New Acquisition

I just ordered Rob Shimer's Labor Markets and Business Cycles (2010), and I may be reading it next (it might turn out a semester back in the swing of graduate level economics would help me digest it better, though). I expect Shimer's work to be a jumping off point for my dissertation, particularly the material on wage rigidity. Wage rigidity does not play a big role in my view of macroeconomic fluctuations, but (1.) maybe it should - particularly for the more typical downturns which I'm likely to see more of in my lifetime than more atypical downturn that we're going through now, (2.) even if I stay unconvinced of the importance of wage rigidity, I ought to work on it because this is a quite dominant perspective in the field right now. This may take me into using the sexy LEHD data that everybody loves but I'm concerned that (because it only provides earnings and not wage rates), the plain Jane CPS might end up being more useful for me. Anyway - I have a rough brain storm of the types of ideas I might look into, and reading and familiarizing myself with this book seems like an important start.