Vassar Scholarship

It is commonly believed that firms prefer layoffs to worksharing, in part, because layoffs economize on fringe benefit costs. We find that when labor markets are characterized by optimal implicit contracts, layoffs will never occur in equilibrium, regardless of the...

In this paper I analyze learning communities of color of the past and present and how they resist the dominant White narratives of racial progress and consensus in their social studies teaching, both in curricula and in praxis/structure. I will...

The traditional classroom presentation of international macroeconomic issues obscures the link between budget deficits, exchange rates, and the trade deficit. The article offers a simple supply and demand framework to clarify the role of budget deficits in creating trade deficits...

Implicit contract models of labor market equilibrium under work sharing and layoffs are constructed to examine several common explanations for the observed market bias in favor of layoffs. We first establish the optimality of work sharing in the absence of...

Joan Rivers. Elayne Boosler. Roseanne Barr. Janeane Garofalo. Amy Schumer. What do these commedians–whose careers span seven decades–have in common? Starting in the 1950s and ending in contemporary times, we see that there are transhistorical trends–including self-deprecation, navigating one's anger...