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Articles 1 - 15 of 15
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Employer Market Power In Silicon Valley, Matthew Gibson
Employer Market Power In Silicon Valley, Matthew Gibson
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Adam Smith alleged that employers often secretly combine to reduce labor earnings. This paper examines an important case of such behavior: illegal no-poaching agreements through which information-technology companies agreed not to compete for each other’s workers. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous timing of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, I estimate the effects of these agreements using a difference-in-difference design. Data from Glassdoor permit the inclusion of rich employer- and job-level controls. On average the no-poaching agreements reduced salaries at colluding firms by 5.6 percent, consistent with considerable employer market power. Stock bonuses and job satisfaction were also negatively affected.
The Long-Run Impacts Of Public Industrial Investment On Local Development And Economic Mobility: Evidence From World War Ii, Andrew Garin, Jonathan Rothbaum
The Long-Run Impacts Of Public Industrial Investment On Local Development And Economic Mobility: Evidence From World War Ii, Andrew Garin, Jonathan Rothbaum
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper studies the long-run effects of government-led construction of manufacturing plants on the regions where they were built and on individuals from those regions. Specifically, we examine publicly financed plants built in dispersed locations outside of major urban centers for security reasons during the United States’ industrial mobilization for World War II. Wartime plant construction had large and persistent impacts on local development, characterized by an expansion of relatively high-wage manufacturing employment throughout the postwar era. These benefits were shared by incumbent residents; we find men born before WWII in counties where plants were built earned $1,200 (in 2020 …
Minimum Wages And Racial Discrimination In Hiring: Evidence From A Field Experiment, Alec Brandon, Justin E. Holz, Andrew Simon, Haruka Uchida
Minimum Wages And Racial Discrimination In Hiring: Evidence From A Field Experiment, Alec Brandon, Justin E. Holz, Andrew Simon, Haruka Uchida
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
When minimum wages increase, employers may respond to the regulatory burdens by substituting away from disadvantaged workers. We test this hypothesis using a correspondence study with 35,000 applications around ex-ante uncertain minimum wage increases in three U.S. states. Before the increases, applicants with distinctively Black names were 19 percent less likely to receive a callback than equivalent applicants with distinctively white names. Announcements of minimum wage hikes substantially reduce callbacks for all applicants but shrink the racial callback gap by 80 percent. Racial inequality decreases because firms disproportionately reduce callbacks to lower-quality white applicants who benefited from discrimination under lower …
Human Capital And Black-White Earnings Gaps, 1996–2017, Owen Thompson
Human Capital And Black-White Earnings Gaps, 1996–2017, Owen Thompson
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper estimates the contribution of human capital to the Black-white earnings gap in three separate samples of men spanning from 1966 through 2017, using both educational attainment and performance on standardized tests to measure human capital. There are three main findings. First, the magnitude of reductions in the Black-white earnings gap that occur after controlling for human capital has become much larger over time, suggesting a growing contribution of human capital to Black-white earnings disparities. Second, these increases are almost entirely due to growth in the returns to human capital, which magnify the impact of any racial differences in …
Firms, Jobs, And Gender Disparities In Top Incomes: Evidence From Brazil, Felipe Benguria
Firms, Jobs, And Gender Disparities In Top Incomes: Evidence From Brazil, Felipe Benguria
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper studies the gender disparities among top incomes in Brazil during the period 1994-2013 using administrative data on the universe of formal-sector job spells and detailed information on educational attainment, employers, and occupations performed. Over these two decades, differences in pay and participation between genders have narrowed, yet the process has been slow and women are still severely underrepresented, especially within the very top percentiles of the earnings distribution. The following findings highlight the role of firms and occupations in explaining these patterns. At the start of the period, women in the top percentile of the distribution owe a …
Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Cares Act On Earnings And Inequality, Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza C. Forsythe
Impacts Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Cares Act On Earnings And Inequality, Guido Matias Cortes, Eliza C. Forsythe
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we show that the Covid-19 pandemic led to a loss of aggregate real labor earnings of more than $250 billion between March and July 2020. By exploiting the panel structure of the CPS, we show that the decline in aggregate earnings was entirely driven by declines in employment; individuals who remained employed did not experience any atypical earnings changes. We find that job losses were substantially larger among workers in low-paying jobs. This led to a dramatic increase in inequality in labor earnings during the pandemic. Simulating standard unemployment benefits and Unemployment …
Immigrants And The U.S. Wage Distribution, Vasil I. Yasenov
Immigrants And The U.S. Wage Distribution, Vasil I. Yasenov
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
A large body of literature estimates the relative wage impacts of immigration on low- and high-skill natives, but it is unclear how these effects map onto changes of the wage distribution. I document the movement of foreign-born workers in the U.S. wage distribution, showing that, since 1980, they have become increasingly overrepresented in the bottom. Downgrading of education and experience obtained abroad partially drives this pattern. I then undertake two empirical approaches to deepen our understanding of the way foreign-born workers shape the wage structure. First, I estimate a standard theoretical model featuring constant elasticity of substitution technology and skill …
Degrees Of Poverty: The Relationship Between Family Income Background And The Returns To Education, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein
