This Paper explores the implications of the recent sharp rise in US wage inequality for welfare and the cross-sectional distributions of hours worked, consumption and earnings. From 1967 to 1996 cross-sectional dispersion of earnings increased more than wage dispersion, due to a rise in the...

We examine the impact of housing wealth on labor supply decisions using data on exogenous local variation in house prices merged into household panel data for Britain. Our estimates are conditioned on variations in local labor demand and income expectations as these may co-determine housing...

This paper provides background information and basic descriptive statistics for a representative survey of the German population conducted on our behalf by GfK in the first quarter of 2013. The survey addresses important topics in fiscal policy, including: 1) public preferences on the...

Estimates of Frisch labor-supply elasticities are biased in the presence of borrowing constraints. We show that this estimation bias is less pronounced for secondary than for primary earners. The reason is that, in households with two earners and joint borrowing constraints, wage-rate...

We examine the impact of house prices on labour supply decisions using UK micro data. We combine household survey data with local level house price measures and controls for local labour demand. Our micro data also allows us to control for individual level income expectations. We find...

In the United States, the employment rate is nearly flat across wealth quintiles with the exception of the first quintile. Correlations between wealth and employment are close to zero or moderately positive. However, incomplete markets models with a standard utility function counterfactually...

Young and small firms are typically matched with younger and nonemployed individuals, and they provide these workers with lower earnings compared to other firms. To explore the mechanisms behind these facts, a dynamic model of entrepreneurship is introduced, where individuals can choose not to...

In the past years, work time in many industries has become increasingly flexible opening up a new channel for intertemporal substitution. To study this, we set up a two-period model with wage uncertainty. This extends the standard savings model by allowing a worker to allocate a fixed time...

In the past years, work time in many industries has become increasingly flexible opening up a new channel for intertemporal substitution. To study this, we set up a two-period model with wage uncertainty. This extends the standard saving model by allowing a worker to allocate a fixed time budget...

We document the large dispersion in hours worked in the cross-section. We account for this fact using a model in which households combine market inputs and time to produce a set of nonmarket activities. To estimate the model, we create a novel data set that pairs market expenditures and time use...