Research
Publications
The Micro-Level Anatomy of the Labor Share Decline (with Nicolas Vincent),
Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 136, no. 2, pp. 1031-1087, May 2021.
The aggregate labor share decline is overwhelmingly driven by reallocation of value added to establishments with a low and declining labor share.
[paper] [appendix] [NBER WP] [data] [bibtex] [vox eu] [Bruegel] [Fin. Post] [Il Sole 24 Ore] [ET Today] [FTC panel] [Marginal Revolution]
The Cross-Section of Labor Leverage and Equity Returns (with Andres Donangelo, François Gourio and Miguel Palacios)
Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 132, no. 2, pp. 497-518, May 2019.
Firms with high labor leverage have higher expected asset returns and operating profits that are more sensitive to shocks.
[paper] [appendix] [data] [bibtex]
Slow to Hire, Quick to Fire: Employment Dynamics with Asymmetric Responses to News (with Cosmin Ilut and Martin Schneider)
Journal of Political Economy, vol. 126, no. 5, pp. 2011-2071, October 2018.
Firms respond 50% more strongly to negative than to positive news about future profitability.
[paper] [2014 NBER WP version] [appendix] [data & codes] [bibtex] [vox eu]
Comment on "Computerizing Industries and Routinizing Jobs: Explaining Trends in Aggregate Productivity" by Sangmin Aum, Sang Yoon (Tim) Lee and Yongseok Shin
Journal of Monetary Economics, vol. 97, pp. 22-28, August 2018.
Labor productivity and computer productivity grow at similar rates in those occupations in which labor is complementary to computer equipment.
[paper] [wp version] [data] [bibtex]
The Effects of the Real Oil Price on Regional Wage Dispersion (with Nicolas L. Ziebarth)
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 115-148, April 2017.
Wage dispersion dynamics tell apart labor supply from labor demand shifts confounded in average wages.
[paper] [data & codes] [bibtex]
Working Papers
Good Dispersion, Bad Dispersion (with Nicolas Vincent)
revise and resubmit at the Review of Economic Studies, NBER Working Paper No. 25923 and CEPR Discussion Paper No. 13772, March 2024.
Productivity is more dispersed across plants within firms than across firms. Rather than misallocation, this may reflect optimal reallocation of internal funds.
Welfare Effects of Gas Price Fluctuations (with Florian Kuhn and Nicolas L. Ziebarth).
Working Paper, September 2021.
Expenditure share of gasoline usage declines in income; such non-homotheticities in preferences make gasoline price shocks painful for low-income households.
Returns to Scale, Productivity and Competition: Empirical Evidence from U.S. Manufacturing and Construction Establishments (with Wei Gao).
Working Paper, February 2020.
Multiple structural estimators are used to estimate returns to scale of U.S. construction and manufacturing establishments and to show how returns to scale imapct the firms size distribution, concentration and productivity dispersion.
The Cyclical Nature of the Productivity Distribution
revise and resubmit at the Quarterly Journal of Economics, March 2015, new version coming soon.
Productivity dispersion across firms is 12% more spread-out in recessions than in booms.
[paper] [data] [appendix] [bibtex]
Financial Frictions and Investment Dynamics in Multi-Plant Firms (with Nicolas Vincent)
US Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies Paper No. CES-WP-56, June 2013.
The majority of long-run and cyclical investment differences originate within firms rather than between firms.
Work in Progress
Job Flows, Multi-Unit Firms and Productivity Growth (with Paul Grieco and Rebecca Lessem)
Business Dynamism and Firm Dynamism.
R&D, Innovation, Productivity (with Weiting Miao and Daniel Xu).
Hibernating Projects
Job Reallocation between and within Occupations (with Miao Ben Zhang)
How Do Oil Price Shocks Matter? Transmission Channels on the Supply and the Demand Side (with Nicolas L. Ziebarth), May 2009.
Limited Commitment and Moral Hazard in Late Classical Athenian Maritime Loans, April 2008.
Empirical Work
Using Confidential Census Data, October 2013.