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This paper argues that several of the poor labor market outcomes observed in the Great Recession can be traced back to a change in the demand pattern for skilled workers that started with the tech bust of 2000. In particular, we show that around the year 2000, the demand for cognitive tasks underwent a reversal. In response, highskilled workers moved down the occupational ladder and increasingly displaced lower-educated workers in less skill-intensive jobs. While these effects were present before the financial crisis of 2008, they became more obvious after jobs associated with the housing bubble disappeared.

We document that successive cohorts of college and post-college degree graduates experienced an increase in the probability of obtaining cognitive jobs both at the start of their careers and with time in the labor market in the 1990s. However, this pattern reversed for cohorts entering after 2000; profiles of the proportion of a cohort in cognitive occupations since school completion fall and become flatter with successive cohorts. Since cohort-wage profiles display a similar pattern, these findings appear to fit with a strong increase in demand for cognitive tasks in the 1990s followed by a decline in the 2000s.

We use Census and Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for the period from 1971 to 2012 to investigate whether the Canadian wage and employment structures have polarized, that is, whether wages and employment have grown more in high-and low-than in middlepaying occupations. We find that there has been faster growth in employment in both highand low-paying occupations than those in the middle since 1981. However, up to 2005, the wage pattern reflects a simple increase in inequality with greater growth in high-paid than middle-paid occupations and greater growth in middle than low-paid occupations. Since 2005, there has been some polarization but this is present only in some parts of the country and seems to be related more to the resource boom than technological change. We present results for the US to provide a benchmark. The Canadian patterns fit with those in the US and other countries apart from the 1990s when the US undergoes wage polarization not seen elsewhere. We argue that the Canadian data do not fit with the standard technological change model of polarization developed for the US.

We propose and estimate a novel specification of the labor demand curve incorporating search frictions and the role of entrepreneurs in new firm creation. Using city-industry variation over four decades, we estimate the employment - wage elasticity to be -1 at the industry-city level and -0.3 at the city level. We show that the difference between these estimates likely reflects the congestion externalities predicted by the search literature. Also, holding wages constant, an increase in the local population is associated with a proportional increase in employment. These results provide indirect information about the elasticity of job creation to changes in profits.

In this paper, we present a spatial equilibrium model where search frictions hinder the immediate reallocation of workers both within and across local labour markets. Because of the frictions, firms and workers find themselves in bilateral monopoly positions when determining wages. Although workers are not at each instant perfectly mobile across cities, in the baseline model we assume that workers flows are sufficient to equate expected utility across markets. We use the model to explore the joint determination of wages, unemployment, house prices and city size (or migration). A key role of the model is to clarify conditions under which this type of spatial equilibrium setup can be estimated. We then use US data over the period 1970-2007 to explore the fit of model and it quantitative properties of the model. Our main goal is to highlight forces that influence spatial equilibria at 10 year intervals.

What explains the current low rate of employment in the US? While there has been substantial debate over this question in recent years, we believe that considerable added insight can be derived by focusing on changes in the labor market at the turn of the century. In particular, we argue that in about the year 2000, the demand for skill (or, more specifically, for cognitive tasks often associated with high educational skill) underwent a reversal. Many researchers have documented a strong, ongoing increase in the demand for skills in the decades leading up to 2000. In this paper, we document a decline in that demand in the years since 2000, even as the supply of high education workers continues to grow. We go on to show that, in response to this demand reversal, high-skilled workers have moved down the occupational ladder and have begun to perform jobs traditionally performed by lower-skilled workers. This de-skilling process, in turn, results in high-skilled workers pushing low-skilled workers even further down the occupational ladder and, to some degree, out of the labor force all together. In order to understand these patterns, we offer a simple extension to the standard skill biased technical change model that views cognitive tasks as a stock rather than a flow. We show how such a model can explain the trends in the data that we present, and offers a novel interpretation of the current employment situation in the US.

Working Paper No. 15790 In search and bargaining models, the effect of higher wages on employment is determined by the elasticity of the job creation curve. In this paper, we use U.S. data over the 1970-2007 period to explore whether labor market outcomes abide by the restrictions implied by such models and to evaluate the elasticity of the job creation curve. The main difference between a job creation curve and a standard demand curve is that the former represents a relationship between wages and employment rates, while the latter represents a relationship between wages and employment levels. Although this distinction is quite simple, it has substantive implications for the identification of the effect of higher wages on employment. The main finding of the paper is that U.S. labor market outcomes observed at the city-industry level appear to conform well to the restrictions implied by search and bargaining theory and, using 10-year differences, we estimate the elasticity of the job creation curve with respect to wages to be -0.3. We interpret this relatively low elasticity as reflecting a low propensity for individuals to become more entrepreneurial and create more jobs when labor costs are lower and variable profits are higher.

