Labor Economics Commons^™

Essays On Health And Immigration Policy, Selen Ozdogan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two essays in applied microeconomics, each examining how individuals and institutions respond to policy changes. Both essays leverage natural experiments and recent advances in difference-in-differences estimation to identify causal effects. Both also speak to a common theme in public policy: the gap between intended and actual consequences of government intervention, and the role that policy design plays in shaping those consequences.

The first essay examines the impact of state-level e-cigarette excise taxes on nicotine and tobacco exposure among adults aged 18 and older. A central contribution is its use of individual-level panel biomarker data from urine …

Essays On The Economics Of Aging: Structural And Machine Learning Approaches, Alexander S. Kwon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Population aging has made the study of older workers’ economic behavior increasingly important for understanding labor markets, retirement systems, and public policy. In many advanced economies, rising old-age dependency ratios have increased the need to understand labor-supply, retirement, and savings decisions later in life (OECD, 2025). In the United States, these issues are especially important because Social Security faces long-run financing pressure, with the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund projected to be depleted around 2033 (U.S. Social Security Administration, Office of the Chief Actuary, 2025). Longer life expectancy increases the expected length of retirement and raises the fiscal importance …

The State Of The Unions 2025: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

Organized labor has taken center stage in the 2020s, with workers leading successful organizing drives at Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, and across a range of industries from health care to higher education. Public approval of unions has reached its highest level in decades, and a new generation of workers is stepping forward as leaders in the movement. The State of the Unions 2025 provides the most comprehensive profile of organized labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, highlighting where unions are growing, who is leading the charge, and how labor is shaping the future of work …

Menstrual Math: The Price Of Bleeding, Gabrielle Langston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the landscape of menstrual equity in the United States through a data storytelling lens, focusing on state-level policies regarding taxation and access to menstrual products. The analysis explores which states impose sales tax on menstrual products, if state schools provide free menstrual products, and which states ensure access for incarcerated individuals using publicly available datasets from advocacy groups. Additionally, there is an investigation into potential correlations between the gender wage gap and states that tax menstrual products, shedding light on economic and policy disparities.

Through its data visualizations, this project aims to provide a clear, although not …

The State Of The Unions 2024: A Profile Of Organized Labor In New York City, New York State, And The United States, Ruth Milkman, Joseph Van Der Naald

Publications and Research

This report released by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, State of the Unions 2024: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, is a part of an annual publication series, documents recent trends in unionization patterns. The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies’ latest annual report on unionization patterns shows that private-sector union organizing efforts continued to increase across the country over the last year. The report documents that growth in union election petitions since 2020 has reversed a decade of decline, reaching a level not seen since …

Socioeconomic Inequalities Between The Bronx And Other Counties In New York City, Mexican Studies Institute Cuny, Eliana Checo-Genaoa

CUNY Mexican Studies Institute

The Bronx, despite its proximity to the other boroughs of New York City, has the highest poverty rates among them. Using data from 2010 to 2022, this study examines the socioeconomic disparities between the Bronx and Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Key indicators analyzed include poverty levels, SNAP benefits, unemployment rates, median income, educational attainment, homeownership rates, business creation, and GDP per capita. Our study reveals that the Bronx has the highest poverty, unemployment, and SNAP benefit dependency rates, lower educational attainment, and the lowest median income and homeownership rates. Our findings underscore the persistent socioeconomic challenges faced by …

The Impact Of Sexual Orientation And Sexual Behavior On Wages, Curtis Lowe

Theses and Dissertations

On General Social Survey data from 2008–2018, I estimate the impact of sexual orientation on wages by addressing mismeasurement in sexual orientation that causes the estimates to attenuate towards zero. I use interval regression to estimate wages on reported sexual orientation. I then identify consistent reports of sexual orientation and sexual behavior to estimate wage gaps between individuals whose reported sexual orientation is consistent with their behavior. Removing inconsistent reports reduces the amount of attenuation that biases the estimates. Interacting sexual orientation and sexual behavior improves the wage gap estimates slightly and increases the value in absolute terms, suggesting that …

Effects Of The Automatic Enrollment Provision Of The Pension Protection Act Of 2006 On Labor Market Outcomes Of Older Americans, Yannis Giannoulakis

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 is to protect pension plans, reinforce individual savings and prepare Americans for retirement. A provision of the act strengthens the 1998-2000 IRS ruling that allows firms to automatically enroll their employees in 401(k) plans by superseding state written permission requirements. Prior to the Pension Protection Act of 2006, several states required written permission from employees to authorize wage deductions and 401(k) enrollments. Single-event difference-in-difference regressions estimate the effects of the Pension Protection Act of 2006’s auto-enrollment provision on labor market outcomes in states that had written permission requirements in the years …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

What Does One Billion Dollars Look Like?: Visualizing Extreme Wealth, William Mahoney Luckman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word “billion” is a mathematical abstraction related to “big,” but it is difficult to understand the vast difference in value between one million and one billion; even harder to understand the vast difference in purchasing power between one billion dollars, and the average U.S. yearly income. Perhaps most difficult to conceive of is what that purchasing power and huge mass of capital translates to in terms of power. This project blends design, text, facts, and figures into an interactive narrative website that helps the user better understand their position in relation to extreme wealth: https://whatdoesonebilliondollarslooklike.website/

