Economists face difficulties explaining the strong cyclicality of US unemployment. This paper contributes both by developing modeling tools and evaluating a potentially important explanation. The paper develops a parsimonious equilibrium model of job search with aggregate productivity shocks,...

In this paper, we document that households’ consumption expenditures depend on their expected earnings - even after controlling for realized earnings and wealth. To explain this evidence, we develop and structurally estimate a standard-incomplete markets model in which rational households...

In this paper, we document that households' consumption expenditures depend on their expected earnings - even after controlling for realized earnings and wealth. To explain this evidence, we develop and structurally estimate a standard-incomplete markets model in which rational households...

In this paper, we document that households' consumption expenditures crucially depend on their expected earnings - even after controlling for realized earnings, wealth and time-invariant unobserved characteristics such as permanent income and over-confidence. To explain this evidence, we develop...

The standard labor-supply literature typically assumes that the labor supply response to wage increases is the same as that for equivalent wage decreases. However, evidence from the behavioral-economics literature suggests that people are loss averse and thus perceive losses differently than...

This paper examines evidence on the role of assimilation versus source country culture in influencing immigrant women’s behavior in the United States-looking both over time with immigrants' residence in the United States and across immigrant generations. It focuses particularly on labor supply...

There is still considerable dispute about the magnitude of labor supply elasticities. While differences in estimates especially between micro and macro models are recently attributed to frictions and adjustment costs, we show that the variation in elasticities derived from structural labor...

Using data from social security records and an event study approach, we estimate the child penalty in Spain, looking at disparities for women and men across different labor outcomes following the birth of the first child. Our findings show that, the year after the first child is born, mothers’...

We decompose permanent earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. Both...