The first essay "The Effects of Job Displacement on Family Expenditures" explores the effects of a husband's job displacement on his family expenditures by using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics during 1999-2013. Even with a lasting and sizable fall in family income induced by a husband's job displacement, the households reduced their expenditures only moderately. More specifically, their expenditures fell just slightly in the periods around the job displacement occurrence, then continued to further decline two to six or more years after the job loss, but not as much as their concurrent income loss. These later declines in their expenditures were largely driven by the fall in those for housing, health care and education. The relatively small reduction in those expenditures was achieved through a reduction in wealth.The second essay "The Evolution of Earnings Volatility During and After the Great Recession" studies how men's and women's earnings volatility evolved during and after the Great Recession, the most severe downturn of the postwar era. Using matched March Current Population Survey data, I find that earnings volatility rose considerably after the Great Recession began and, particularly for men, the volatility increase was as large as in the severe recession of the early 1980s. These findings update the evidence on the counter-cyclicality of earnings volatility. I show that such counter-cyclicality is due mainly to counter-cyclical volatility in annual hours of work. In turn, the counter-cyclical volatility in work hours appears mainly among workers who experience unemployment.Finally, the third essay "How Did Men's Earnings Volatility Change during the Great Recession? A Comparison of Evidence between the PSID and CPS" also finds men's earnings volatility increased substantially during the Great Recession by using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). I further find that the counter-cyclicality was mainly driven by unemployed workers. All these findings are largely consistent with those of my second essay, which examines the same topic with the matched March Current Population Study (CPS). In particular, I find that the PSID and CPS generate a fairly similar evolution of men's earnings volatility from the early 1980s through the Great Recession for the sample, excluding zero-earners and the 1 % top and bottom positive-earners. For the sample including the zero-earners and outliers, however, the PSID shows somewhat divergent results compared to the CPS, particularly for the period 1993-2004. This partly explains why previous studies have reported different trends in men's earnings volatility during the early 2000s between the two datasets.
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