One suggested hypothesis for the dramatic rise in household borrowing that preceded the financial crisis is that low-income households increased their demand for credit to finance higher consumption expenditures in order to keep up with higherincome households. Using household level data on debt...

The user cost of labor is the expected difference between the present discounted value of wages paid to a worker hired in the current period and that paid to a worker hired in the next period. Analogous to the price of any long-term asset, the user cost, not wage, is the relevant price for a...

We use micro data on applications to job openings by individuals on a job search website to study the relationship between search intensity and search duration. Our data allow us to control for several factors that can affect the measured relationship between intensity and duration, including...

Occupational specificity of human capital motivates an important role of occupational reallocation for the economy's response to shocks and for the dynamics of inequality. We introduce occupational mobility, through a random choice model with dynamic value function optimization, into a...

Unemployment recoveries in the US have been inexorable. Between 1948 and 2019, the annual reduction in the unemployment rate during cyclical recoveries was fairly tightly distributed around 0.1 log points per year. The economy seems to have an irresistible force toward restoring full employment....

Potential workers are classified as unemployed if they seek work but are not working. The unemployed population contains two groups—those with jobs and those without jobs. Those with jobs are on furlough or temporary layoff. This group expanded tremendously in April 2020, at the trough of the...

Using a unique data set and a novel identification strategy, we estimate the effect of minimum wage increases on job vacancy postings. Utilizing occupation-specific county- level vacancy data from the Conference Board's Help Wanted Online for 2005-2018, we find that state-level minimum wage...

We use regional variation in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009-2012) to analyze the effect of government spending on consumer spending. Our consumption data come from household-level retail purchases in the Nielsen scanner data and auto purchases from Equifax credit balances. We...

Using a nationally representative panel of consumer credit records for the US from 1999 to 2021, we document a positive correlation between child and parent homeownership. We propose a new causal mechanism behind this relationship based on parents extracting home equity to help finance their...

Using a unique data set and a novel identification strategy, we estimate the effect of minimum wage increases on job vacancy postings. Utilizing occupation-specific countylevel vacancy data from the Conference Board's Help Wanted Online for 2005-2018, we find that state-level minimum wage...