Strategic Formal Layoffs: Unemployment Insurance and Informal Labor Markets

By Bernardus Van Doornik, David Schoenherr, and Janis Skrastins

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

Exploiting an unemployment insurance reform in Brazil, we study incentive effects of UI in the presence of informal labor markets. We find that eligibility for UI benefits increases formal layoffs by 11 percent. Most of the additional layoffs are related ...

The Effect of Immigration Restrictions on Local Labor Markets: Lessons from the 1920s Border Closure

By Ran Abramitzky, Philipp Ager, Leah Boustan, Elior Cohen, and Casper W. Hansen

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

In the 1920s, the United States substantially reduced immigration by imposing country-specific entry quotas. We compare local labor markets differentially exposed to the quotas due to variation in the national-origin mix of their immigrant population. US-...

Inefficient Water Pricing and Incentives for Conservation

By Ujjayant Chakravorty, Manzoor H. Dar, and Kyle Emerick

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

Farmers often buy water using fixed fees—rather than with marginal prices. We use two randomized controlled trials in Bangladesh to study the relationship between marginal prices, adoption of a water-saving technology, and water usage. Our first experim...

The Effects of Working While in School: Evidence from Employment Lotteries

By Thomas Le Barbanchon, Diego Ubfal, and Federico Araya

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

Does working while in school smooth students' transition into the labor market? We provide evidence on this question by leveraging a one-year work-study program that randomized job offers among over 90,000 student applicants in Uruguay. Program rules forb...

High School Majors and Future Earnings

By Gordon B. Dahl, Dan-Olof Rooth, and Anders Stenberg

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

We study how high school majors affect adult earnings using a regression discontinuity design. In Sweden students are admitted to majors in tenth grade based on their preference rankings and ninth grade GPA. We find engineering, natural science, and busin...

CSWEP Mentoring Breakfasts for Junior Economists

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October 27, 2022

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CSWEP Mentoring Breakfast for Mid-Career Economists

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October 27, 2022

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CSWEP Seeks Mentors for Annual Mentoring Breakfasts

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October 27, 2022

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Front Matter

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

Learning about Debt Crises

By Radoslaw Paluszynski

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

The European debt crisis presents a challenge to our understanding of the relationship between government bond yields and economic fundamentals. I argue that information frictions are an important missing element and support that claim with evidence on th...

Robust Predictions for DSGE Models with Incomplete Information

By Ryan Chahrour and Robert Ulbricht

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

We provide predictions for DSGE models with incomplete information that are robust across information structures. Our approach maps an incomplete-information model into a full-information economy with time-varying expectation wedges and provides condition...

Anchored Inflation Expectations

By Carlos Carvalho, Stefano Eusepi, Emanuel Moench, and Bruce Preston

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

We develop a theory of low-frequency movements in inflation expectations, and use it to interpret joint dynamics of inflation and inflation expectations for the United States and other countries over the postwar period. In our theory, long-run inflation e...

A Risky Venture: Income Dynamics among Pass-Through Business Owners

By Jason DeBacker, Vasia Panousi, and Shanthi Ramnath

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

We employ a large panel of US income tax returns for the period 1987–2018 to extensively characterize and quantify business income risk. Our findings show business income to be much riskier than labor income. Business income is less persistent and is ch...

The Government Spending Multiplier in a Multisector Economy

By Hafedh Bouakez, Omar Rachedi, and Emiliano Santoro

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

We study the effects of aggregate government spending shocks in a production network economy where sectors differ in their price rigidity, factor intensities, use of intermediate inputs, and contribution to final demand. The model implies an aggregate val...

House Prices and Consumption: A New Instrumental Variables Approach

By James Graham and Christos A. Makridis

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

We introduce a novel Bartik-like instrument for house prices consisting of the local composition of housing characteristics interacted with aggregate changes in the marginal prices of these characteristics. Using household-level panel data, we estimate el...

Skilled Labor Productivity and Cross-Country Income Differences

By Lutz Hendricks and Todd Schoellman

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

This paper revisits the question of how allowing for imperfect substitution among workers with different skill levels affects the results of development accounting. We consider a range of models that nest the approaches in the literature and calibrate the...

Childcare Subsidies and Child Skill Accumulation in One- and Two-Parent Families

By Emily G. Moschini

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

I examine the role of family structure and childcare subsidies in child skill accumulation. I establish empirically that skill accumulation is more responsive to childcare price for one-parent families than for two-parent families. I analyze the effects o...

Women, Wealth Effects, and Slow Recoveries

By Masao Fukui, Emi Nakamura, and Jón Steinsson

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

Business cycle recoveries have slowed in recent decades. This slow-down comes entirely from female employment, as women's employment rates converged toward men's during the past half-century. But does the slowdown in the growth of female employment rates ...

Consumption Heterogeneity: Micro Drivers and Macro Implications

By Edmund Crawley and Andreas Kuchler

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

We document heterogeneity in the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) across household characteristics relevant to understanding heterogeneous agent models and monetary policy transmission. We find a strong negative relationship between household liquid w...

Firm Entry and Exit and Aggregate Growth

By Jose Asturias, Sewon Hur, Timothy J. Kehoe, and Kim J. Ruhl

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2023

Applying the Foster, Haltiwanger, and Krizan (2001) decomposition to plant-level manufacturing data from Chile and Korea, we find that the entry and exit of plants account for a larger fraction of aggregate productivity growth during periods of fast GDP g...