Search Results
Firms’ Wage-Setting Power: A New Take on Monopsony in the Labor Market
Why do some firms seem to pay workers less than what their labor is worth? An economic model gives insights into how wage-setting power arises in modern labor markets.
Working Paper
China's Exporters and Importers: Firms, Products, and Trade Partners
This paper provides a detailed overview of China’s participation in international trade using newly available data on the universe of globally engaged Chinese firms over the 2003-2005 period. We document the distribution of trade flows and product- and trade-partner intensity across both exporting and importing firms and study the relationship between firms’ intensive and extensive margins of trade. We also compare trade patterns across firms of different organizational structure, distinguishing between domestic private firms, domestic state‐owned firms, foreign-owned firms, and joint ...
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
Do Inflation Expectations Become More Anchored During a Disinflation Episode? Evidence for Euro Area Firms
Does a successful disinflation contribute to the anchoring of inflation expectations? We provide novel survey evidence on the dynamics of euro area firms’ inflation expectations during the disinflation episode since 2022. We show that firms’ short-term inflation expectations declined steadily towards the inflation target as the disinflation progressed. However, we also document a thick tail in longer-term inflation expectations, substantial disagreement about the inflation outlook, and an increased sensitivity of longer-term inflation expectations to short-term inflation expectations. ...
Speech
Prepare for Landing
Remarks at the ISDA Benchmark Strategies Forum (delivered via videoconference).
Journal Article
Do Banks Lend to Distressed Firms?
Concerns emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic over banks continuing to lend to unproductive businesses that were close to default. Recent research shows that lenders have incentives to offer relatively better terms to less-productive and more-indebted firms to recover their prior investments. U.S. loan-level data confirm the empirical relevance of such lending behavior. A rich model of firms and banks further emphasizes that this type of lending can also depress overall productivity by sustaining firms that should otherwise exit the economy.
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. To arrive at this finding, I develop a life-cycle search model with heterogeneous workers and firms. In the model, a worker’s earnings can grow through both human capital accumulation and labor market competition channels. Human capital growth depends on both the worker’s ability and the firm’s learning environment. I apply the model to administrative micro data from Germany. While bringing the model to the data, I find evidence of ...
Journal Article
What To Know About the Rise of Services
What should you know about the rise of services over the past 40 years? The services sector now accounts for about 79% of output, 85% of employment, 83% of firms, and 78% of household spending.
Working Paper
Supply Chain Networks and the Macroeconomic Expectations of Firms
In a randomized control trial of customer-supplier firm pairs in New Zealand, we treat with information one firm in a pair and analyze the treatment's effects on the expectations and actions of both the directly treated firms (direct effect) and connected firms that did not directly receive information (spillover effect). The direct and spillover effects on expectations and actions are significant and of comparable magnitude. Higher expected future real GDP growth increases prices and employment, while greater uncertainty about it reduces prices, investment, and employment. We show that ...
Aggregate Implications of the Rise in Firms’ Custom Software Investments
U.S. firms’ investment in custom software has risen markedly. This analysis examines its effect on aggregate outcomes like sales concentration and productivity.