Shifts in the aggregate production function have long been studied by economists. Solow (1957) first classified these shifts as technical changes that can encompass slowdowns, speedups or improvements in the education of the labor force. Solow showed that these technical changes were factor-neutral from 1909-1949. Shifts in the production function are neutral if they leave the marginal rate of ...

The perspective of modern macroeconomic theory, be it new classical or old and new Keynesian, is that unemployment can be reduced only if real wages are cut. The modern Keynesians, basing themselves upon the microfoundations of efficiency wage theory, argue that real wages cannot and will not be cut by firms for efficiency wage reasons. This generates involuntary unemployment based on a market ...

We construct a dynamic, stochastic rational expectations model of labor reallocation that is designed so that its key parameters can be estimated for trade policy analysis. A key feature is the presence of time-varying idiosyncratic moving costs faced by workers. As a consequence of these shocks: (i) Gross ‡ows exceed net ‡ows (an important feature of empirical labor movements); (ii) the econom...

Construction jobs are more labor-intensive compared to other industries. As such, construction workers are often required to exceed their natural physical capability to cope with the increasing complexity and challenges in this industry. Over long periods of time, this sustained physical labor causes bodily injuries to the workers which in turn, conveys huge losses to the industry in terms of m...

B y the end of 1998, the disinflation of the 1990s had brought the U.S. price level close to absolute stability. The same disinflation witnessed a remarkable resurgence of what used to be called cost-push theories of price-level movements to explain it. Such theories, of course, attribute inflation and disinflation to a host of nonmonetary, supply-oriented influences that alter the unit cost an...

A fundamental puzzle for productivity driven business cycle theories is that labor productivity and hours are negatively correlated. I refine the empirical puzzle and provide a theory to account for it. I emphasize that hours per worker and individual hours relative to usual hours move counter to productivity. In the cross-section, I find that almost all workers increase their hours when produc...

Despite the remarkable rise in women's participation in the labor market in Brazil, its consequences on health are still virtually unknown. This study aims to identify theoretical and methodological problems in the relationship between labor and women's health from a gender perspective. Characteristics of women's occupational placement are described and analyzed as resulting from their role in ...

This paper uses readily accessible data to measure the probability that an employed worker becomes unemployed and the probability that an unemployed worker finds a job, the ins and outs of unemployment. The job finding probability is strongly procyclical and the separation probability is nearly acyclical, particularly during the last two decades. Using the underlying microeconomic data, the pap...

Among the variables most often tracked by economic analysts and policymakers, the rate of growth of labor productivity is one of the most volatile and hardest to interpret, at least in the short run. Yet, it is often used to explain movements in inflation and output under the assumption that there are stable relationships between productivity growth and those variables. This paper uses frequenc...