We examine the dynamics of a country's growth, consumption, and sovereign debt, assuming that the government is myopic and wants to maximize short-term, self-interested spending. Surprisingly, government myopia can increase a country's access to external borrowing. In turn, access to borrowing...

Developmental disabilities are not rare among U.S. children and rates have been increasing in recent decades. The increases have been driven by cognitive and behavioral disorders. While some studies have investigated the effects of specific childhood conditions, particularly ADHD, on adult...

Small and young businesses are essential for job creation, innovation, and economic growth. Even most of the superstar firms start their business life small and then grow over time. Small firms have less internal resources, which makes them more fragile and sensitive to macroeconomic conditions....

This paper describes the adoption of automation technologies by US firms across all economic sectors by leveraging a new module introduced in the 2019 Annual Business Survey, conducted by the US Census Bureau in partnership with the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)....

We introduce new measurement tools to understand the sources of earnings differences across space. Based on the natural language employers use in job vacancy text, we develop granular measures of job tasks and of worker specialization. We find that jobs in larger commuting zones involve greater...

This article reviews the literature on automation and its impact on labor markets, wages, factor shares, and productivity. I first introduce the task model and explain why this framework offers a compelling way to think about recent labor market trends and the effects of automation technologies....

We consider large, permanent shocks to individual occupations whose arrival date is uncertain. We are motivated by the advent of self-driving trucks, which will dramatically reduce demand for truck drivers. Using a bare-bones overlapping generations model, we examine an occupation facing...

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...

Abstract This paper extends the Becker (1968)-Ehrlich (1973) model of crime to allow for government transfers. Using the Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984) model, it is shown that one can view deterrence as a tax on (criminal) labor supply. That in turn allows an integration of a crime model with a...

We study the effect of mandates requiring COVID-19 vaccination among healthcare industry workers adopted in 2021 in the United States. There are long-standing worker shortages in the U.S. healthcare industry, pre-dating the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 vaccine mandates on shortages...