Search Results
Working Paper
The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium
This paper seeks to understand the forces that maintain racial segregation and the Black-White gap in college attainment, as well as their interactions with place-based policy interventions. We incorporate race into an overlapping-generations spatial-equilibrium model with neighborhood spillovers. Race matters due to: (i) a Black-White wage gap, (ii) amenity externalities---households care about their neighborhood's racial composition---and (iii) additional barriers to moving for Black households. We find that these forces account for 71% of the racial segregation and 64% of the Black-White ...
Working Paper
The Alpha Beta Gamma of the Labor Market
We access a long panel dataset of US workers to document the extent to which individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their pattern of transitions across employment states. We find that heterogeneity is well approximated by three latent types: αs, βs and γs. Workers of type α leave unemployment quickly and, once they find a job, they are likely to keep it for more than 2 years. Workers of type γ find employment slowly and, once they do find a job, they are likely to leave it within 1 year. We use our empirical findings to calibrate a search-theoretic model in which workers are ...
Journal Article
Pandemic Recession: L- or V-Shaped?
We develop and calibrate a search-theoretic model of the labor market in order to forecast the evolution of the aggregate US labor market during and after the coronavirus pandemic. The model is designed to capture the heterogeneity of the transitions of individual workers across states of unemployment and employment and across different employers. The model is designed also to capture the trade-offs in the choice between temporary and permanent layoffs. Under reasonable parametrizations of the model, the lockdown instituted to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is shown to have ...
Labor Force Exits and COVID-19: Who Left, and Are They Coming Back?
Millions of workers are still unemployed or have dropped out of the labor force. What is the likelihood that these people will return to work in the coming year?
Working Paper
Firms as Learning Environments: Implications for Earnings Dynamics and Job Search
This paper demonstrates that heterogeneity in firms’ promotion of human capital accumulation is an important determinant of life-cycle earnings inequality. I use administrative micro data from Germany to show that different establishments offer systematically different earnings growth rates for their workers. This observation suggests that that the increase in inequality over the life cycle reflects not only inherent worker variation, but also differences in the firms that workers happen to match with over their lifetimes. To quantify this channel, I develop a life-cycle search model with ...
Working Paper
The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium
We incorporate race into an overlapping-generations spatial-equilibrium model with neighborhood spillovers. The model incorporates race in three ways: (i) a Black-White wage gap, (ii) an amenity externality---households care about the racial composition of their neighbors---and (iii) an additional barrier to moving for Black households. These forces quantitatively account for all of the racial segregation and 80% of the Black-White gap in college attainment in the data for the St. Louis metro area. Counterfactual exercises show that all three forces are quantitatively important. The presence ...
Examining Recent Patterns in Residential Building Permits
Where are America’s homes being built? This analysis looks at 2023 housing permits per capita in the country’s metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas.
Journal Article
Generational Gaps in Income and Homeownership
At age 30, non-college-educated Boomers were about twice as likely as non-college-educated Millennials to own homes.
Working Paper
The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium
This paper seeks to understand the forces that maintain racial segregation and the implications for the Black-White gap in college attainment. We incorporate race into an overlapping-generations spatial-equilibrium model with neighborhood spillovers. The model incorporates race in three ways: (i) a Black-White wage gap, (ii) an amenity externality---households care about the racial composition of their neighbors---and (iii) an additional barrier to moving for Black households. These forces quantitatively account for all of the racial segregation and 80% of the Black-White gap in college ...
Assets and Debt across Generations
This analysis examines the household wealth that baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials each held at age 30, comparing these generations’ assets, debt and net worth.