This paper examines the underlying state of the labor market, assuming data in the monthly "Employment Situation" are contaminated by measurement error and other transient noise. To better filter out unobserved noise, the methodology exploits correlations among labor-market series. Household...

In this paper I evaluate to what extent a real business cycle (RBC) model that incorporates search and leisure decisions can simultaneously account for the observed behavior of employment, unemployment and out-of-the-labor-force. This contrasts with the previous RBC literature, which analyzed...

This paper extends Hopenhayn and Rogerson's analysis of firing taxes by introducing a flexible form of capital and considering transitionary dynamics. The paper finds that capital is not important for understanding the long run and welfare effects of firing taxes. However, capital is crucial for...

There are significant differences in the dynamics of employment over the business cycle between young and old manufacturing plants. Young plants are more sensitive to aggregate disturbances, and they respond to them along different margins. We interpret these differences as reflecting greater...

Fixed term employment contracts have been introduced in number of European countries as a way to provide flexibility to economies with high employment protection levels. We introduce these contracts into the equilibrium search model in Alvarez and Veracierto (1999), a version of the Lucas and...

This paper seeks to determine whether a causal relationship exists between maternal employment and childhood overweight. We use matched mother/child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and employ econometric techniques to control for observable and unobservable differences across...

In this study, Nathan Balke and Mine Yucel ask whether the Eleventh Federal Reserve District's Beige Book description contains timely information about economic activity within the District. They examine whether the Beige Book description tracks current Texas real gross state product (GSP)...