Comment

摘要

Sixteen years ago, Steven Davis and John Haltiwanger's paper for the NBER Macroeconomics Annual was among the first to use firm-level data to study employment fluctuations. The focus of the current paper, written with Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda, is on a different piece of the employment picture. The authors argue that during the past two decades, employment levels at individual firms and establishments have become more stable. Their preferred measure of firm volatility for the U.S. private sector, displayed in figure 2.6, declines by about one-quarter from 1978 to 2001.1 am confident that like Davis and Halti-wanger (1990), this thoughtful paper will influence both empirical and theoretical work long after its publication.