PhD Candidate
Department of Economics
Princeton University
E-mail:
tpapp@princeton.edu
Mailing address:
Department of Economics
001 Fisher Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tamas K. Papp
Job Market Candidate
Curriculum Vitae [PDF]
Research interests
Macroeconomics, Labor markets and search frictions, Bayesian econometrics, Numerical methods
Job market paper (last updated Jan 16, 2009)
``Explaining frictional wage dispersion'' [PDF]
Abstract
Matching the magnitude of frictional wage dispersion has been difficult for most
frictional search models of the labor market; only 1/30–1/4 of the frictional wage dispersion observed in the data can be accounted for
using realistic calibrations. In this paper, I develop a general equilibrium
model with ex ante homogeneous workers but heterogeneous firm productivities
that accounts much better for the magnitude of frictional wage dispersion.
The key ingredient that makes this model different from wage posting models is
the bargaining and the wage determination structure. When a firm meets an employed
worker, the new firm and the incumbent firm engage in Bertrand competition in
the worker's share of the match surplus; consequently the current wage of the
worker depends not only on the firm's productivity, but also on the history
of previous offers. I demonstrate that the latter generates about 80% of the
frictional wage dispersion, and that standard wage posting models cannot achieve
similar magnitudes of frictional wage dispersion with the calibration used in
the paper.
In contrast to the structural estimation literature, the parametrization of the
model is very parsimonious. The model is calibrated to match the worker flows,
the standard deviation of log productivity and the replacement ratio, and it
delivers frictional wage dispersion that matches the data very closely.
Working papers
``Embodied technological growth, on-the-job search and wage dispersion'' [PDF]
Abstract
Matching the magnitude of frictional wage dispersion has been difficult for most
frictional search models of the labor market; only 1/30–1/4 of the frictional ; wage dispersion observed in the data can be accounted
for using realistic calibrations in typical settings. In a companion paper,
``Explaining frictional wage dispersion'', I show that the introduction of a
bargaining mechanism, derived in a general equilibrium model of on-the-job search,
makes the wage offer distribution history-dependent and is successful in delivering
enough wage dispersion.
In this paper I go one step further and attempt to get closer to the
source
of the firms' productivity dispersion by introducing embodied technological growth,
which generates an endogenous productivity distribution among firms. I show
that this model also generates large wage dispersion. Comparative statics indicate
that wage dispersion is increasing in embodied technological growth; the model
also predicts a procyclical wage dispersion with an elasticity of approx. 3
wrt changes in aggregate productivity.
Software
Below you find a list of software packages I maintain, most of them are for numerical/scientific computing. I use them for numerical solution of economic models, but most of them should have more general application. All packages are licensed under the LLGPL unless otherwise stated.
In 2007, I gradually switched from R to Common Lisp for all the numerical work I do. Bugs, if any, will still be fixed in R packages, but don't expect new development.
All the packages are hosted on Github or available as tarballs. Please send patches created with git-diff. R packages install using the package mechanism of R.
Actively supported packages
ffa
Glue code to interface Common Lisp arrays to foreign (C, Fortran) code, taking advantage of implementation-specific capabilities where possible.
cl-colors
Named RGB colors package for Common Lisp.
cl-cairo2
Cairo bindings for Common Lisp.
Packages that are maintained but awaiting cleanup
cl-numlib
A collection of diverse numerical functions (basic utility functions, numerical integration, univariate and multivariate optimization, rootfinding (with automatic bracketing), random numbers) for Common Lisp.
array-operations
Common array operations, for possibly multidimensional arrays
affi
An affine indexing package that provides convenience functions for traversing
slices of arrays, optionally with index permutations and other convenient transformations.
A driver clause for
iterate
is provided, along with
map-subarray, a simple yet powerful function for mapping arrays into each other using affine
indexes.
cl-sparsematrix
A simple (generalized) sparse matrix library for Common Lisp using hash tables. Has utility functions and basic numerical operations, also an interface to UMFpack for solving sparse linear systems. Documentation is available in PDF and LaTeX formats in the package.
Legacy packages, no longer under active development
klin
klin is an R package for solving linear equations with Kronecker structure. Given a matrix A which is the Kronecker product of matrices, it solves Ax=b for x or calculates x given A and b. It also includes least square calculation.
