Large shocks to local labor markets can cause long-lasting changes to employment, unemployment and the local labor force. This study examines the relationship between mass layoffs and the long-run size of the local labor force. It considers four main channels through which the local labor force...

Concerns that there are problems with the supply of skills, especially education-related skills, in the US labor force have exploded in recent years with a series of reports from employer-associated organizations but also from independent and even government sources making similar claims. These...

We build a general equilibrium model that features uninsurable idiosyncratic shocks, search frictions and an operative labor supply choice along the extensive margin. The model is calibrated to match the average levels of gross flows across the three labor market states: employment,...

What are the economic determinants of a firm's market value? We answer this question through the lens of a generalized neoclassical model of investment with physical capital, quasi-fixed labor, and two types of intangible capital, knowledge and brand capital as inputs. We estimate the structural...

Increases in the proportion of the working age population can yield a quot;demographic dividendquot; that enhances the rate of economic growth. We estimate the parameters of an economic growth model with a cross section of countries over the period 1960 to 1980 and investigate whether the...

This paper surveys recent research on the labor force in the nineteenth century. I examine trends in the aggregate size, demographic, occupational and industrial composition of the labor force; short-run and long-run movements in nominal and real wages; hours of work; the development of the...

Population aging is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic growth yet there is little empirical evidence about the magnitude of its effects. This paper starts from the observation that many U.S. states have already experienced substantial growth in the size of their older...

This paper estimates the response of the unemployment rate and labor force participation rate to exogenous variation in the youth share of the working age population, using cross-state variation in lagged birth rates as an instrumental variable. A one percent increase in the youth share reduces...

The economies of the less developed countries are about to face perhaps the greatest challenge in their histories: generating a sufficient number of jobs at reasonable wages to absorb their rapidly growing populations into productive employment. In terms of absolute magnitude, this challenge has...

Demographic changes in the labor force will imply that firms must change their labor policies in the coming decades. My estimates suggest that the labor force will get older and more female. The aging will not be as pronounced for males as for females because the trend toward early retirement...