christine braun

working papers

Measuring the Total Number of US Job Seekers [draft] Conditionally Accepted at The Economic Journal
*previously distributed as part of "Aggregate Job Search of the Employed, Unemployed, and Non-Participants"

Abstract: I document a substantial rise in the proportion of job seekers who are classified as out of the labour force in the United States since 1980. I propose an adjusted unemployment rate to account for these searchers; the adjustment increases the unemployment rate by 5.2 percentage points, rids the unemployment rate of its downward trend, and decreases volatility by 50%. I also construct a measure of total search effort in the economy, including employed job seekers. Finally, estimates of the Phillips Curve using the adjusted unemployment rate or total searcher rate show no sign of a flattening output-inflation relationship in the post-2008 recession period.

Quality Hours: Measuring Labour Input [draft] Forthcoming at Labour Economics

Abstract: We construct an aggregate labor input series from 1979 to 2019 to adjust for changes in the experience and education levels of the workforce using the Current Population Survey’s Outgoing Rotation Groups. We compare the cyclical behavior of labor input to aggregate hours – finding that labor input is about 9% less volatile over the business cycle and that the quality of the workforce is countercyclical. We show that the decrease in labor productivity beginning in 2004, the “productivity slowdown,” is understated by 12 percentage points when using aggregate hours instead of labor input to calculate productivity, as compared to the 1990-2003 growth rate. Moreover, 39% of the average quarterly growth rate of labor productivity can be attributed to increases in education and experience since 2004.

Measuring the Productivity of Working from Home, with Travis Cyronek and Peter Rupert [draft] Reject & Resubmit at Review of Economics and Statistics

Abstract: We document a doubling of hours worked at home in the US from 2003 to 2019. We propose a model where workers choose optimally where (at home or at the office) and how much to work, in which their choices depend on their preferences across locations and the relative productivity of working from home. We estimate the model allowing for both preference and productivity to change over time and decompose the rise in hours worked. We show that changes in preferences and the demographic composition of the workforce played little role in the rise of working from home. Instead, increases in the relative productivity of working from home and employment shifts toward occupations with higher relative productivity can account for the entire observed increase in hours worked at home.

Labor Market Beliefs and the Gender Wage Gap, with Ana Figueiredo [draft]

Abstract: We study the role of labor market beliefs in the gender pay gap. We find that, on average, women expect to receive lower salaries than men and also expect to receive fewer offers when employed. Gender differences in expectations explain a sizable fraction of the residual gap in reservation wages. We estimate a partial equilibrium job search model that incorporates worker heterogeneity in beliefs about the wage offer distribution, arrival rates, and separation rate. Counterfactual exercises show that labor market beliefs play an important role in the gender wage gap, but matter little for the gender differences in welfare. Eliminating gender differences in the actual offer distribution, by contrast, decreases the gender gap in pay and welfare.