Using matched March Current Population Surveys, we examine labor market transitions of husbands and wives. We find that the "added-worker effect" - the greater propensity of nonparticipating wives to enter the labor force when their husbands exit employment - is still important among a subset of...

We develop a dynamic factor model with Markov switching to examine secular and business cycle fluctuations in the U.S. unemployment rates. We extract the common dynamics amongst unemployment rates disaggregated for 7 age groups. The framework allows analysis of the contribution of demographic...

U.S. consumption has gone through steep ups and downs since 2000. We quantify the statistical impact of income, unemployment, house prices, credit scores, debt, financial assets, expectations, foreclosures, and inequality on county-level consumption growth for four subperiods: the "dot-com...