This paper examines the evolution of hours worked in France, Germany, Italy and the US from 1956-2003 and assesses the role of taxes and technology to account for the differences. The empirical work establishes three results. First, hours worked in Europe decline by almost 45% compared to the US...

The U.S. economy has been going through a striking structural transformation—the secular reallocation of employment across sectors—over the past several decades. We propose a decomposition framework to assess the contributions of various margins of firm dynamics to this shift. Using...

The U.S. economy has been going through a striking structural transformation - the secular reallocation of employment across sectors - over the past several decades. We propose a decomposition framework to assess the contributions of various margins of firm dynamics to this shift. Using...