Arguably the most important development in recent decades in US factor markets is the decline in the relative wage of the unskilled. By contrast, in Europe it is undoubtedly the rise and persistence of unemployment. Technology has been identified as a key reason for the rising US wage...

This paper presents a semiparametric procedure to analyze the effects of institutional and labor market factors on recent changes in the U.S. distribution of wages. The effects of these factors are estimated by applying kernel density methods to appropriately 'reweighted' samples. The procedure...

Most international commerce is carried out by multinational firms, which use their foreign affiliates both to serve the market of the host country and to export to other markets outside the host country. In this paper, I examine the determinants of multinational firms' location and production...

A growing body of new research has emphasized the macroeconomic consequences of transactional impediments in factor markets, and their role in the recurrent restructuring requirements of modern economies. We first review the function institutional arrangements play in facilitating transactions...

A rapidly growing literature examines the impact of immigrants on the labor market outcomes of native-born Americans. However, the impact of immigration on natives in self-employment has not been examined, despite the over-representation of immigrants in that sector. We first present a new...

Using the 1970, 1980 and 1990 Censuses, we investigate the impact of labor and marriage market conditions on the incidence of marriage of young women (age 16-24). We employ a two-stage methodology. First, across individuals, marriage is regressed on personal characteristics and MSA indicators,...

The observation that liquidations are concentrated in recessions has long been the subject of controversy. One view holds that liquidations are beneficial in that they result in increased restructuring. Another view holds that liquidations are privately inefficient and essentially wasteful. This...

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...

A variety of recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models, even in labor markets that are textbook examples of monopsony. We use an exogenous change in wages at...

This paper explains prices, output and employment adjustment In an open economy characterized by a monopolistic competitive market structure where goods prices are flexible while wages are determined by contracts that pre-set the wage path for several periods. The paper solves the rational...