Given past estimates of wage increases associated with workplace computer use and higher usage rates among more skilled workers, the diffusion of computers has been interpreted as a mechanism for skill-biased technological change and consequent widening of the earnings distribution. I...

Using data from the Current Population Survey from 1980 through 2010 we examine what drives variation and cyclicality in the growth rate of real wages over time. We employ a novel decomposition technique that allows us to divide the time series for median weekly earnings growth into the part...

Speech to the Center for the Study of Democracy 2006-2007 Economics of Governance Lecture, University of California, Irvine, November 6, 2006>

We show that the existence of downward nominal wage rigidities bends the short-run wage Phillips curve. We introduce a model of monetary policy with downward nominal wage rigidities and show that both the slope and curvature of the Phillips curve depend on the level of inflation and the extent...

Previous studies of real wage cyclicality have made only sparing use of the microdata detail that is available in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The present paper brings to bear this additional detail to investigate the robustness of previous results and to examine whether there are...