Degrees Of Poverty: The Relationship Between Family Income Background And The Returns To Education, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document a startling empirical pattern: the career earnings premium from a four-year college degree (relative to a high school diploma) for persons from low-income backgrounds is considerably less than it is for those from higher-income backgrounds. For individuals whose family income in high school was above 1.85 times the poverty level, we estimate that career earnings for bachelor’s graduates are 136 percent higher than earnings for those whose education stopped at high school. However, for individuals whose family income during high school was below 1.85 times the poverty level, the career …
Genes, Education, And Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Nicholas W. Papageorge, Kevin Thom
Genes, Education, And Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence From The Health And Retirement Study, Nicholas W. Papageorge, Kevin Thom
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We demonstrate that the same genetic score that predicts education is also associated with higher wages, but only among individuals with a college education. Moreover, the genetic gradient in wages has grown in more recent birth cohorts, consistent with interactions between technological change and labor market ability. We also show that individuals who grew up in economically …
Nafta And The Gender Wage Gap, Shushanik Hakobyan, John Mclaren
Nafta And The Gender Wage Gap, Shushanik Hakobyan, John Mclaren
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Using U.S. Census data for 1990–2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on U.S. wages, focusing on differences by gender. We find that NAFTA tariff reductions are associated with substantially reduced wage growth for married blue-collar women, much larger than the effect for other demographic groups. We investigate several possible explanations for this finding. It is not explained by differential sensitivity of female-dominated occupations to trade shocks, or by household bargaining that makes married female workers less able to change their industry of employment than other workers. We find some support for an explanation based on an equilibrium theory of selective …
Using Linked Survey And Administrative Data To Better Measure Income: Implications For Poverty, Program Effectiveness And Holes In The Safety Net, Bruce D. Meyer, Nikolas Mittag
Using Linked Survey And Administrative Data To Better Measure Income: Implications For Poverty, Program Effectiveness And Holes In The Safety Net, Bruce D. Meyer, Nikolas Mittag
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
We examine the consequences of underreporting of transfer programs in household survey data for several prototypical analyses of low-income populations. We focus on the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics, but provide evidence that our qualitative conclusions are likely to apply to other surveys. We link administrative data for food stamps, TANF, General Assistance, and subsidized housing from New York State to the CPS at the individual level. Program receipt in the CPS is missed for over one-third of housing assistance recipients, 40 percent of food stamp recipients, and 60 percent of TANF and …
The Rise Of Domestic Outsourcing And The Evolution Of The German Wage Structure, Deborah Goldschmidt, Johannes Schmieder
The Rise Of Domestic Outsourcing And The Evolution Of The German Wage Structure, Deborah Goldschmidt, Johannes Schmieder
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
The nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the last three decades, with firms increasingly relying on contractors, temp agencies, and franchises rather than hiring employees directly. We investigate the impact of this transformation on the wage structure by following jobs that are moved outside of the boundary of lead employers to contracting firms. For this end we develop a new method for identifying outsourcing of food, cleaning, security, and logistics services in administrative data using the universe of social security records in Germany. We document a dramatic growth of domestic outsourcing in Germany since …
America's Human Capital Paradox, Thomas A. Kochan
America's Human Capital Paradox, Thomas A. Kochan
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
It is widely recognized that human capital is essential to sustaining a competitive economy at high and rising living standards. Yet acceptance of persistent high unemployment, stagnant wages, and other indicators of declining job quality suggests that policymakers and employers undervalue human capital. This paper traces the root cause of this apparent paradox to the primacy afforded shareholder value over human resource considerations in American firms and the longstanding gridlock over employment policy. I suggest that a new jobs compact will be needed to close the deficit in jobs lost in the recent recession and to achieve sustained real wage …
Earnings Inequality In Germany, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman
Earnings Inequality In Germany, Katharine G. Abraham, Susan N. Houseman
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
Recent studies have documented the growth of earnings inequality in the United States during the 1980s. In contrast to these studies' findings, our analysis of micro data for the former West Germany yields virtually no evidence of growth in earnings inequality over the same period. Between 1978 and 1988, a reduction in the dispersion of earnings among workers in the bottom half of the earnings distribution led to a narrowing of the overall dispersion of earnings in Germany. Earnings differentials across education and age groups remained roughly stable, and there was no general widening of earnings differentials within either education …
Culture, Human Capital, And The Earnings Of West Indian Blacks, Stephen A. Woodbury
Culture, Human Capital, And The Earnings Of West Indian Blacks, Stephen A. Woodbury
Upjohn Institute Working Papers
This paper offers an empirical analysis of West Indians' performance in the U.S. labor market, drawing adjusted comparisons between the earnings of native-born black American men of West Indian ancestry and the earnings of other native-born men, both black and white. The data required for these comparisons come from the 1980 Census of Population, in which native-born respondents reported their ancestry. The results offer a mixed picture of the success of West Indians, suggesting that native-born blacks of West Indian ancestry do have somewhat higher earnings than other native-born blacks, other things equal. Nevertheless, there is still a large earnings …