This paper shows that job polarization has a persistent negative effect on employment opportunities, labor mobility and skill-to-job match quality for mid/low-skilled workers, in particular during downturns. I introduce a model generating an endogenous mapping between skills and jobs, that I estimate to match solely occupational dynamics during the Great Recession, a major episode of polarization in the US economy. Yet, this is sufficient for the model to replicate well the reallocation patterns of all workers on the job ladder and the mismatch dynamics observed in the data. Comparison with the planner solution reveals that 1/4 of mismatches is efficient and attenuates polarization and unemployment over the cycle.

Share buybacks have become common practice across U.S corporations. This paper shows that firms finance these operations mostly through newly issued corporate bonds, and that the exogenous variation in the cost of debt -due to innovations in monetary policy-is key in explaining managers' incentives to repurchase their own shares. Under our identification strategy, we find that firms are more likely to repurchase in periods of accommodative monetary policy when the yield on bond adjusts in the same direction. This behavior has macroeconomic implications as it diverts resources from investment and employment, thus reducing the transmission of accommodative monetary policy at firm-level.

This paper shows that job polarization has a persistent negative effect on employment opportunities, labor mobility and skill-to-job match quality for mid/low-skilled workers, in particular during downturns. I introduce a model generating an endogenous mapping between skills and jobs, that I estimate to match solely occupational dynamics during the Great Recession, a major episode of polarization in the US economy. Yet, this is sufficient for the model to replicate well the reallocation patterns of all workers on the job ladder and the mismatch dynamics observed in the data. Comparison with the planner solution reveals that 1/4 of mismatches is efficient and attenuates polarization and unemployment over the cycle.

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