Separations are noticeably more countercyclical for workers who average shorter workweeks. This pattern is mirrored in wage cyclicality; wages are less procyclical for those who work shorter hours. But separations, counter to our model predictions, are not higher in recessions nor heavily...

A number of economists find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries. A model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one's elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling. The model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the...

Using U.S. Consumer Expenditure Surveys, we estimate "quality Engel curves" for 66 durable goods based on the extent richer households pay more for each good. The same data show that the average price paid rises faster from 1980 to 1996 for goods with steeper quality Engel curves, as if...

A standard state-dependent pricing model implies very limited scope for using active monetary policy to stabilize real activity. Two modeling strategies which expand the role of monetary policy are time-dependent pricing and strategic complementarities between price-setting firms. These...

The author examines the cyclical behavior of price/marginal cost margins for U.S. manufac turing after 1956. Short-run marginal cost is markedly procyclical. This is primarily due to procyclical overtime payments, incurred beca use employment is not perfectly flexible. In most industries, output...

We consider a matching model of employment with wages that are flexible for new hires, but sticky within matches. We depart from standard treatments of sticky wages by allowing worker effort to respond to the wage being too high or low, rendering the effective wage (wage divided by output) more...