We discuss how the relative importance of factors that contribute to movements of the U.S. Beveridge curve has changed from 1960 to 2023. We review these factors in the context of a simple flow analogy used to capture the main insights of search and matching theories of the labor market. Changes...

Economists have long viewed recessions as contributing to increasing inequality. However, this conclusion is largely based on data from a period in which inequality was increasing over time. This paper examines the connection between long-run trends and cyclical variation in earnings inequality....

This article reviews the literature on the cost of U.S. post-War business cycle fluctuations. I argue that recent work has established this cost is considerably larger than initial work found. However, despite the large cost of macroeconomic volatility, it is not obvious that policymakers should...

Recent work has revived the Schumpeterian hypothesis that recessions facilitate innovation and growth. But a major source of productivity growth, research and development, is actually procyclical. This paper argues that while it is optimal to concentrate growth-enhancing activities in downturns,...

This paper proposes a methodology for estimating job search models that does not require either functional form assumptions or ruling out the presence of unobserved variation in worker ability. In particular, building on existing results from record-value theory, a branch of statistics that...

In his famous monograph, Lucas (1987) put forth an argument that the welfare gains from reducing the volatility of aggregate consumption are negligible. Subsequent work that revisited Lucas' calculation continued to find only small benefits from reducing the volatility of consumption, further...

Most of the theoretical literature on price-setting behavior deals with the special case in which only a single price is changed. At the retail-store level, at least, where dozens of products are sold by a single price-setter, price-setting policies are not formulated for individual products....

Much recent work has suggested that endogenous technological change tends to reinforce the position of the leading nations. Yet from time to time this leadership role shifts. We suggest a mechanism that explains this pattern of -leapfrogging- as a response to occasional major changes in...

In many professional service firms, new associates work long hours while competing in up-or-out promotion contests. Our model explores why these firms require young professionals to take on heavy workloads while simultaneously facing significant risks of dismissal. We argue that the productivity...