The gender unemployment gap, the difference between female and male unemployment rates, was positive until the early 1980s. This gap disappeared after 1983, except during recessions, when men's unemployment rate has always exceeded women's. Using a calibrated three-state search model, we show...

A broadly accepted view contends that the 2007-09 financial crisis in the U.S. was caused by an expansion in the supply of credit to subprime borrowers during the 2001- 2006 credit boom, leading to the spike in defaults and foreclosures that sparked the crisis. We use a large administrative...

The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) is the most important reform of personal bankruptcy in the United States in recent years. This legislation overhauled eligibility requirements and increased monetary costs of filing for bankruptcy. Using administrative...

This paper studies the impact of changing trends in female labor supply on productivity, TFP growth and aggregate business cycles. We find that the growth in women's labor supply and relative productivity added substantially to TFP growth from the early 1980s, even if it depressed average labor...

This paper studies optimal taxation of entrepreneurial capital with private information and multiple assets. Entrepreneurial activity is subject to a dynamic moral hazard problem and entrepreneurs face idiosyncratic capital risk. We first characterize the optimal allocation subject to the...

We analyze two monetary economies - a cash-credit good model and a limited participation model. In our models, monetary policy is made by a benevolent policymaker who cannot commit to future policies. We define and analyze Markov equilibrium in these economies. We show that there is no time...

The economic crisis associated with the emergence of the novel corona virus is unlike standard recessions. Demand for workers in high contact and inflexible service occupations has declined, while parental supply of labor has been reduced by lack of access to reliable child care and in-person...

U.S. fertility rose from a low of 2.27 children for women born in 1908 to a peak of 3.21 children for women born in 1932. It dropped to a new low of 1.74 children for women born in 1949, before stabilizing for subsequent cohorts. We propose a novel explanation for this boom-bust pattern, linking...

We develop a model to predict consumer default based on deep learning. We show that the model consistently outperforms standard credit scoring models, even though it uses the same data. Our model is interpretable and is able to provide a score to a larger class of borrowers relative to standard...

The purpose of this paper is to study the joint determination of gender differentials in labor market outcomes and in the household division of labor. Specifically, we explore the hypothesis that incentive problems in the labor market amplify differences in earnings due to gender differentials...