A. Working Papers
Job Applications and Labor Market Flows (with Serdar Birinci and Shu Lin Wee)
Accepted, Review of Economic Studies
Paper
Job applications have risen over time, yet job-finding rates remain unchanged. Meanwhile, separations have declined. We argue that increased applications raise the probability of a good match rather than the probability of job-finding. Using a search model with multiple applications and costly information, we show that when applications increase, firms invest in identifying good matches, reducing separations. Concurrently, increased congestion and selectivity over which offer to accept temper increases in job-finding rates. Our framework contains testable implications for changes in offers, acceptances, reservation wages, applicants per vacancy, and tenure, objects that enable it to generate the trends in unemployment flows.
The Allocation of Immigrant Talent: Macroeconomic Implications for the U.S. and Across Countries (with Serdar Birinci and Fernando Leibovici)
Paper
We quantify the labor market barriers that immigrants face, using an occupational choice model with natives and immigrants of multiple types subject to wedges that distort their allocations. We find sizable output gains from removing immigrant wedges in the U.S., representing 25% of immigrants' overall economic contribution, and that these wedges alter the impact of alternative immigration policies. We harmonize microdata across 19 economies and exploit cross-country variation in immigrant outcomes and estimated wedges to examine the drivers of differences in wedges and gains from their removal. Finally, we relate the estimated wedges with external cross-country measures of immigrant barriers.
Labor Market Shocks and Monetary Policy (with Serdar Birinci, Fatih Karahan, and Yusuf Mercan)
Paper
We develop a heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model featuring a frictional labor market with on-the-job search to quantitatively study the positive and normative implications of employer-to-employer (EE) transitions for inflation. We find that EE dynamics played an important role in shaping the differential inflation dynamics observed during the Great Recession and COVID-19 recoveries, with the former exhibiting subdued EE transitions and inflation despite both episodes sharing similar unemployment dynamics. The optimal monetary policy prescribes a strong positive response to EE fluctuations, implying that central banks should distinguish between recovery episodes with similar unemployment but different EE dynamics.
Uncovering the Differences among Displaced Workers: Evidence from Canadian Job Separation Records (with Serdar Birinci, Youngmin Park, and Thomas Pugh)
Paper
We revisit the measurement of the sources and consequences of job displacement using Canadian job separation records. To circumvent administrative data limitations, conventional approaches address selection by identifying displacement effects through mass-layoff separations, which are interpreted as involuntary. We refine this procedure and find that only a quarter of mass-layoff separations are indeed layoffs. Isolating mass-layoff separations that reflect involuntary displacement, we find twice the earnings losses relative to existing estimates. We uncover heterogeneity in losses for separations with different reason and timing, ranging from 15 percent for quits after a mass layoff to 60 percent for layoffs before it.
"Medicare for All": The Macroeconomic and Welfare Consequences of Public Health Insurance Reform
Paper
In the United States, employment and medical expenditure risk are tightly linked because of the prevalence of employer-provided health insurance. In this paper, I investigate the macroeconomic and welfare consequences of introducing a single-payer (universal) healthcare system using an incomplete asset markets model with labor market frictions and medical expenditure risk over the lifecycle, paying particular attention to the labor market effects of the reform. First, I compare the model-implied labor supply elasticities with respect to public health insurance generosity to existing empirical evidence. The model partially accounts for the puzzlingly wide range of estimates found in three microeconomic experiments conducted in Tennessee, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Next, I use the model to understand the general equilibrium effects of the policy reform. I find that it results in higher reservation wages, a corresponding reduction in firm vacancy creation, both of which lead to a quantitatively large decline in the job finding rate. The negative impact of the lower job finding rate outweighs insurance benefits of generous public health coverage, resulting in substantial welfare losses among low-wealth households for whom employment is most valuable.
B. Published or Forthcoming
Heterogeneous Responses to Job Mobility Shocks in a HANK Model with a Frictional Labor Market (with Serdar Birinci, Fatih Karahan, and Yusuf Mercan)
AEA Papers and Proceedings, forthcoming, 2024
Paper
Labor Market Responses to Unemployment Insurance: The Role of Heterogeneity (with Serdar Birinci)
Retitled from: How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary Over the Business Cycle?
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 15(3), 388-430, July 2023
Paper
The Heterogeneous Effects of COVID-19 on Canadian Household Consumption, Debt and Savings (with Jim MacGee and Thomas Pugh)
Canadian Journal of Economics, 55(S1), 54-87, February 2022
Paper
Labor Market Policies During an Epidemic (with Serdar Birinci, Fatih Karahan, and Yusuf Mercan)
Journal of Public Economics, 194, 104348, February 2021
Paper
What Do Survey Data Tell Us about U.S. Businesses? (with Anmol Bhandari, Serdar Birinci, and Ellen McGrattan)
American Economic Review: Insights 2(4), 443-58, December 2020
Paper Online Appendix Replication Files Response to Bricker, Moore, and Volz (2022)
Prior to Grad School
The Role of Education and Government Sponsored Programs in Limiting Family Size in Pasay, Eastern Samar, and Agusan Del Sur (with John Paolo R. Rivera)
De La Salle University Business and Economic Review, 21(2), 2012
Paper
C. Commissioned Research Projects
Labor Market Signaling in APEC Economies: An Approach in Addressing Manpower Mismatch (with Tereso S. Tullao, Jr. and John Paolo R. Rivera)
A project funded by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 2012
Paper