{"title":"A multisector perspective on wage stagnation","authors":"L. Rachel Ngai , Orhun Sevinc","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101269","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101269","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Low-skill workers are concentrated in sectors experiencing fast productivity growth, yet their real wages have stagnated and lagged behind aggregate productivity. We provide evidence demonstrating the importance of a multisector perspective. Central to our mechanism is the decline in the relative price of the low-skill intensive sector driven by its faster productivity growth. This dampens wage gains for low-skill workers by lowering the price of their output relative to their consumption basket, which is further reinforced by shifting them into the sector where less weight is placed on their labor. We calibrate the two-sector model to the 1980–2010 U.S. economy and find this mechanism to be quantitatively important. Our counterfactual analysis reveals that low-skill real wage growth would have nearly doubled if the observed aggregate productivity growth had been evenly distributed across sectors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101269"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143167225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Home construction financing and search frictions in the housing market","authors":"Miroslav Gabrovski , Victor Ortego-Marti","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101253","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101253","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the effects of financial frictions in construction on housing market dynamics. To this end, we build a search-theoretic model of the housing market in which there is endogenous entry of buyers and developers face credit constraints. We capture credit frictions by assuming that developers must search for financing before building a home à la <span><span>Wasmer and Weil (2004)</span></span>. Our model explores a novel channel that links credit frictions faced by developers to the housing market. We calibrate the model to quantify the size of the credit channel during the 2012–2019 housing market recovery. Through a series of counterfactuals, our model predicts that the credit channel had a large impact on housing liquidity, construction, and the vacancy rate. Furthermore, it accounts for around half of the rise in prices during the 2012-2019 housing market recovery.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101253"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142654363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migration spillovers within families: Evidence from Thailand","authors":"Travis Baseler","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101255","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101255","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When a person migrates, are their family members more likely to migrate too? I estimate the causal impact of family migrant network size on migration decisions using household survey data from rural Thailand. Large but temporary labor demand shocks in a nearby city—originating from a national infrastructure program—provide plausibly exogenous variation in family members' migration decisions based on their ages at the time of the program. Among those too young to be directly impacted by the program, I find that each older family migrant increases their migration probability by about 5 percentage points. Further analysis suggests a role for better information about the destination in driving this impact. My findings imply that the short-run benefits of relieving migration constraints can underestimate the long-run benefits due to spillovers within the household.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101255"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142540230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monetary non-neutrality in a multisector economy: The role of risk-sharing","authors":"Jae Won Lee , Seunghyeon Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101241","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101241","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We show that the degree of risk-sharing among heterogeneous workers is a key determinant of monetary non-neutrality in a multisector sticky-price model. In this framework, workers are employed across different sectors, earning distinct wages. The limited ability of workers to fully insure against labor income risks results in strategic complementarity in firms' price-setting decisions with respect to aggregate shocks and strategic substitutability with respect to idiosyncratic shocks. These pricing interactions lead to sluggish adjustments of the price level in response to monetary and other aggregate shocks, causing significant fluctuations in the output gap while maintaining large responses of individual prices to idiosyncratic shocks. We illustrate these results across three stylized asset market scenarios: complete markets, non-contingent bond-only markets, and financial autarky.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101241"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142044587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A job ladder model of executive compensation","authors":"Bo Hu","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101257","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101257","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the impact of managerial labor market competition on executive incentive contracts. I develop a dynamic contracting model that incorporates moral hazard, search frictions, and poaching offers. The model generates a job ladder along which executives can either use outside offers to renegotiate with the current firm or transition to outside firms. I show that poaching offers generate a new source of incentives, which explains a novel empirical finding whereby larger firms give executives a higher proportion of incentive compensation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101257"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142593532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John Haltiwanger , Henry Hyatt , Erika McEntarfer , Matthew Staiger
