Hires, quits, and layoffs exhibit strong, highly nonlinear relationships to employer growth rates in the cross section. Simple statistical models of these relationships greatly improve our ability to account for fluctuations in aggregate worker flows and enable us to construct synthetic measures of hires, separations, quits, and layoffs back to 1990.

Many commentators argue that uncertainty about taxes, government spending and other policy matters deepened the recession of 2007-2009 and slowed the recovery. To investigate this issue we develop a new index of policy-related economic uncertainty and estimate its dynamic relationship to output, investment and employment.

In light of recent attacks on Governor Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) director of economic policy studies Kevin Hassett and economist Steven Davis examine in their recently published piece what is private equity, its impact on jobs, and its role in the American economy.

Governor Romney's defenders have argued that critics of his role at Bain Capital are really attacking capitalism itself. Given the academic evidence, we would have to agree.

In an upcoming piece, AEI's Kevin Hassett highlights a new unique index of policy uncertainty which was developed in a path-breaking paper by Stanford economists Scott R. Baker and Nicholas Bloom along with AEI Visiting Scholar and University of Chicago economist Steve Davis. Among...

A major factor behind the weak recovery and gloomy outlook is a climate of policy-induced economic uncertainty. An index we devised shows U.S. policy uncertainty at historically high levels.

Recent research points to a shift in recruiting behavior by employers as an important factor in the distressing U.S. jobs situation. Employers have influenced the pace of job filling by the intensity of their recruiting efforts.