We investigate the impact of rising educational attainment on wage inflation and the equilibrium (non-inflationary) rate of unemployment. Rising educational attainment may reduce wage pressures by shifting the composition of the labor force towards groups with lower equilibrium unemployment...

After being emblematic of the U.S. economic surge in the late 1990s, urban areas that specialize in information technology (IT) products have more recently been struggling with the aftermath of the IT spending bust. To what degree can they bounce back and reemerge as leaders of innovative...

The trend toward increasing U.S. wage inequality during the 1980s is well documented. I investigate the role of employment shifts from goods-producing to service-producing industries in contributing to increased inequality during the period 1979-1995. Earlier analyses revealed that average...

The unemployment rate is determined by the incidence and duration of unemployment spells. In this paper, I examine the time-series properties of unemployment incidence by reason and the duration of a typical unemployment spell. In line with earlier research, I find strong countercyclicality in...