This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city’s growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is,...

We explore the influence of city-level business cycle fluctuations on crime in 20 large cities in the United States. Our monthly time series analysis considers seven crimes over an approximately 20-year period: murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Short-run...

A modification of existing sticky-wage models to account for the observed cyclical behavior of real wages by means of a model that introduces productivity factors into nominal-wage contracts.

This paper attempts to add to the understanding of changes in the magnitude of business cycle fluctuations by examining disaggregated employment data. Specifically, we use a stochastic variance approach on monthly employment data for the 1946-1996 period to highlight two stylized facts of...

Does the magnitude of a trough in employment differ from the magnitude of a peak in employment, and is the time employment spends in rising from a trough to a peak longer than the time spends in falling from a peak to a trough? In this paper we measure the “asymmetry of magnitudes” and the...

This paper uses micro data to examine differences in the cyclical variability of employment, hours, and wages for skilled and unskilled workers. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that, at the aggregate level, skilled and unskilled workers are subject to essentially the same degree of...

The authors describe how evidence on aggregate job flows challenges standard business cycle theory and discuss recent developments in business cycle theory aimed at accounting for the evidence.

Employment growth is highly correlated across regions. The author uses joint movements in regional employment growth to define and estimate a common factor, analogues to the business cycle. Regions differ substantially in the relative importance of cyclical shocks and idiosyncratic shocks in...

Over the last 35 years, the U.S. economy has created service sector jobs at a faster pace than manufacturing sector jobs. Not only has this trend led to a significant shift in the composition of the labor force from manufacturing to services, but it has also fundamentally changed the...