Working Papers

"Spatial Disparities in Unemployment" [New Draft Coming Soon!]

Abstract: This paper documents novel empirical facts about the spatial gaps in unemployment rates for heterogeneous workers in the United States. Cities with high productivity feature a low unemployment rate, and this spatial gap is particularly striking for low-skill workers. This paper aims to understand how much different channels of regional heterogeneity, namely, labor market matching efficiency, location productivity, and local housing market conditions, drive spatial differences in unemployment rates for high-skill and low-skill workers. The theoretical model, featuring spatial equilibrium and frictional labor markets, shows that housing prices and unemployment rates relate negatively across locations, matching empirical patterns. Calibrated to the U.S. economy between 2012-2019, counterfactual experiments show that the location productivity channel and the matching efficiency channel drive the low-skill spatial unemployment rate gap, whereas the high-skill spatial unemployment rate gap is driven by the local housing channel and the matching efficiency channel.

"Inflation, Skill Loss During Unemployment, and TFP in the Long Run" [Under Review]

 (with Paul Jackson and Fan Liang) [Working Paper]  

Abstract: We develop a search model with frictional goods and labor markets to study the long run relationship between inflation, unemployment, and TFP when workers lose skills during unemployment. As inflation increases, fewer jobs are created, workers experience longer unemployment durations and their skills deteriorate, causing TFP to decline. Our calibrated results show that transitioning from the Friedman rule to 10% annual inflation lowers TFP by 4.3%. A stochastic version of the model demonstrates that prolonged periods of inflation, such as the 1970s in the US, can have lasting negative effects on productivity.

"Information Barriers and Housing Tenure Choice: Do Local Ties Matter?" [Accepted]

(with Jae Hong Kim) [Working Paper] 

Abstract: This paper explores the extent to which ties to migration destinations affect housing tenure decisions for movers in the US, in particular, long-distance (LD) movers.1 Using American Community Survey from 2012 to 2019, we show that LD movers are less likely to own their next home compared to short distance (SD) movers by 5.1 percentage points. We explore how various channels of local ties affect LD movers’ housing tenure choices. We find that, among LD movers, the lack of geographic proximity reduces the likelihood of owning their next home, while social connectedness can mitigate this effect substantially. This result is robust across different empirical specifications. Our analysis also shows that these local ties bear very different significance for SD movers’ housing tenure choices compared to LD movers.

"Search Frictions and Rent Control Policies on the Rental Market: Theory and Evidence " [New Draft Coming Soon!]

(With Miroslav Gabrovski)