Working Papers

In English:


As a complement to the federal EITC, some states offer their own EITC, typically calculated as a percentage of the federal EITC. In this paper, we analyze the effect of state EITC on education using policy discontinuities at U.S. state borders. Our estimates reveal that an increase in state EITC leads to a statistically significant drop in high school completion. We then use a life-cycle matching model with directed search and endogenous educational choices, search intensities, hirings, hours worked, and separations to investigate the long-term effects of EITC on labor market dynamics. We show that a tax credit targeted at low-wage (and low-skilled) workers reduces the relative return to schooling, thereby generating a powerful disincentive to pursue long-term studies. In the long run, this results in an increase in the proportion of low-skilled workers in the economy, which may have important implications in terms of employment, productivity, and income inequalities.

This paper builds a time series for vacancies in Argentina and shows the path of the Beveridge curve during the period 2000--2018. We use a novel dataset from a survey that collects vacancy postings since 2008 and combine it with a print help-wanted index published from 2000 through 2014. We present, as a result, a job vacancy series long enough to cover six recessions in addition to the 2001 crisis.

In this paper we investigate the labor market dynamics in a matching model where fluctuations are driven by movements in the discount factor. A comparison with the standard productivity shock is provided. Movements in the discount factor can be used as a proxy for variations in financial risks, especially the expected payoff from hiring workers. It is shown that the canonical matching model under a very standard calibration is able to generate an important volatility of unemployment and vacancies with respect to output. We estimate the structural model with the two shocks and using the Bayesian methodology. The bulk of variations in unemployment and vacancies is mainly explained by disturbances pertaining to the discount factor. Productivity shocks account for most of the historical output variations but the discount factor plays a more important role over the last two decades.