We study the role of foreign-born workers in the growth of employment in STEM occupations since 1980. Given the importance of employment in these fields for research and innovation, we consider their role in a model featuring endogenous non-routine-biased technical change. We use this model to...

The extent to which K-12 schools should remain open is at the forefront of discussions on long-term pandemic management. In this context, there has been little mention of the immediate importance of K-12 schooling for the rest of the economy. Eliminating in-person schooling reduces the amount of...

Our purpose in this paper is to present a class of convex endogenous growth models, and to analyze their performance in terms of both growth and business cycle criteria. The models we study have close analogs in the real business cycle literature. In fact, we interpret the exogenous growth rate...

The search-and-matching model of the labor market fails to match two important business cycle facts: (i) a high volatility of unemployment relative to labor productivity, and (ii) a mild correlation between these two variables. We address these shortcomings by focusing on technological...

The U.S. labor market has become increasingly polarized since the 1980s, with the share of employment in middle-wage occupations shrinking over time. This job polarization process has been associated with the disappearance of per capita employment in occupations focused on routine tasks. We use...

We document a new finding regarding changes in labor market outcomes for high-skilled men and women in the US. Since 1980, conditional on being a college-educated man, the probability of working in a cognitive/high-wage occupation has fallen. This contrasts starkly with the experience for...

This paper documents two COVID-related risks, viral risk and employment risk, and their distributions across the Canadian population. The measurement of viral risk is based on the VSE COVID Risk/Reward Assessment Tool, created to assist policymakers in determining the impacts of economic...

We construct longitudinal data from the U.S. Census records to study migration patterns of those affected by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Our focus is on the famous "Okie" migration of the Southern Great Plains. We find that migration rates were much higher in the Dust Bowl than elsewhere in the...

Job polarization refers to the shrinking share of employment in middle-skill, routine occupations experienced recently, over the last 35 years. Jobless recoveries refers to the slow rebound in aggregate employment following recent recessions, despite recoveries in aggregate output. We show how...

We investigate the consequences of demographic change for business cycle analysis. We find that changes in the age composition of the labor force account for a significant fraction of the variation in business cycle volatility observed in the U.S. and other G7 economies. During the postwar...