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Benjamin Schoefer

Benjamin Schoefer

Associate Professor (with tenure)
Department of Economics
UC Berkeley

schoefer@berkeley.edu

Twitter account (occasional news about my research) Bsky account (less active)

Director, Macro Labor Center for the Study on Aggregate Labor Markets, Policies, and Institutions, at UC Berkeley and IRLE

Journal of Monetary Economics, Associate Editor

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Visiting Researcher

Bundesbank (German Central Bank), Research Professor

IWH Halle Research Fellow (Senior Researcher)

NBER Research Associate (Economic Fluctuations & Growth, Monetary, Public, Labor)

CEPR Research Affiliate (Monetary Economics and Fluctuations, Labour, Public)

IZA Research Fellow

CESifo Affiliate Member

 

CV

 

Upcoming Conference Organization

SITE Conference CfP: The Micro and Macro of Labor Markets. Sydnee Caldwell, Gregor Jarosch, Isaac Sorkin and I are organizing a Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE) session on the Micro and Macro of Labor Markets on Tuesday August 6 and Wednesday August 7, 2024 in Stanford, CA. The call for papers and submission information are here (sessions are organized by date). The submission deadline is May 15, 2024. Decisions will be made by June 1, 2024.

Berkeley Macro Labor Workshop, Spring 2024, April 26th, 2024. Program



Job Market Candidates

This year, I am advising/writing letters for three excellent job market candidates out of UC Berkeley Economics. The (alphabetical) list is:


Andrea Cerrato
Fields: Macroeconomics, Economic Geography, Labor Economics
JMP: How Big Is the Big Push? The Macroeconomic Effects of a Large-Scale Regional Development Program

Felipe Lobel
Fields: Public Economics, Labor Economics
JMP: Who Benefits from Payroll Tax Cuts? Market Power, Tax Incidence and Efficiency

David Qihang Wu
Fields: Development Economics, Labor Economics, Political Economy
JMP: Search Frictions, Belief Formation, and Firm Hiring: Evidence from Ethiopia


Selected Work in Progress

Unions, Collective Bargaining, and the Wage Structure: An International Perspective
with Simon Jäger and Suresh Naidu
In Preparation for Handbook of Labor Economics, 2024

Job Mobility and Unemployment Risk
with Alex Clymo, Piotr Denderski and Yusuf Mercan
Conference draft and slides

Opting Out of Centralized Collective Bargaining: Firm and Worker Consequences
with Christian Dustmann, Chiara Giannetto, Lorenzo Incoronato, Chiara Lacava, Vincenzo Pezone and Raffaele Saggio
Conference draft and slides

Do Jobs End in Bilateral Efficiency? Evidence from the Introduction of "Separations by Mutual Agreement" in France
with Pauline Carry
Conference draft and slides

Labor in the Production Function
(placeholder title) with Matthias Mertens
Conference draft


Research Papers

Deadwood Labor? The Effects of Eliminating Employment Protection for Older Workers
with Emmanuel Saez and David Seim
Working paper, March 2024
NBER Working Paper, Slides, VOX summary, Presentation video (NBER SI 2023, joint Labor & Public)

The Financial Channel of Wage Rigidity
Working paper, April 2022 (substantially revised update of previous version, the 2015 dissertation chapter)
Marginal Revolution blog summary, Slides

Voice at Work
American Economic Journal: Applied, Revise and Resubmit, with Jarkko Harju and Simon Jäger
VOX summary, Slides

Worker Beliefs About Outside Options
Quarterly Journal of Economics, Forthcoming (August 2024), with Simon Jäger, Christopher Roth and Nina Roussille
Publication, Slides, EconImate Video Summary

Reservation Raises: The Aggregate Labor Supply Curve at the Extensive Margin
Review of Economic Studies, Forthcoming, with Preston Mui
Publication, Slides (outdated)

Productivity, Place, and Plants
Review of Economics and Statistics, Forthcoming (September 2024), with Oren Ziv
Publication, Slides (NBER Summer Institute)

A Congestion Theory of Unemployment Fluctuations
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 16(1), 2024, with Yusuf Mercan and Petr Sedlacek
Publication, Slides, Marginal Revolution blog summary

The German Model of Industrial Relations: Balancing Flexibility and Collective Action
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 36(4), 2022, with Simon Jäger and Shakked Noy
Publication

Marginal Jobs and Job Surplus: A Test of the Efficiency of Separations
Review of Economic Studies, 90(3), 2023, with Simon Jäger and Josef Zweimüller
Publication, Slides, VOX summary

What Does Codetermination Do?
ILR Review, 75(4), 2022, with Shakked Noy and Simon Jäger
Publication, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance Summary

Paying Outsourced Labor: Direct Evidence from Linked Temp Agency-Worker-Client Data
Review of Economics and Statistics, 105(1), 2023, 206-216 with Andres Drenik, Simon Jäger and Pascuel Plotkin
Publication, VOX summary

Hysteresis from Employer Subsidies
Journal of Public Economics, 200, 2021, 104459, with Emmanuel Saez and David Seim
Publication

Labor in the Boardroom
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(2), 2021, 669-725, Editor's Choice (lead article), with Simon Jäger and Joerg Heining
Publication, VOX summary, NBER Digest February 2020, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance Summary, IZA Newsroom Summary, EconImate Video Summary

Wages and the Value of Nonemployment
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(4), 2020, 1905-1963, with Simon Jäger, Samuel Young and Josef Zweimüller
Publication, Slides

Jobs and Matches: Quits, Replacement Hiring, and Vacancy Chains
American Economic Review: Insights, 2(1), 2020, 101-124, with Yusuf Mercan
Publication, Slides

Payroll Taxes, Firm Behavior, and Rent Sharing: Evidence from a Young Workers' Tax Cut in Sweden
American Economic Review 109(5), 2019, 1717-1763, with Emmanuel Saez and David Seim
Publication, Online Appendix, Slides, Older and Longer NBER WP Version, VOX summary

Regulation and Taxation: A Complementarity
Journal of Comparative Economics 38.4 (2010): 381-94 (Undergraduate Thesis)
Publication

 

Policy Papers and Other Writing

Codetermination and Power in the Workplace
Journal of Law and Political Economy 3.1 (2022), with Simon Jäger and Shakked Noy
Publication, Economic Policy Institute: Unequal Power Project

Equitable Wage Growth: Macroeconomic Perspectives
Invited book chapter, in: "Boosting Wages for U.S. Workers in the New Economy" (Washington Center for Equitable Growth/US Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment 2021 Essay Series) 
Web version, Complete book (PDF) Complete book (web version)


Recent Discussions etc.

Discussion: "Sticky Wages on the Layoff Margin," by Steven Davis and Pawl Krolikowski
NBER Summer Institute, Labor Studies, July 2023
Slides

Discussion: "Firm Market Power, Worker Mobility, and Wages in the US Labor Market," by Sadhika Bagga
NBER Wage Dynamics in the 21st Century, September 2022
Slides

Employment Adjustment and COVID: Some Thoughts on Theory and Reality
Invited short talk connecting academic and policy perspectives CEPR-IZA-OECD Workshop: Employment Support Strategies during COVID-19, October 2020
Slides


Teaching

Econ 202B: Macroeconomic Theory (mandatory first-year PhD course)
Econ 101B: Intermediate Macroeconomics (Math Intensive/Honors Track)
Econ 191: Topics in Economic Research
[Econ 236B: Macroeconomics (second-year field course) (not currently)]
Econ 237: Macroeconomics Research Seminar