Is skill dispersion a source of comparative advantage? While it is established that a country's aggregate endowment of human capital is an important determinant of comparative advantage, this paper investigates whether the distribution of skills in the labor force can play a role in the...

Using an incentivized measure of test for competition, this paper investigates whether this taste explains subsequent gender differences in earnings and industry choice in a sample of high-ability MBA graduates. We find that “competitive” individuals earn 9% more than their less competitive...

We study how firms differ from their competitors using new time-varying measures of product differentiation based on text-based analysis of product descriptions from 50,673 firm 10-K statements filed yearly with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This year-by-year set of product...

I calculate unemployment multipliers of fiscal consolidation policies in a standard, closed-economy New Keynesian framework with search and matching frictions, and, as an innovation, in the presence of sectoral heterogeneity. Family and non-family firms behave differently in the labor market and...

The practice of adopting adults, even if one has biological children, makes Japanese family firms unusually competitive. Our nearly population-wide panel of postwar listed nonfinancial firms shows inherited family firms more important in postwar Japan than generally realized, and also performing...