Using ideas from the endogenous growth literature, we present a model of the endogenous determination of productivity growth based on individual worker decisions about human capital investment. We calibrate a version of the model to match long run growth facts from the US and study the business...

Is there a trade-off between fluctuations and growth? The empirical evidence is mixed, with some studies finding a positive relationship, while others find a negative one. Our objectives are to understand how fundamental uncertainty affects the long run growth rate and to identify important...

We investigate the consequences of demographic change for business cycle analysis. We find that changes in the age composition of the labor force account for a significant fraction of the variation in business cycle volatility observed in the U.S. and other G7 economies. During the postwar...

We investigate the consequences of demographic change for business cycle analysis. We find that changes in the age composition of the labor force account for a significant fraction of the variation in business cycle volatility observed in the U.S. and other G7 economies. During the postwar...

Over the business cycle young workers experience much greater volatility of hours worked than prime-aged workers. This can arise from age differences in labor supply or labor demand characteristics. To distinguish between these, we document that, for young workers, both the cyclical volatilities...

Job polarization refers to the recent shrinking concentration of employment in occupations in the middle of the skill distribution. Jobless recoveries refers to the slow rebound in aggregate employment following recent recessions, despite recoveries in aggregate output. We show how these two...

The search‐and‐matching model of the labor market fails to match two important business cycle facts: (i) a high volatility of unemployment relative to labor productivity, and (ii) a mild correlation between these two variables. We address these shortcomings by focusing on technological...

We present a tractable, dynamic general equilibrium model of state-dependent pricing and study the response of output and prices to monetary policy shocks. We find important nonlinearities in these responses. For empirically relevant shocks, this generates substantially different predictions...

The search-and-matching model of the labor market fails to match two important business cycle facts: (i) a high volatility of unemployment relative to labor productivity, and (ii) a mild correlation between these two variables. We address these shortcomings by focusing on technological...