In this paper we study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. The data for the U.S. and for a cross section of countries make it clear that urbanization and industrialization are strongly associated with the rise of social insurance. We describe a model economy in which...

In recent years, Spain has received unprecedented immigration flows. Between 2001 and 2006 the fraction of the population born abroad more than doubled, increasing from 4.8% to 10.8%. For Spanish provinces with above-median inflows (relative to population), immigration increased the high school...

After a decade in which wages and employment fell precipitously in low-skill occupations and expanded in high-skill occupations, the shape of U.S. earnings and job growth sharply polarized in the 1990s. Employment shares and relative earnings rose in both low and high-skill jobs, leading to a...

We study long-run trends in market hours of work and employment shifts across economic sectors driven by uneven TFP growth in market and home production. We focus on the substitutions between market and home production and on the structural transformation between agriculture, manufacturing and...

The process of economic development is characterized by substantial rural-urban migrations and a decreasing share of agriculture in output and employment. The literature highlights two main engines behind this process of structural change: (i) improvements in agricultural technology combined...

"We include learning in a standard equilibrium business cycle model with explicit growth. We use the model to study how the economy's agents could learn in real time about the important trend-changing events of the postwar era in the U.S., such as the productivity slowdown, increased labor force...