-
作者:Buckles, Kasey; Hungerman, Daniel; Lugauer, Steven
作者单位:University of Notre Dame; IZA Institute Labor Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Kentucky
摘要:Many papers show that aggregate fertility is pro-cyclical over the business cycle. Using data on more than 100 million births from 1988 to 2014, we show that for recent recessions in the United States, there is a large and rapid fall in the growth rate of conceptions several quarters prior to economic decline. This newly emerging pattern appears in the aggregate data, as well as within individual states and in many European countries. Our findings suggest that fertility behaviour is more forwa...
-
作者:Bagger, Jesper; Birchenall, Javier A.; Mansour, Hani; Urzua, Sergio
作者单位:University of London; Royal Holloway University London; Aarhus University; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Children's Hospital Colorado; University of Colorado Denver; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:This article introduces a framework to study parental investments in the presence of birth order preferences and/or human capital cost differentials across children. The framework yields canonical models as special cases and delivers sharp testable predictions concerning how parental investments respond to an exogenous change in family size in the presence of birth order effects. These predictions characterize a generalised quantity-quality trade-off. Danish administrative data confirm our the...
-
作者:Galenianos, Manolis
作者单位:University of London; Royal Holloway University London
摘要:This is the first article to study the interaction between labour markets and endogenous referral networks in the context of worker heterogeneity. In equilibrium the structure of the referral network is hierarchical, which is different from the usual assumption of homophily but is consistent with the evidence. Hierarchy exacerbates inequality. The welfare effects of the use of referrals are subtle and depend on the nature of heterogeneity. If heterogeneity is due to productivity differences, r...
-
作者:Elsner, Benjamin; Isphording, Ingo E.; Zoelitz, Ulf
作者单位:University College Dublin; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Zurich; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要:In this paper we study how a student's ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing related follow-up courses and majors. We document two types of dynamic effect. First, earlier ranks are less important than later ranks. Second, responses to rank changes are asymmetric: improvements in...
-
作者:Acemoglu, Daron; Wolitzky, Alexander
作者单位:Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
摘要:We propose a simple model of the emergence of equality before the law. A society can support effort ('cooperation', 'prosocial behaviour') using the carrot of future cooperation or the stick of coercive punishment. Community enforcement relies only on the carrot and involves low coercion, low inequality and low effort. A society in which elites control the means of violence supplements the carrot with the stick, and involves high coercion, high inequality and high effort. In this regime, elite...
-
作者:Carlsson, Mikael; Messina, Julian; Skans, Oskar Nordstrom
作者单位:Uppsala University; Sveriges Riksbank; Inter-American Development Bank; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要:We analyse how labour flows respond to permanent idiosyncratic shifts in firm-level production functions and demand curves using very detailed Swedish micro data. Shocks to firms' physical productivity have only modest effects on firm-level employment decisions. In contrast, we document rapid and substantial employment adjustments through hires and separations in response to firm-level demand shocks. The choice of adjustment margin depends on the sign of the shock: firms adjust through increas...
-
作者:Laureys, Lien
作者单位:Bank of England
摘要:This paper argues that human capital depreciation during unemployment generates an externality in job creation: firms ignore how their hiring decisions affect the skill composition of the future unemployment pool, and hence the output produced by new hires. As a consequence. job creation is too low from a social point of view. But the extent to which it is too low varies over the cycle. The reason is that the increase in the expected productivity of a new hire from next period's unemployment p...
-
作者:Bergeaud, Antonin; Ray, Simon
作者单位:European Central Bank; Bank of France
摘要:We study corporate real estate frictions and their effect on firm dynamics and labour demand. We build and simulate a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms that predicts the response of firms to a productivity shock in the presence of fixed adjustment costs on real estate. Using a large firm-level database merged with local real estate prices, we then exploit variations in the tax on capital gains to document a causal effect of adjustment costs on firms' labour demand and derive n...
-
作者:Madsen, Jakob B.; Minniti, Antonio; Venturini, Francesco
作者单位:University of Western Australia; University of Bologna; University of Perugia
摘要:This paper extends the analysis of the wealth-income ratio based on the neoclassical model in a Schumpeterian growth framework in which savings are channelled to both tangible and intangible capital investment. Using historical data for 21 OECD countries over the period 1860-2015, we find that the wealth-income ratio and, hence, wealth inequality, is negatively related to the rate of economic growth and positively related to the rates of investment in intangible and tangible assets, as predict...
-
作者:Chambers, Christopher P.; Echenique, Federico
作者单位:Georgetown University; California Institute of Technology
摘要:We establish that a type of statistical discrimination-that based on informativeness of signals about workers' skills and the ability appropriately to match workers to tasks-is possible if and only if it is impossible uniquely to identify the signal structure observed by an employer from a realised empirical distribution of skills. The impossibility of statistical discrimination is shown to be equivalent to the existence of a fair, skill-dependent, remuneration for workers. Finally, we connect...