Applications for new businesses from the U.S. Census Bureau's monthly and weekly Business Formation Statistics (BFS) fell substantially in the early stages of the pandemic but then surged in the second half of 2020. This surge has continued through May 2021. The pace of applications since...

It is well known that the long-term unemployed fare worse in the labor market than the short-term unemployed, but less clear why this is so. One potential explanation is that the long-term unemployed are "bad apples" who had poorer prospects from the outset of their spells (heterogeneity)....

Recent empirical work has shown that the success of an economy depends largely on how successful it is in allocating inputs and outputs across businesses efficiently with minimum disruption and frictions. Reallocation of factors of production plays a major role in productivity growth and it is...

This thesis is comprised of three chapters. The first chapter (joint with John Haltiwanger, Julia Lane, and Kevin McKinney) explores a new way of capturing dynamics: following clusters of workers as they move across administrative entities. Information on firm dynamics is critical to...

This thesis is about the process of employment adjustment. It studies adjustment costs and their impact on employment and labor demand. It starts by describing key characteristics of India's labor market; documents legal, economic, and social framework; investigates the impact and finds...

We find that most of the rising between firm earnings inequality that dominates the overall increase in inequality in the U.S. is accounted for by industry effects. These industry effects stem from rising inter-industry earnings differentials and not from changing distribution of employment...