J - Labor and Demographic Economics

• Uncertainty and the Specificity of Human Capital

  Staff Working Paper 2007-57 Martin Gervais, Igor Livshits, Césaire Meh

  This paper studies the choice between general and specific human capital. A trade-off arises because general human capital, while less productive, can easily be reallocated across firms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): D, D9, D92, J, J2, J24, J4, J41, J6, J62

• Schooling, Inequality and Government Policy

  Staff Working Paper 2007-12 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  This paper asks: What is the effect of government policy on output and inequality in an environment with education and labor-supply decisions? The answer is given in a general equilibrium model, consistent with the post 1960s facts on male wage inequality and labor supply in the U.S. In the model, education and labor-supply decisions depend on progressive income taxation, the education system, the social security system, and technology-driven wage differentials.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): H, H5, H52, J, J3, J31, J38

• Education and Self-Employment: Changes in Earnings and Wealth Inequality

  Staff Working Paper 2006-40 Yaz Terajima

  The author quantitatively studies the interaction between education and occupation choices and its implication for the relationship between the changes in earnings inequality and the changes in wealth inequality in the United States over the 1983–2001 period.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): D, D3, D31, I, I2, I21, J, J2, J23

• Intertemporal Substitution in Macroeconomics: Evidence from a Two-Dimensional Labour Supply Model with Money

  Staff Working Paper 2005-30 Ali Dib, Louis Phaneuf

  The hypothesis of intertemporal substitution in labour supply has a history of empirical failure when confronted with aggregate time-series data.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E2, E24, E3, E32, J, J2, J22

• A Search Model of Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, and Unemployment

  Staff Working Paper 2005-24 Robin Boadway, Oana Secrieru, Marianne Vigneault

  The authors develop a search model of venture capital in which the number of successful matches of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (VCs) at any moment in time is a function of the number of entrepreneurs searching for funds, the number of VCs searching for entrepreneurs, and the number of vacancies posted by each VC.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Financial markets, Fiscal policy, Labour markets JEL Code(s): D, D8, D82, G, G1, G18, G2, G24, H, H2, H21, J, J6, J64

• Learning-by-Doing or Habit Formation?

  Staff Working Paper 2005-15 Hafedh Bouakez, Takashi Kano

  In a recent paper, Chang, Gomes, and Schorfheide (2002) extend the standard real business cycle (RBC) model to allow for a learning-by-doing (LBD) mechanism whereby current labour supply affects future productivity.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C52, E, E3, E32, J, J2, J22

• Educational Spillovers: Does One Size Fit All?

  Staff Working Paper 2005-10 Robert Baumann, Raphael Solomon

  In a search model of production, where agents accumulate heterogeneous amounts of human capital, an individual worker's wage depends on average human capital in the searching population.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): I, I2, I29, J, J2, J24, J3, J31

• Recent Developments in Self-Employment in Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2005-8 Nadja Kamhi, Danny Leung

  The authors document the recent evolution of the self-employment rate in Canada. Between 1987 and 1998, the self-employment rate rose 3.5 percentage points from 13.8 per cent to 17.3 per cent.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): J, J2, J23, J24

• Self-Enforcing Labour Contracts and the Dynamics Puzzle

  Staff Working Paper 2005-1 Christian Calmès

  To properly account for the dynamics of key macroeconomic variables, researchers incorporate various internal-propagation mechanisms in their models.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E1, E12, E4, E49, J, J3, J30, J31, J4, J41

• Translog ou Cobb-Douglas? Le rôle des durées d'utilisation des facteurs

  Staff Working Paper 2004-19 Eric Heyer, Florian Pelgrin, Arnaud Sylvain

  Using French data on industrial firms over the period 1989-2001, the authors estimate a "flexible" Translog production function that accounts for the volumes and durations of factor utilization.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Research Topic(s): Economic models JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, D, D2, D24, J, J2, J23