Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of The Great Recession On Nevada’S Latino Community, John P. Tuman, David F. Damore, Maria J.F. Agreda

Brookings Mountain West Publications

The emergence of the Great Recession of 2008 had a profound impact in Nevada. The economic downturn generated high unemployment levels and led to turbulence in many sectors, particularly residential home construction and the hospitality industry. In the wake of the crisis, median home prices in Nevada plunged, while the residential foreclosure rate increased and remains one of the highest rates in the country. By 2009, it was evident that a tightening of commercial bank lending for new mortgages, combined with the impact of rising joblessness and plunging housing values, was hampering recovery efforts in the housing sector and Nevada’s …

Mountain Monitor - 3rd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

The quarter’s Mountain Monitor marks the four-year anniversary of Brookings Mountain West's quarterly tracking of the uneven pace of recovery across the major metro areas of the Intermountain West and it finds that, although the region continues to outperform the national economy the rate of recovery slowed moderately in the region’s metro areas.

As a group, Mountain region metro areas advanced on all four indicators of economic recovery tracked by the Monitor—employment, output, unemployment, and house prices—but their progress was more restrained in the third quarter of 2013 than it was in the second.

Beneath the regional headline of moderating …

Immigration And African American Wages And Employment: Critically Appraising The Empirical Evidence, Patrick Leon Mason

Patrick L. Mason

This paper critically assesses the empirical evidence on the relationship between immigration and African American employment. Studies using various methodologies and data are reviewed: natural experiments, time series, and cross-sectional studies of local labor markets and intertemporal changes in the national labor market. We find that for African Americans as a whole, immigration may have little effect on mean wages and probability of employment. However, there is some evidence that immigration may have had an adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of African Americans belonging to low education-experience groups. However, even this modest conclusion must be qualified: the literature …

The Economic Influence On Electoral Politics, David Lynch, Nicholas R. Jesteadt, Brencis Navia

Professor David Lynch

The economy has been one of the focal points of not just this election, but almost every election in the past. The incumbent party attempts to portray the economy as healthy, recovering, prosperous; the opposing party attempts to show stagnation and volatility. This presentation aims to expose the effect of the economy on campaigning and electoral outcomes by examining historical elections and projecting toward the 2012 election. What economic factors influence voters? We examine unemployment, GDP growth, inflation, and several others as we try to piece together the economic impact on elections. Our guest speaker is David Lynch, a senior …

Simulation Analysis Of The Louisiana Unemployment Insurance Tax System: Final Report, Christopher J. O'Leary

Upjohn Institute Technical Reports

Unemployment insurance (UI) is a federal-state program designed to provide adequate partial income replacement to workers during temporary periods of involuntary joblessness. The UI system acts as an automatic macroeconomic stabilizer, increasing spending during recessions and reducing aggregate spending during recoveries. The program helps prevent recipients from slipping into poverty during unemployment.

This report reviews the recent history of financing regular UI benefits in Louisiana, assesses the adequacy of financing, and suggests areas where the financing system could be improved. The project aims to identify possible system reforms that will 1) assure long-term financial stability, 2) increase tax equity, and …

Mountain Monitor - 2nd Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic recovery progressed steadily across the metropolitan Mountain West in the second quarter of 2013. Many of the region’s major metro areas counted among the strongest economic performers nationally, but output growth slowed over the quarter and the region‘s unemployment recovery looked to be stagnating. Moderate job growth and a fast and accelerating housing recovery buoyed the Mountain West economy in the second quarter.

Unemployment Insurance, Stephen A. Woodbury

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Unemployment insurance (UI) provides temporary income support to workers who have lost their jobs and are seeking reemployment. This paper reviews the origins of the federal-state UI system in the United States and outlines its principles and goals. It also describes the conditions for benefit eligibility, the benefits themselves, and their financing through the UI payroll tax. The UI system is complex and includes many interested parties, including employers, worker advocates, state UI administrators, and the federal government. These parties’ differing views have led to controversies over benefit eligibility, adequacy, and whether the states or federal government should bear primary …

The Historically Low Summer And Year Round 2008 Teen Employment Rate : The Case For An Immediate National Public Policy Response To Create Jobs For The Nation’S Youth, Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Joseph Mclaughlin

Ishwar Khatiwada

No abstract provided.

The Historically Low Summer And Year Round 2008 Teen Employment Rate : The Case For An Immediate National Public Policy Response To Create Jobs For The Nation’S Youth, Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Joseph Mclaughlin

Andrew Sum

No abstract provided.

Labor Force Migration, Unemployment And Job Turnover, Gary S. Fields

Gary S Fields

[Excerpt] In this paper, we show how labor turnover considerations can be integrated into the human investment theory of migration and demonstrate that such a model provides a much better explanation for migration rates into major metropolitan areas than the conventionally-used unemployment rate. The method used here may be of interest as well to researchers working on other human investment problems that also have a multi-period dimension.

Dead-End Jobs And Youth Unemployment: Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Charles Brown has very ambitiously attempted to analyze whether the existence of "dead-end jobs" contributes to the youth unemployment problem. He assumes that the average rate of wage growth of individuals initially employed in an occupation and the proportion of these individuals who remain employed in the same industry for five years are both inversely related to the probability that individuals initially employed in the occupation find themselves in dead end-jobs. His basic methodological approach involves using data from the 1/100 sample of the 1970 Census of Population to calculate both of these variables for each three-digit occupation, merging …

Mountain Monitor-1st Quarter 2013, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Economic recovery gained strength across the major metro areas of the Mountain West in the first quarter of 2013. Multiple metro areas achieved long-awaited full employment recoveries in the first quarter and regional production surpassed pre-recession levels of output for the first time. The region’s strong housing rebound continued to be a boon. Additionally, a special supplement to the Monitor shows that the healthcare sector has been an outsized contributor to recovery throughout the region. Despite progress on multiple fronts, though, many Mountain metro areas remain scarred with high unemployment rates, severely depressed house prices, and daunting jobs deficits.

