We study how human capital diversification, in the form of double majoring, affects the response of earnings to labor market shocks. Double majors experience substantial protection against earnings shocks, of 56%. This finding holds across different model specifications and data sets....

We show that business cycles reduce welfare through a decrease in the average level of employ- ment in a labor market search model with learning on-the-job and skill loss during unemployment. A negative correlation between unemployment and vacancies implies, via the concavity of the matching...

We analyze differences in unemployment between natives and immigrants over the business cycle. Using matched employer-employee data for Austria, we find that immigrants' unemployment rate and flows into and out of unemployment are significantly more sensitive to labor market shocks than those of...