{"title":"Cyclical worker flows: Cleansing vs. sullying","authors":"John Haltiwanger , Henry Hyatt , Erika McEntarfer , Matthew Staiger","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101252","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101252","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Do recessions speed up or impede productivity-enhancing reallocation? To investigate this question, we use U.S. linked employer-employee data to examine how worker flows contribute to productivity growth over the business cycle. We find that in expansions high-productivity firms grow faster primarily by hiring workers away from low-productivity firms. Productivity growth slows during recessions when this job ladder collapses. In contrast, layoffs at low-productivity firms disproportionately increase in recessions, which leads to an increase in productivity growth. We thus find evidence of both sullying and cleansing effects of recessions, but the timing of these effects differs. The cleansing effects are concentrated in downturns while the sullying effects linger well into the economic recovery. Our results imply that slow labor market recoveries will be more damaging to productivity growth than V-shaped recoveries due to lingering sullying effects.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101252"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142164860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Means-tested programs and interstate migration in the United States","authors":"Álvaro Jáñez","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101256","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101256","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper quantifies the impact of means-tested programs – in particular, Medicaid and Public Housing – on the interstate mobility of their beneficiaries. Simulations from a structural model with heterogeneous workers and locations show that beneficiaries' mobility falls by 17.2 percent, with the greatest reduction occurring among the poorest beneficiaries. Around half of this effect stems from the lack of federal coordination in the programs' administrations, namely, the possibility that a moving beneficiary loses transfers despite being eligible for them. A policy that eliminates this risk raises overall welfare, with 5 percent of low-income households enjoying a welfare gain of 1.1 percent.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101256"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142653737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mergers, firm size, and volatility in a granular economy","authors":"Jackie M.L. Chan , Han (Steffan) Qi","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101254","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101254","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We study the firm dynamics associated with mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and their implications at the micro and macro levels. Our paper presents three main findings: (i) mergers generate a more fat-tailed firm-size distribution, thereby amplifying granular fluctuations and increasing aggregate volatility; (ii) the impact of mergers depends on strategic market power and endogenous markups; and (iii) under endogenous markups, we provide a novel characterization of the firm size-volatility relationship in which volatility declines disproportionately with size. We build a quantitative model of domestic horizontal mergers and find a sizeable impact of mergers on aggregate volatility using counterfactual analysis.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101254"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142428685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"One rule fits all? Heterogeneous fiscal rules for commodity exporters when price shocks can be persistent: Theory and evidence","authors":"Arthur Mendes, Steven Pennings","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101239","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101239","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper reevaluates the common characterization of commodity-exporting developing economies as having excessively procyclical fiscal policy. We develop a new measure of fiscal procyclicality—the marginal propensity to spend (MPS) an extra dollar of commodity revenues—which we estimate in a panel of countries and compare with optimal policy in a New Keynesian model. Empirically, fiscal policy is procyclical on average (MPS=0.25), but heterogeneous. Countries with fixed exchange rates (ER) are almost acyclical, but countries with flexible ERs are procyclical and the MPS increases with the persistence of commodity price shocks. Optimal policy in the model is similar qualitatively but differs quantitatively in some dimensions. Under fixed ERs, optimal policy is almost acyclical to stabilize the business cycle. However, under flexible ERs, monetary policy stabilizes the business cycle, so fiscal policy is procyclical because commodity price shocks are typically persistent and so should be spent by the permanent income hypothesis.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101239"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142097065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Real-time forward-looking skewness over the business cycle","authors":"Ian Dew-Becker","doi":"10.1016/j.red.2024.101233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2024.101233","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper measures option-implied skewness for individual firms and the S&P 500 index between 1980 and 2021, giving real-time measures of conditional micro and macro skewness. There are three key results: 1. Micro skewness is significantly procyclical, while macro skewness is acyclical; 2. Micro skewness leads the business cycle and is strongly linked to credit spreads, suggesting one potential causal channel; 3. Micro skewness is significantly, and not mechanically, correlated with macro volatility, implying that there is a common shock driving them both, which is also linked to the business cycle.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47890,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economic Dynamics","volume":"54 ","pages":"Article 101233"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141483127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}