed endogenous participation in a simple, tractable job market matching model, show analytically...

This paper investigates the redistributive effects of taxation on occupational choice and growth. We discuss a two-sector economy in the spirit of Romer (1990). Agents engage in one of two alternative occupations: either self-employment in an intermediate goods sector characterized by...

We propose an agent-based model to investigate the effects of policies against poverty – income support, workfare policies and active labor market programs within different economic and institutional setting