Three Essays on Women and the Macroeconomy

Three Essays on Women and the Macroeconomy
Author: Kathrin Daniela Ellieroth
Publisher:
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2020
Genre: Marriage
ISBN:

In my dissertation I study how differences in gender and marital status affect aggregate labor market outcomes in the economy.In my first chapter "Cyclicality of Hours Worked by Married Women and Spousal Insurance", I document that married women's hours worked are less cyclical than married men's and singles' hours and argue that spousal insurance contributes to the low cyclicality. Analyzing volatility and transition rates, I show that married women are less likely to leave the labor force during recessions, but not more likely to join. In my second chapter "Spousal Insurance, Precautionary Labor Supply, and the Business Cycle", I document that married women are less likely to leave the labor force and are more attached to employment in recessions. Using a two-person household incomplete assets markets model with labor market frictions, I show that married women exhibit precautionary labor supply in response to the higher threat of job loss experienced by their husband in recessions. Quantitative analysis shows that married women's precautionary labor supply behavior is an important mechanism of intra-household risk sharing and accounts for 30% of married women's low employment cyclicality. Furthermore, I show that spousal insurance reduces married households' consumption volatility by 30% over the business cycle.In my third chapter "From Trend to Cycle: the Changing Careers of Married Women and Business Cycle Risk" (joint with Amanda Michaud), we show that the rise in hours and employment of married women has been driven by a rise of "career women" with highly persistent full-time participation. We derive implications of this secular change for the cyclically aggregate labor using a unified theory. We find that, while the hours cyclicality varies greatly across career types, the changing composition of careers and families nets little change in the aggregate hours cyclicality, but redistributes the cyclical risk across household types.

The American Economic Review

The American Economic Review
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1044
Release: 1984
Genre: Economics
ISBN:

Includes annual List of doctoral dissertations in political economy in progress in American universities and colleges; and the Hand book of the American Economic Association.

Unequal We Stand

Unequal We Stand
Author: Jonathan Heathcote
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 61
Release: 2010-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1437934919

The authors conducted a systematic empirical study of cross-sectional inequality in the U.S., integrating data from various surveys. The authors follow the mapping suggested by the household budget constraint from individual wages to individual earnings, to household earnings, to disposable income, and, ultimately, to consumption and wealth. They document a continuous and sizable increase in wage inequality over the sample period. Changes in the distribution of hours worked sharpen the rise in earnings inequality before 1982, but mitigate its increase thereafter. Taxes and transfers compress the level of income inequality, especially at the bottom of the distribution, but have little effect on the overall trend. Charts and tables. This is a print-on-demand publication; it is not an original.