Changing business cycles: The role of women's employment

A column by Stefania Albanesi for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The US economy has been hampered over the last four decades by three trends:

• the productivity slowdown,
• the Great Moderation, and
• jobless recoveries.

Economists seeking to explain these phenomena have generally looked to the impact that technological change has on labour demand.

This column proposes an alternative explanation: the rise and stabilisation of women’s participation in the workforce, one of the most notable developments in the post-war US. Excluding gender differences in aggregate models of the US economy obscures our understanding of business cycle behaviour and economic performance.

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