Editor’S Introduction To The Review Symposium On The Book Myth And Measurement: The New Economics Of The Minimum Wage, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Why has Myth and Measurement engendered so much controversy? In part, because it deals with the minimum wage. The minimum wage was the first piece of protective labor legislation adopted at the national level, and proposals to increase the minimum wage invariably lead to heated debate between labor and business interests. When a book co-authored by the then chief economist in the Clinton Labor Department purports to show that, contrary to received wisdom, minimum wage increases do not appear to have any diverse effects on employment, it is predictable that conservative critics will attack its findings.

Predictors Of Employment Growth And Unemployment In U.S. Central Cities, 1990-2010, Laura Wolf-Powers

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public capital investment as influences on job growth and changes in unemployment rates in 83 central cities in the United States. Change in educational attainment over time is suggestive of causing higher job growth and lower unemployment. The implication is that initiatives to attract and retain college-educated professionals and investments in increasing college attainment among incumbent residents …

Jobs Don’T Grow On Trees, Nicholas Johnson

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2013

Most contemporary macroeconomic models account for unemployment by making the simplifying assumptions that 1) there is an equilibrium level of unemployment and that 2) when the economy is not at that level it will tend towards equilibrium. Implicit in these models is also the assumption that the actual behavior of unemployment does not affect the equilibrium level. This paper joins a growing number of economists pointing out that such assumptions are false: the equilibrium does depend on past behavior, a trait called hysteresis. This paper considers the hysteresis hypothesis by using an iterated version of OLS to construct a series …

Responding To The Needs Of Workers During The Great Recession, Randall W. Eberts, Stephen A. Wandner

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Education On Unemployment In Kentucky, Christopher R. Bollinger

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

No abstract provided.

Mountain Monitor-4th Quarter 2012, Kenan Fikri, Mark Muro

Mountain Monitor Quarterly

Indicators of economic recovery depicted continued progress in the major metropolitan areas of the Mountain West in the fourth quarter of 2012. The region’s employment recovery gained momentum, and solid home-price increases in the region contributed to the nation‘s broader housing recovery. Such inroads bode well for further advances in 2013. At the same time, the region’s output recovery slowed and unemployment refused to budge.

U.S. Employment Outlook For 2013, Randall W. Eberts

Periodical Articles

No abstract provided.

2013-4 Three Revolutions In Macroeconomics: Their Nature And Influence, David Laidler

Economic Policy Research Institute. EPRI Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Inflation And Unemployment: Is The Trade-Off Dead Or Alive In Pakistan?, Najid Ahmad, Kausar Yasmeen, Arsalan Ahmad

Najid Ahmad

The aim of this paper is to identify the relationship betweeninflation and unemployment in Pakistan perspective of Phillips curve. A time series data is used for the period of 1984- 2012. Inflation rate is taken as dependent variable while unemployment rate, exchange rate, trade (percentage of GDP) is taken as independent variables. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) is used after assuring the stationary of the variables with the help of Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test. The paper has found significant results: there is an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment rate in Pakistan. Concept of Phillips curve holdtrue in case of …

Unemployment And Endogenous Reallocation Over The Business Cycle, Ludo Visschers, Carlos Carrillo-Tudela

Ludo Visschers

We build an analytically and computationally tractable stochastic equilibrium model of unemployment in heterogeneous labor markets. Facing search frictions within markets and reallocation frictions between markets, workers endogenously separate from employment and endogenously reallocate between markets, in response to changing aggregate and local conditions. Empirically, using the 1986-2008 SIPP panels, we document the occupational mobility patterns of the unemployed, finding notably that occupational change of unemployed workers is procyclical. The heterogeneous-market model yields highly volatile countercyclical unemployment, and is simultaneously consistent with procyclical reallocation, countercyclical separations and a negatively-sloped Beveridge curve. Moreover, the model exhibits unemployment duration dependence, which (when …

Tackling Unemployment: The Legislative Dynamics Of The Employment Act Of 1946, Ruth Ellen Wasem

Upjohn Press

Wasem examines the impacts and implications of the Employment Act of 1946 and discusses how provisions of the Act might be useful for today's policymakers.

Offshoring, Unemployment, And Welfare With Risk Averse Workers, Priya Ranjan

Priya Ranjan

This paper studies the welfare and policy implications of offshoring when risk averse workers face the risk of unemployment. If offshored inputs can be easily substituted for domestic workers, then offshoring reduces wages and increases unemployment. In this situation, in the absence of any government intervention offshoring not only reduces the welfare of workers but could reduce aggregate welfare as well if workers are highly risk averse and the markets for insurance against unemployment risk are missing. In addition to unemployment insurance, the role of employment protection policies- severance payments and administrative cost of firing -in protecting workers against the …

O¤Shoring, Unemployment, And Welfare With Risk Averse Workers, Priya Ranjan

Priya Ranjan

This paper studies the welfare and policy implications of offshoring when risk averse workers face the risk of unemployment. If offshored inputs can be easily substituted for domestic workers, then offshoring reduces wages and increases unemployment. In this situation, in the absence of any government intervention offshoring not only reduces the welfare of workers but could reduce aggregate welfare as well if workers are highly risk averse and the markets for insurance against unemployment risk are missing. In addition to unemployment insurance, the role of employment protection policies- severance payments and administrative cost of firing -in protecting workers against the …