Research

Working papers

1. Income and Wealth Inequality in the United States: An Update Including the 2022 Wave with José-Víctor Ríos-Rull (May 2025)
   available as NBER Working Paper No. 33823, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 20267

2. To Have or Not to Have: Understanding Wealth Inequality with Pavel Brendler and Ulrike Steins (April 2025)
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 19412, OIGI Working Paper No. 98

3. Distributional Dynamics with Christian Bayer and Luis Calderon (January 2025)
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 19829

4. Short-Time Work Extensions with Christina Brinkmann, Simon Jäger, Farzad Saidi, and Stefanie Wolter (October 2024)
   also available as NBER WP 33112, CEPR DP 19653, IZA DP. 17421
   media mentioning of our work in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

5. Army of Mortgagors: Long-Run Evidence on Credit Externalities and the Housing Market with Tobias Herbst and Farzad Saidi (July 2024)
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 18942, OIGI Working Paper No. 87

6. Female Employment and Structural Transformation with Iourii Manovskii and Xincheng Qiu (June 2024)
   available as IZA Discussion Paper No. 17118

7. Distributional Consequences of Climate Policies with Lennard Schlattmann (January 2024)
   Revise and Resubmit American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
   media mentioning of our work at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit
   VoxEU column summarizing the paper

8. Unemployment risk, portfolio choice, and the racial wealth gap with Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, and Moritz Schularick (October 2023)
   available as OIGI working paper No. 086

9. Job levels and Wages with Christian Bayer (May 2023)
   Revision requested at the Review of Economic Studies
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No 18169, IZA Discussion Paper No. 16177, ECONtribute discussion paper No 235, SOEPpaper No.1190
   media mentioning of our work at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

10. The Geography of Job Creation and Job Destruction with Iourii Manovskii and Xincheng Qiu (March 2022)
    Reject and Resubmit Journal of Monetary Economics
    available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 16645, IZA Discussion Paper No. 14791, NBER Working Paper No. 29399, OIGI working paper No. 085
    Find here our response to a recent critique of our work. 

11. Job stability, earnings dynamics, and life-cycle savings with Gasper Ploj (November 2020)
    available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 15460, IZA Discussion Paper No. 13887, CESIfo Working Paper No. 8710
    Here is a short Youtube summary presentation of the paper

12. Intergenerational ties and case fatality rates: A cross-country analysis with Christian Bayer (March 2020)
    available as CEPR discussion paper No. 16080
    Media mentionings of our work at MDR, Deutsche Welle, Deutschlandfunk, N-TV, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Corriere Della Serra, La Repubblica, Neue Züricher Zeitung, El Pais, ProMarket

Published papers

1. The Distribution of Household Debt in the United States, 1950-2022 with Alina Bartscher, Moritz Schularick, and Ulrike Steins (January 2025)
   Accepted for publication at the Review of Economic Dynamics
   Paper supersedes working paper Modigliani Meets Minsky: Inequality, Debt, and Financial Fragility in America, 1950-2016 (April 2020)
   earlier working paper available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 14667, New York Fed Staff Report No.924, CESIfo Working Paper No 8273

2. Unemployment insurance reforms and labor market dynamics with Benjamin Hartung and Philip Jung  (May 2024)
   Accepted for publication at the Review of Economic Studies
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 13328 , IZA Discussion Paper No. 12001
   Media mentionings of our work at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Makronom, IZA Newsroom, Berliner Zeitung, General Anzeiger, Rheinische Post, Sueddeutsche Zeitung
   Radio interview on Deutschlandfunk "Laenderzeit"
   Ifo Schnelldienst with a non-academic summary (in German) of our work together with reform ideas

3. What if? The economic effects for Germany of a stop of energy imports from Russia with  Rüdiger Bachmann, David Baqaee, Christian Bayer,  Andreas Löschel, Benjamin Moll,  Andreas Peichl, Karen Pittel, and Moritz Schularick (May 2022)
   Accepted for publication at Economica

4. Changes in the Distribution of Black and White Wealth Since the US Civil War with Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, and Moritz Schularick
   Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 37, no. 4, Fall 2023 (pp. 71-90)

5. Wealth of two nations: The U.S. racial wealth gap, 1860-2020 with Ellora Derenoncourt, Chi Hyun Kim, and Moritz Schularick (June 2023)
   Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 139, Issue 2, May 2024, Pages 693–750
   available as NBER working paper No. 30101, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 17328, CESIfo Working Paper No. 9774
   summary at NBER Digest August 2022

6. Coordinated Firm-Level Work Processes and Macroeconomic Resilience with Jinfeng Luo, Iourii Manovskii, and Xincheng Qiu (April 2023)
   Journal of Monetary Economics Carnegie-Rochester-NYU series (Fall 2022)