The site incorporates …

Parents, Paths, And Paychecks: Examining Intergenerational Occupational Mobility And Career Choices, Swapnil Landge

Publications and Research

This paper examines the influence of fathers’ and mothers’ occupations on their children’s occupational outcomes, using a self-selection model to analyze intergenerational career mobility. By constructing and analyzing transition matrices, I estimate the extent of positive and negative self-selection for sons and daughters when they follow either their father’s or mother’s occupation. The results reveal distinct patterns for sons and daughters. Sons who follow their father’s occupation tend to avoid negative self-selection, particularly in higher-paying fields such as Professional Occupations and Technicians and Related Support Occupations, where negative self-selection is minimal. Conversely, sons following their mother’s occupation face higher rates …

Hispanic Empowerment In New York's Municipal Workforces, 2021, Carlos Vargas-Ramos

CUNY Centro, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies

One of the markers of political empowerment of historically marginalized groups in society is not simply the election and appointment of representatives from those groups to governmental institutions; their participation as employees and contractors in the governmental apparatus that provides services and goods to residents of towns, cities and counties also reflects the levels at which members of the community are included and represented. New York City has the largest municipal workforce in the country. New York is also one of the most socially diverse communities in the United States. Yet, as varied as New York City’s municipal workforce is, …

Self-Employment Industry Selection: An Evaluation Of Wealth And Demographics On Industry Choice In The U.S., Samuel Ramirez

Theses and Dissertations

This paper evaluates the impact of financial resources and demographics on industry choice by self-employed business owners. I use a multinomial logistic regression to estimate the probability of having a business in a particular industry. The results suggest that entry into industries are hampered by financial constraints and social barriers.

Essays On Entrepreneurship, Yoshiko Oka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the determinants of successful entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial entry. It consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1 estimates the effect of regional concentrations of related industrial firms and business owners' cognitive and non-cognitive traits on their business survival. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the County Business Patterns, I find that incorporated businesses that operate in a location where similar businesses are clustered together have a significantly higher chance of survival. However, the effect of location appears to be insignificant for unincorporated businesses. On the other hand, the results show that businesses that are …

The Effects Of The Social Security Amendments Of 1983 On Employment Status, Alcohol Consumption, And Depression, Adam J. Delgenio

Theses and Dissertations

Nearly four decades ago, Congress passed the Social Security Amendments of 1983. The changes were significant, and they pressured people to delay retirement. In this thesis, I use individual-level data from the Annual and Social Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey and the Health Retirement Study to analyze the effects of the amendments. The amendments affect individuals at the same age, but across different years. Year of birth determines treatment by the amendments. I control for year of birth and age effects in a difference-in-difference model and interact treatment with age to identify the effects of the amendments on …

Intergenerational Transmission Of Occupation In The United States, Swapnil Landge

Publications and Research

This paper explores the persistence of inequality via intergenerational transmission of occupations using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data from 1968 to 2001 of 56,952 unique parent-child pairs. I find that having a father who is in the top and bottom strata† of the socioeconomic professional category has a positive and significant effect on the probability that a son will follow the same professional category as the father, which supports my main hypothesis of persistence of income inequality concerning the transmission of the occupations. The main concern that has been addressed in this paper is that the intangible …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Employment Characteristics, Eliana Shatkin

Theses and Dissertations

The following study examines ways in which COVID-19 has disrupted the United States labor market. My findings present disproportionately negative effects of COVID-19 on employment, labor force participation, worker absence, and weekly working hours for the female population in my sample, as well as veterans, disabled persons, and racial minorities.

Essays On Social Mobility And Distribution, Luis A. Monroy Gómez Franco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters on the relationship between immutable characteristics of a person (also known as circumstances) and the intergenerational social mobility experienced by them, as well as their human capital accumulation. It pays particular attention to the role played by the economic resources of the household of origin in producing differences in the economic outcomes across persons.

In the first chapter, I show that the decomposition of intergenerational persistence indicators into their structural and positional components offers a clearer understanding of the determinants of heterogeneity in subnational mobility rates. The crucial element for the separate analysis of …

Universal Basic Income And The Alaska Permanent Fund: Impact On Labor Outcomes And Skill Composition, Michele Cafasso

Theses and Dissertations

To analyze the effects of universal basic income on labor supply and human capital, I estimate the effects of Alaska’s Permanent Fund on employment, hours worked, and skills using data from the Current Population Survey and O*NET. My method combines synthetic control and difference-in-differences regressions.

