This paper investigates the age-dependency of participation and unemployment by integrating job search with intertemporal optimizing behavior of finitely-lived households. We find that search frictions and tax rates distort the decisions of older workers to a much larger extent than that of young workers. This finding provides an explanation of the observed fall of participation rates of elder ...

Unemployment rates differ widely across U.S. metropolitan areas. In 2007, they ranged from 3.1 percent or less among the 25 lowest unemployment metropolitan areas to 6.6 percent or more among the 25 highest unemployment metropolitan areas. Such large differences in metro unemployment rates have held continuously since at least 1990. Moreover, those metro areas that had a relatively high unemplo...

The literature on economic voting notes that voter’s subjective evaluations of the overall state of the economy are correlated with vote choice, whereas personal economic experiences are not. Little is known about how voters acquire information about the general state of the economy, and how this information is then used to determine vote choice. To better understand this process, we asked a se...