MFI workshop on April 8 will look at labor markets

Rob Shimer, Professor in Economics and the College, has organized a workshop to discuss the importance of heterogeneity in workers’ skills and the role of uncertainty in the labor market.

The workshop, set for Wednesday, April 8 and titled “Heterogeneity in Labor Markets,” is being presented by the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.

The workshop will bring together leading academics to present and discuss recent research that identifies the determinants of wages and examines job assignments and the duration of unemployment spells as well as the evolution of income and consumption inequality.

During a lunchtime panel discussion, a group of experts will discuss current research in labor economics and potential future challenges. Panelists will include Dale Mortensen, the Ida Cook professor of economics, Northwestern University; Richard Rogerson, the Rondthaler chair of economics, Arizona State University; and Kenneth Wolpin, the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg professor in the social sciences, University of Pennsylvania.

Workshop participants will be MFI Visiting Fellows during the weeks of March 30 and April 6. They include Jaap Abbring, professor of econometrics, Tilburg University; Stéphane Bonhomme, assistant professor of microeconometrics and labor economics, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies), Madrid, Spain; and Jean-Marc Robin, professor of economics, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne and University College London.

In addition, Flavio Cunha, assistant professor of economics, University of Pennsylvania; Gianluca Violante, associate professor of economics, New York University; and Rasmus Lentz, assistant professor of economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison will present papers.

The free workshop, which is open to the campus community, begins at 10 a.m. at the Quadrangle Club.