2026-05-20T04:15:04Zhttps://keep.lib.asu.edu/oai/requestoai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-2009492025-04-29T18:01:09Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items200949
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.200949
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All Rights Reserved
2025
280 pages
Doctoral Dissertation
Academic theses
en
Bandyopadhyay, Sujan
Ferraro, Domenico
Vereshchagina, Galina
Ventura, Gustavo
Arizona State University
Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2025
Field of study: Economics
In this dissertation, I study how macroeconomic forces shape aggregate labor markets in the United States over the long and short run. The long-run perspective examines how technological progress and changes in aggregate production have influenced labor outcomes since the post-war period, while the short-run perspective explores labor market dynamics over the business cycle.
Chapter 1 develops a theory of domestic outsourcing based on search frictions and worker-firm heterogeneity. Motivated by empirical evidence on skilled services outsourcing—including its rising employment share, wage premium, and sorting ofhigh-ability workers—the model features workers, firms, and labor intermediaries in a frictional labor market. Intermediaries act as competitive matching platforms, reducing search frictions. A quantitative calibration of the model reveals that the rise in outsourcing since 1980 increased output by 4% and workers’ welfare by 2.5%.
Chapter 2 builds a quantitative model to explain the puzzling negative co-movement between hours per worker, which steadily decline, and the employment-to-population ratio, which rises, over the post-war period. The model extends a standard growth framework with home production, endogenous participation, and search frictions, attributing the divergence to a slowdown in total factor productivity growth.
Chapter 3 studies how rising separations and greater labor force attachment among the nonemployed amplify unemployment during recessions. This participation margin explains 38% of unemployment fluctuations and affects high- and low-wage workers differently, shifting the skill composition of the unemployed. A representative agent model replicates these patterns, showing that the rise in opportunity cost of employment rises during recessions increases labor force attachment; with differential wage groups responses driven by differences in unemployment insurance, and steady-statejob-finding and separation rates.
Economics
Essays in Aggregate Labor Markets