Essays On Intergenerational Mobility In Education, Ercio A. Munoz Saavedra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that investigate intergenerational mobility in education in Chile, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Chapter 1: In this chapter, I estimate intergenerational mobility (IGM) in education using data from 91 censuses that span 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) over half a century. I measure upward mobility as the likelihood of obtaining at least a primary education for individuals whose parents did not finish primary school, whereas downward mobility as the likelihood of failing to complete primary education for individuals whose parents completed at least primary school. In addition, I …

Essays On Labor Economics, Gabriel Movsesyan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first chapter, I evaluate the wage impacts from exogenous and endogenous peer effects within different metropolitan areas. I construct comparison groups for workers within the same industry and Public Use Microdata Area (PUMA) residence based on support from existing literature on social networks, and estimate peer and network effects in a spatial auto-regressive model with a network structure that in- corporates group fixed effects. Inclusion of these effects reveals that both observed and unobserved factors within each network have significant effects on individual outcomes. This is the first attempt to estimate the social effects on wages using the …

Employment Trends And Poverty Status: Men And Women In The New York City Metro Area Between 2000 And 2017, Sarah Kostecki

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines employment trends and poverty status among men and women aged 25-54 in the New York City metropolitan area. The report assesses the characteristics of these persons, while examining trends and differences in poverty status by sex, race/ethnicity, and across the five largest Latino nationalities.

Methods:

This report uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public Use Microdata Series) data for all years released by the Census Bureau and reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa, (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). See Public Use Microdata Series Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew …

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

Educational Investments In Low-Income Households: The Role Of Parental Occupational Identity And Substitutability, Aparna Anand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Poor parents face difficult trade-offs when investing in their children's education. This dissertation studies how low-income urban households in Southern India, where child labor is a concern, make educational investments for their children. First, I build a model that shows how educational investments are shaped by the possibility of children substituting labor for their parents. Second, I collect parent surveys, child surveys, and student-level administrative data from schools and construct a linked dataset. Third, I examine the relationship between educational investments and several pertinent factors, with an emphasis on child labor substitution and the strength of occupational identity. I find …

O Espaço E O Tempo Do Valor, David Harvey, Artur Renzo

Publications and Research

O artigo discute a lei do valor em Karl Marx como valor em movimento, que se faz valer no espaço e no tempo. Entende-se que o movimento não pode ocorrer no vácuo, sendo necessário abandonar a visão do valor que se move sem estar ancorado em nenhum lugar e passar a enxergá-lo criando geografias de cidades e redes de transportes; formando paisagens agrícolas para a produção de alimentos e matérias-primas; englobando fluxos de pessoas, bens e informações; determinando configurações territoriais de valores fundiários e habilidades de trabalho; organizando espaços de trabalho, estruturas de governo e administração. Conclui-se que há três …

Federation Divided, Max M. Balton

Capstones

At the start of the 2020 school year, a lack of covid safety plans led teachers like Rosy Clark to protest, urging her union the United Federation of Teachers to act. She and other progressives in the dissident caucus, Movement of Rank and File Educators, were willing to strike to ensure their safety. Union leadership hesitated largely because public union strikes are illegal under the state’s Taylor Law.

This four-part audio documentary looks at the history of the UFT and this contentious state law. The union began striking under more onerous strike prohibition legislation. Its roots are steeped in radical …

Beyond The Capitalist Workplace: How The Production Of Surplus Across The Economy Keeps Producers Divided, Costas Panayotakis

Publications and Research

This article analyzes the public and household sectors of the economy as sites of surplus production within contemporary capitalist societies. It also shows how the coexistence of structurally distinct spheres of surplus production creates divisions among workers in the private, public, and household sectors of the economy, thus amplifying the racial, gender, and other divisions which have often in the past kept working people divided. Fueling these cross-sector divisions is the appearance that private-sector workers are paid for their labor rather than for their labor-power. Thus, this article also explores an implication of this appearance which Karl Marx, the thinker …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Eric Osborne-Christenson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters and covers topics in applied microeconomics broadly defined as health and labor. The precise topics are varied, with their unifying thread being that they are all related to marginalized or at-risk communities. The first chapter estimates the impact of Daylight Saving Time (DST) on deaths of despair (DoD) in the United States. Using Multiple Cause-of-Death Mortality Data from the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics from 1979-1988, the effect is identified in two ways: a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that exploits discrete time changes in the Spring and Fall; …

Essays On Paid Sick Leave In The United States, Shaoying Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters.

Chapter 1 This study estimates the causal effect of access to paid sick leave on worker mobility, by exploiting variation in the implementation of local paid sick leave mandates over time in the U.S. I use May 2004 - June 2019 Current Population Survey (CPS) basic monthly data, and by taking a Difference-in-Differences approach, I find that the local mandates significantly reduce private sector employees' monthly job turnover. This study is, to the best of my knowledge, the first to present the effect of local paid sick leave mandates in the U.S. on worker …

The Effects Of Eighth Years Of Compulsory Schooling Enforcement In Turkey, Muhammed Tumay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters that cover Education, Labor and Health Economics.

Chapter 1. Impacts of Compulsory Schooling Reform on Higher Education and Intergenerational Educational Mobility: we estimate the effects of an exogenous increase in mandatory schooling (5 years to 8 years of schooling), as a result of a change in compulsory schooling law, on higher education, potential intergenerational educational mobility, and labor market outcomes among women in Turkey. Our empirical strategy addresses a well-known identification problem where women’s years of schooling are endogenous to individual characteristics. The Law took effect in 1997, whereby girls born before January …