Search Results
Working Paper
The Allocation of Immigrant Talent: Macroeconomic Implications for the U.S. and Across Countries
We quantify the barriers to the economic integration of immigrants using an occupational choice model with natives and immigrants of multiple types subject to wedges that distort their allocations. We show that key parameters, including wedges, can be estimated to match the distribution of employment and earnings across individuals and occupations. We find sizable output gains from removing immigrant wedges in the U.S., accounting for 7 percent of immigrants’ overall economic contribution. These gains arise from increased labor force participation and from reallocation from manual toward ...
Working Paper
Mismatch Unemployment During COVID-19 and the Post-Pandemic Labor Shortages
We examine the extent to which mismatch unemployment—employment losses relative to an efficient allocation where the planner can costlessly reallocate unemployed workers across sectors to maximize output—shaped labor market dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent recovery episode characterized by labor shortages. We find that, for the first time in our sample, mismatch unemployment turned negative at the onset of the pandemic. This result suggests that the efficient allocation of job seekers would involve reallocating workers toward longer-tenure and more-productive jobs, ...
Working Paper
The Implications of Labor Market Heterogeneity for Unemployment Insurance Design
We estimate unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility, take-up, and replacement rates at the individual level and document how they vary with earnings, wealth, and unemployment duration. We extend a widely used framework that combines an incomplete-markets model with a frictional labor market to match our findings. We show that the optimal UI policy becomes substantially more generous. The gap between optimal policies in the two models is largely driven by endogenous UI take-up, which entails a utility cost: only those who value UI the most choose to take it. The welfare gains from insuring ...
Working Paper
Spousal Labor Supply Response to Job Displacement and Implications for Optimal Transfers
I document a small spousal earnings response to the job displacement of the family head. The response is even smaller in recessions, when earnings losses are larger and additional insurance is valuable. Using cross-state differences in transfer generosity, I find that generous transfers substantially crowd out the spousal earnings response. To study its policy implications, I develop an incomplete markets model with family labor supply and aggregate fluctuations, where predicted labor supply elasticities to taxes and transfers are in line with empirical estimates both in aggregate and across ...
The Evolution of the Job Finding Rate during the COVID-19 Recession
The unusual nature of the COVID-19 recession appears to have masked the severity of the downturn’s impact on the rate at which unemployed workers found jobs.
Working Paper
Labor Market Policies During an Epidemic
We study the positive and normative implications of labor market policies that counteract the economic fallout from containment measures during an epidemic. We incorporate a standard epidemiological model into an equilibrium search model of the labor market to compare unemployment insurance (UI) expansions and payroll subsidies. In isolation, payroll subsidies that preserve match capital and enable a swift economic recovery are preferred over a cost-equivalent UI expansion. When considered jointly, however, a cost-equivalent optimal mix allocates 20 percent of the budget to payroll subsidies ...
How Should the Government Spend the Fiscal Budget during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
A mix of expanded unemployment insurance benefits and payroll subsidies to employers may be more effective in speeding up the recovery than implementing just one of those policies.
Unemployment Insurance Eligibility, Replacement and Takeup Rates across the U.S.
Differences in states’ UI rules create large variations across the U.S. in eligibility, how many of those eligible take benefits, and income that is replaced.
Working Paper
Uncovering the Differences among Displaced Workers: Evidence from Canadian Job Separation Records
We revisit the measurement of the sources and consequences of job displacement using Canadian job separation records. To circumvent administrative data limitations, conventional approaches address selection by identifying displacement effects through mass-layoff separations, which are interpreted as involuntary. We refine this procedure and find that only a quarter of mass-layoff separations are indeed layoffs. Isolating mass-layoff separations that reflect involuntary displacement, we find twice the earnings losses relative to existing estimates. We uncover heterogeneity in losses for ...
Working Paper
The Heterogeneous Impacts of Job Displacement: Evidence from Canadian Job Separation Records
When estimating earnings losses upon job separations, existing strategies focus on mass-layoff separations to distinguish involuntary separations from voluntary separations. We revisit the measurement of the sources and consequences of involuntary separations using Canadian job separation records. We refine existing strategies and find that only a quarter of mass-layoff separations are indeed layoffs. Isolating mass-layoff separations that reflect involuntary displacement, we find twice the earnings losses relative to existing estimates. We also uncover significant heterogeneity in losses for ...