Mark Bils (December 1, 1958) is a

macroeconomist Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...

. Bils obtained his PhD in economics from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1985 and BA in economics from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

in 1979. He has taught at the University of Chicago GSB and is currently professor and chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Rochester. In 1987, Bils published ''The Cyclical Behavior of Marginal Cost and Price'' in the

American Economic Review The ''American Economic Review'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Economic Association. First published in 1911, it is considered one of the most prestigious and highly distinguished journals in the field of ec ...

where he argued that

marginal cost In economics, the marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented, the cost of producing additional quantity. In some contexts, it refers to an increment of one unit of output, and in others it r ...

procyclical Procyclical and countercyclical variables are variables that fluctuate in a way that is positively or negatively correlated with business cycle fluctuations in gross domestic product (GDP). The scope of the concept may differ between the context ...

. This is driven from the

counterintuitive A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

fact that

employment Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any othe ...

is high when

wages A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remuner ...

are high. Thus, Bils argues, an increase untrained

labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

must increase

marginal costs In economics, the marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented, the cost of producing additional quantity. In some contexts, it refers to an increment of one unit of output, and in others it r ...

(in the same way an increase in

demand In economics, demand is the quantity of a good that consumers are willing and able to purchase at various prices during a given time. The relationship between price and quantity demand is also called the demand curve. Demand for a specific item ...

increases wages). He is in the top 5% of most cited economists.

Selected publications

*"How Sticky Wages In Existing Jobs Can Affect Hiring" (with Yongsung Chang and Sun-Bin Kim), Manuscript, January 2014 *"Has Consumption Inequality Mirrored Income Inequality?" (with Mark Aguiar), Manuscript, December 2013 *"Testing for Keynesian Labor Demand" (with Pete Klenow and Benjamin Malin), NBER Macroeconomics Annual, January 2013 *"Reset Price Inflation and the Impact of Monetary Policy Shocks" (with Pete Klenow and Benjamin Malin), American Economic Review, October 2012 *"Comparative Advantage and Unemployment" (with Yongsung Chang and Sun-Bin Kim), Journal of Monetary Economics, March 2012 *"Worker Heterogeneity and Endogenous Separations in a Matching Model of Unemployment Fluctuations" (with Yongsung Chang and Sun-Bin Kim), American Economic Journal of Macroeconomics, January 2011 *"Do Higher Prices for New Goods Reflect Quality Growth or Inflation?", Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2009 *"Studying Price Markups from Stockout Behavior", Manuscript, December 2004 *"Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Prices" (with Pete Klenow), Journal of Political Economy, October 2004 *"Quantifying Quality Growth" (with Pete Klenow), American Economic Review, September 2001 *"Does Schooling Cause Growth" (with Pete Klenow), American Economic Review, December 2000 *"What Inventory Behavior Tells Us about Business Cycles" (with James Kahn), American Economic Review, June 2000 *"Deducing Markups from Stockout Behavior,"Research in Economics, June 2016"

References

1958 births Living people Macroeconomists University of Rochester faculty University of Chicago Booth School of Business faculty MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni Fellows of the Econometric Society 20th-century American economists 21st-century American economists Journal of Political Economy editors {{US-economist-stub