7. Monetary policy and racial inequality with Alina Bartscher, Moritz Schularick, and Paul Wachtel (January 2021)
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 15734, New York Fed Staff Reports No 959, ECONtribute discussion paper No 061
   Media mentionings of our work at the Wall Street Journal, Morning Star, Hill Reporter, Cato Brief in Economic Policy
   Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2022: 1–47

8. Wealth and Income Inequalityin America, 1949-2016 with Moritz Schularick and Ulrike I. Steins (December 2019)
   available as CESIfo Working Paper No. 6608, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 12218, or Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute working paper No. 9
   See also VoxEU column from August 2018
   Media mentionings of our work at New York Times Magazine, CNN, New York Times, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, ProMarket, Star Tribune, Star Tribune 2, Star Tribune 3, Bloomberg, Bloomberg 2, The Region, Quartz, Quartz 2, Spiegel Online (in German), Harvard Business Review 2, Bloomberg 3
   Journal of Political Economy, 128.9 (2020): 3469-3519. 

9. The College Wealth Divide: Education and Inequality in America, 1956-2016 with Alina Bartscher and Moritz Schularick (December 2018)
   available as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 13864, CESifo Working Paper No. 7726
   Find here the Economic Synopses essay on the paper.
   Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis Review, First Quarter 2020, Vol. 102, No. 1

10. Earnings losses and labor mobility over the life cycle with Philip Jung (October 2017)
    available as CESifo Working Paper No. 6552, IZA Discussion Paper No. 6835  or as CEPR Discussion Paper 11572
    Journal of the European Economic Association, 17.3 (2019): 678-724. 

11. Insurance in Human Capital Models with Limited Enforcement with Tom Krebs and Mark Wright (November 2016)
    available as IZA Discussion Paper No. 9948 or as CEPR Discussion Paper No. 11612
    Review of Economic Dynamics, Vol. 25, 2017, p.121-150

12. 2013 Update on the U.S. Earnings, Income, and Wealth Distributional Facts: A View from Macroeconomic Modelers with José-Víctor Ríos-Rull (April 2015)
    All results from the paper can be found on this data page.
    Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review, April 2016, Vol. 37 No. 1 (link)
    Slides from presentation at the Royal Economic Society Meeting 2016 in the session on "Earnings, Consumption and Wealth"

13. Human Capital Risk, Contract Enforcement, and the Macroeconomy with Tom Krebs and Mark Wright
    available as NBER Working Paper No. 17714 (December 2011), available as IZA Discussion Paper No. 9228 (July 2015)
    here an discussion on the paper on the NEP-DGE Blog
    American Economic Review, Vol. 105, No. 11, p. 3223 - 72 (November 2015, lead article)

14. Optimal taxation in a habit formation economy with Sebastian Koehne
    online appendix
    Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 122, p. 31-39, February 2015

15. Should unemployment insurance be asset-tested? with Sebastian Koehne
    available as IZA Discussion Paper No. 7488
    Review of Economic Dynamics, Vol. 18, Issue 3, January 2015

16. Labor market institutions and worker flows: Comparing Germany and the U.S. with Philip Jung
    paper has been previously circulated under the title "Labor Market Rigidity and Business Cycle Volatility"
    Labor Market Rigidity and Business Cycle Volatility working paper with additional results (January 2011)
    Download monthly worker transition rates for West Germany 1980 - 2004 (see paper for details)
    The Economic Journal, Vol. 124, Issue 581, p. 1317-1342, December 2014
    column on VoxEU (February 2015)

17. Recursive equilibria in an Aiyagari style economy with permanent income shocks
    International Economic Review, Vol 54-3 (August 2013)

Other publications and older working papers

1. Vermögensungleichheit in Deutschland (in German, February 2020)
   Ifo Schnelldienst

2. Die Reform der Arbeitslosenversicherung with Philip Jung (in German, September 2019)
   Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik

3. Die Arbeitslosen­versicherung: Ein Blick zurück und nach vorne (in German, March 2019)
   Ifo Schnelldienst

4. Etiopathology of Europe’s sick man Worker flows in Germany, 1959 - 2016 with Benjamin Hartung and Philip Jung (September 2016)
   available as IZA Discussion Paper No. 10341

5. The Short-Run Macro Implications of School and Child-Care Closures with Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln and Michèle Tertilt (June 2020)
   Media mentionings of our work at Handelsblatt, Rhein-Neckar Zeitung, Generalanzeiger Bonn, Westdeutsche Zeitung, Die Rheinpfalz

6. What if? The Economic Effects for Germany of a Stop of Energy Imports from Russia with Rüdiger Bachmann, David Baqaee, Christian Bayer, Andreas Löschel, Benjamin Moll, Andreas Peichl, Karen Pittel, and Moritz Schularick
   Media mentionings of our work at Handelsblatt, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Spiegel