Unemployment, Skills, and the Business Cycle Since 2000

This paper employs reduced-form microeconometric analysis to examine how yearly changes in aggregate income and GDP growth affect the unemployment probability of individuals with varied skills in the United States. The paper goes beyond traditional education-based measures and assesses how manual, communication, and quantitative skills affect the relationship between macroeconomic shocks and unemployment. Workers specialized in communication skills exhibit lower unemployment rates, reduced unemployment volatility, and less sensitivity to macroeconomic fluctuations.Unemployment, Skills, Business Cycle, Macroeconomic Shocks, GDP

Highly-educated immigrants and native occupational choice

Economic debate about the consequences of immigration in the US has largely focused on how influxes of foreign-born labor with little educational attainment have affected similarly-educated native-born workers. Fewer studies analyze the effect of immigration within the market for highly-educated labor. We use O*NET data on job characteristics to assess whether native-born workers with graduate degrees respond to an increased presence of highly-educated foreign-born workers by choosing new occupations with different skill content. We find that immigrants with graduate degrees specialize in occupations demanding quantitative and analytical skills, whereas their native-born counterparts specialize in occupations requiring interactive and communication skills. When the foreign-born proportion of highly educated employment within an occupation rises, native employees with graduate degrees choose new occupations with less analytical and more communicative content. For completeness, we also assess whether immigration causes highly educated natives to lose their jobs or move across state boundaries. We find no evidence that either occurs

Existence of solitary waves in dipolar quantum gases

We study a nonlinear Schroedinger equation arising in the mean-field description of dipolar quantum gases. Under the assumption of sufficiently strong dipolar interactions, the existence of standing waves, and hence solitons, is proved together with some of their properties. This gives a rigorous argument for the possible existence of solitary waves in Bose-Einstein condensates, which originate solely due to the dipolar interaction between the particles.Comment: Minor modifications; more explanations added. To appear in Physica

Dimension reduction for rotating Bose-Einstein condensates with anisotropic confinement

We consider the three-dimensional time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation arising in the description of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates and study the corresponding scaling limit of strongly anisotropic confinement potentials. The resulting effective equations in one or two spatial dimensions, respectively, are rigorously obtained as special cases of an averaged three dimensional limit model. In the particular case where the rotation axis is not parallel to the strongly confining direction the resulting limiting model(s) include a negative, and thus, purely repulsive quadratic potential, which is not present in the original equation and which can be seen as an effective centrifugal force counteracting the confinement.Comment: 22 page

Racial Diversity and Aggregate Productivity in U.S. Industries: 1980-2000

This paper employs industry-level U.S. Census data from 1980-2000 to assess the aggregate effects of racial diversity. While most international accounts find that diversity reduces productivity, I argue that the U.S. experience is more nuanced. Unqualified statements about the costs and merits of diversity are unwarranted, as racial heterogeneity increases productivity within many, but not all, industries. Sectors employing a large number of workers responsible for creative decision-making and customer service experience gains from diversity, while industries characterized by high levels of group effort suffer losses. The results thus reconcile two competing literatures by suggesting that diversity improves decision-making and problem solving, but also encumbers common action and public goods provision.Racial Diversity, Productivity

Task specialization, immigration, and wages

Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. Large inflows of less-educated immigrants would reduce wages paid to comparably-educated native-born workers if the two groups are perfectly substitutable in production. In a simple model exploiting comparative advantage, however, we show that if less-educated foreign and native-born workers specialize in performing different tasks, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. We merge occupational task-intensity data from the O*NET and DOT datasets with individual Census data across US states from 1960-2000 to demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations that require manual and physical labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in communication and language tasks. Immigration induces natives to specialize accordingly. Simulations show that this increased specialization might explain why economic analyses commonly find only modest wage and employment consequences of immigration for less-educated native-born workers across U.S. states. This is especially true in states with large immigration flows

Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages

Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. Large inflows of less-educated immigrants would reduce wages paid to comparably-educated native-born workers if the two groups are perfectly substitutable in production. In a simple model exploiting comparative advantage, however, we show that if less-educated foreign and native-born workers specialize in performing different tasks, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. We merge occupational task-intensity data from the O*NET and DOT datasets with individual Census data across US states from 1960-2000 to demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations that require manual and physical labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in communication and language tasks. Immigration induces natives to specialize accordingly. Simulations show that this increased specialization might explain why economic analyses commonly find only modest wage and employment consequences of immigration for less-educated native-born workers across U.S. states. This is especially true in states with large immigration flows.Immigration, Less-Educated Labor, Manual Tasks, Communication Skills, Comparative Advantages, US States