Building a Good Jobs Economy

Good jobs, bad jobs, and trade liberalization

☆ Much of this paper was written while Davis wa employed by, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The are those of the authors and do not necessarily refle Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve Syste Elhanan Helpman and Oleg Itskhoki for very helpful co this paper, and to seminar participants at Columbia, For and the NBER. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Economi York, NY 100...

Roads, Jobs and the Economy

Economic Origins of Good Jobs

In recent decades, many firms offered more discretion to their employees, often increasing the productivity of effort but also leaving more opportunities for shirking. We show experimentally that complementarities between high effort discretion, rent-sharing, screening opportunities, and competition are important driving forces behind these “high-performance work systems.” We document the endog...

Looking for jobs with good pay and good working conditions

In perfectly competitive labour markets, there is a market for non-material job amenities in which workers’ willingness to pay for these goods implies that workers accept compensating wage differentials, such that jobs with better working conditions should have lower wages. In labour market characterised by frictions, workers’ wages typically depend also on firm productivity. However many job c...

Bad Jobs, Good Jobs, No Jobs? The Employment Experience of the Mexican American Second Generation

Concern with the prospects and experience of the ‘new’ second generation now stands at the top of the immigration research agenda in the United States. In contrast to the past, many immigrant offspring appear to be rapidly heading upward, exemplified by the large number of Chinese, Korean, Indian and other Asian-origin students enrolled in the nation’s leading universities, some the children of...