Working Paper No. 13006 Does attracting or losing jobs in high paying sectors have important spill-over effects on wages in other sectors? The answer to this question is central to a proper assessment of many trade and industrial policies. In this paper, we explore this question by examining how predictable changes in industrial composition in favor of high paying sectors affect wage determination at the industry-city level. In particular, we use US Census data over the years 1970 to 2000 to quantify the relationship between changes in industry-specific city-level wages and changes in industrial composition. Our finding is that the spill-over (i.e., general equilibrium) effects associated with changes in the fraction of jobs in high paying sectors are very substantial and persistent. Our point estimates indicate that the total effect on average wages of a change in industrial composition that favors high paying sectors is about 3.5 times greater than that obtained from a commonly used composition-adjustment approach which neglects general equilibrium effects. We interpret our results as being most likely driven by a variant of the mechanism recently emphasized in the heterogenous firm literature whereby changes in competitive pressure cause a reallocation of employment toward the most efficient firms.

Background Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a debilitating lung disease with limited treatment options. A phase 2 trial (NCT01766817) showed that twice-daily treatment with BMS-986020, a lysophosphatidic acid receptor 1 (LPA 1 ) antagonist, significantly decreased the slope of forced vital capacity (FVC) decline over 26 weeks compared with placebo in patients with IPF. This analysis aimed to better understand the impact of LPA 1 antagonism on extracellular matrix (ECM)-neoepitope biomarkers and lung function through a post hoc analysis of the phase 2 study, along with an in vitro fibrogenesis model. Methods Serum levels of nine ECM-neoepitope biomarkers were measured in patients with IPF. The association of biomarkers with baseline and change from baseline FVC and quantitative lung fibrosis as measured with high-resolution computed tomography, and differences between treatment arms using linear mixed models, were assessed. The Scar-in-a-Jar in vitro fibrogenesis model was used to further elucidate the antifibrotic mechanism of BMS-986020. Results In 140 patients with IPF, baseline ECM-neoepitope biomarker levels did not predict FVC progression but was significantly correlated with baseline FVC and lung fibrosis measurements. Most serum ECM-neoepitope biomarker levels were significantly reduced following BMS-986020 treatment compared with placebo, and several of the reductions correlated with FVC and/or lung fibrosis improvement. In the Scar-in-a-Jar in vitro model, BMS-986020 potently inhibited LPA 1 -induced fibrogenesis. Conclusions BMS-986020 reduced serum ECM-neoepitope biomarkers, which were previously associated with IPF prognosis. In vitro, LPA promoted fibrogenesis, which was LPA 1  dependent and inhibited by BMS-986020. Together these data elucidate a novel antifibrotic mechanism of action for pharmacological LPA 1 blockade. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01766817; First posted: January 11, 2013; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01766817 .

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are divided into two populations 1 , 2 ; long GRBs that derive from the core collapse of massive stars (for example, ref.  3 ) and short GRBs that form in the merger of two compact objects 4 , 5 . Although it is common to divide the two populations at a gamma-ray duration of 2 s, classification based on duration does not always map to the progenitor. Notably, GRBs with short (≲2 s) spikes of prompt gamma-ray emission followed by prolonged, spectrally softer extended emission (EE-SGRBs) have been suggested to arise from compact object mergers 6 – 8 . Compact object mergers are of great astrophysical importance as the only confirmed site of rapid neutron capture ( r -process) nucleosynthesis, observed in the form of so-called kilonovae 9 – 14 . Here we report the discovery of a possible kilonova associated with the nearby (350 Mpc), minute-duration GRB 211211A. The kilonova implies that the progenitor is a compact object merger, suggesting that GRBs with long, complex light curves can be spawned from merger events. The kilonova of GRB 211211A has a similar luminosity, duration and colour to that which accompanied the gravitational wave (GW)-detected binary neutron star (BNS) merger GW170817 (ref.  4 ). Further searches for GW signals coincident with long GRBs are a promising route for future multi-messenger astronomy. A possible kilonova associated with a nearby, long-duration gamma-ray burst suggests that gamma-ray bursts with long and complex light curves can be spawned from the merger of two compact objects, contrary to the established gamma-ray burst paradigm.