We provide industry-level estimates of the elasticity of substitution (?) between capital and labor in the US economy. We also estimate rates of factor-augmentation. Aggregate estimates are produced using the same data. Our empirical model comes from the first-order conditions associated with a...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence we offer comes from the market for Coca-Cola. We demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a substantial amount of written evidence of its implicit contract with its consumers—a very explicit form of...

US banks are thought to have become increasingly fragile and exposed during the lead-up to the recent financial crisis. However, commercial bank leverage actually decreased during this period. To resolve this discrepancy, we explore another dimension of bank balance sheets: the effective...

We use annual data on capital’s share and relative factor prices from 35 US industries from 1960 to 2005 to test the induced innovation hypothesis. We derive, from a production function framework, testable implications for the effect of contemporaneous and lagged factor price ratios on...

The relative stability of aggregate labor's share constitutes one of the great macroeconomic ratios. However, relative stability at the aggregate level masks the unbalanced nature of sectoral labor's shares. We present a two-sector (manufacturing and services) model with induced innovation that...

We consider a decentralized version of the neoclassical growth model where labor share is chosen by workers to maximize their long run (permanent) wages. In this framework, if the labor share increases relative to the competitive share, workers capture a larger share of a smaller total income in...

We explore the relationship between union density and labor’s shares using panel data on 35 industries, spanning the entire US economy, for the years 1983 through 2005. For the full sample, a standard deviation increase in union density (membership or coverage rates) is associated with an...

Conventional monetary theory suggests that a closed system banking regime may lead to a systematic and uniform over-expansion of circulation. However, Selgin (2001, 2010) argues that as the number of banks increases, they act much as a “chain gang” does, making coordination all the more...

The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key amongst those characteristics. From a policy perspective this is...

In this paper we model the migration decisions of high-skilled women as a function of the benefits associated with moving from an origin with relatively low women´s rights to a destination with a relatively high women´s rights. However, the costs faced by women are decreasing in the level...