Labor Economics Commons^™

Uneven Ranks: Geographic Deepening Of The All-Volunteer Force, Christine Hogestyn

Master in Public Policy Theses

Who is enlisting in Fiscal Year 2025, and what state-level characteristics are associated with military enlistment rates, service selection, and recruit quality? This study documents the geographic landscape of U.S. military accessions during a period of recruiting recovery, filling a gap in the literature by providing a current, empirical description of who enlists and from where in today’s All-Volunteer Force. Drawing on personnel data from the Department of War, the U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, and a federal dataset of military installations, I analyze 203,987 new accessions across the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps from …

Benefits Of Extended Unemployment Insurance On Post-Unemployment Outcomes, Alyssa Roche

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how unemployment insurance (UI) affects individuals during and after unemployment. Drawing on historical evidence from recent recessions in the United States, publicly available data, behavioral insights, and mathematical modeling, it argues that the benefits of extending UI outweigh the potential costs. The analysis incorporates a wide range of sources, including empirical economic studies using regression models and psychology and business research that highlight behavioral responses to financial stress and job insecurity. By combining quantitative data with behavioral context, the thesis offers a more comprehensive understanding of how extended UI influences job search decisions, wage outcomes, and overall …

Industrial Parks And Domestic Power: Work, Industrialization, And Intimate Partner Violence In Nigeria, Faye X. Dingle

Economics Honors Projects

This paper examines the effect of industrial zone openings on women's employment, relative earnings, and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Nigeria. I exploit variation in the timing of industrial zone openings to use a staggered difference-in-differences model. I compare women near industrial zones to women near not-yet-built industrial zones and capture the effect of the average treatment effect on the treated. I perform this analysis for women within 10, 15, 20, and 25 kilometers of an industrial zone. I find that being within all distances of an industrial zone increases a woman's relative earnings compared to women in non-industrialized zones. …

Aaron Sojourner’S Beginner’S Guide To Bluesky, Aaron Sojourner

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Experiments On Employer-Employee Relationships, Hang Chen

Economics Theses and Dissertations

Employer-employee relationships exist commonly in workplaces and are important for people to understand the interactions between employers and employees and also their own behavior. This dissertation presents studies of different aspects of employer-employee relationships using laboratory experiments. Chapter 1 studies how the problematic nature of many middle management positions drive middle managers to interact with their employees in a negative way in workplaces, as they are under pressure from upper management to extract high effort from their employees, but given few incentives to do so. Chapter 2 focuses on the potential peer effects of employees' performance feedback and performance. My …

Minimum Wage: Theoretical And Empirical Debates, Ghofran Alrebh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to explore the evolution of research methodologies in the minimum wage debate, focusing on the contrasting perspectives of the neoclassical and institutional models. By examining the changes in research methodologies employed by economists from these two schools, this study seeks to shed the light on the shifting paradigms and the impact of these changes on our understanding of minimum wage policies and their implications. This highlights the limitations of relying on one economic school of thought in understanding socio-economic phenomena complexations and policy decisions. As well as it creates the necessity to critical evaluation of the method …

Examining The Aggregate Economic Impacts Of Criminal Record Expungement In Marion County, Indiana, Zane Callison

Lux et Fides: A Journal for Undergraduate Christian Scholars

This article investigates the individual economic effects of criminal record expungement identified in a previous article as they appear in the aggregate, particularly rates of unemployment and wages. As interest around the effects of overincarceration increases, criminal record expungement offers a possible solution to the economic woes faced by justice-involved individuals. To that end, this article examines unemployment rates and per capita personal income in Marion County, Indiana, where implementation of the state of Indiana’s criminal record expungement statute has been exceptionally effective. After an analysis, we find that criminal record expungement bears only a light or unclear causal relationship …

What Impact Did The Tcja Tax Cuts Have On The Manufacturing Sector?, Ryan Parker

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout this paper I will examine positive effects the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had on the manufacturing sector. To do this I begin by outlining the key provisions in the TCJA that directly benefit the manufacturing sector. This includes the corporate tax rate reduction from 35 percent to 21 percent, the changes to the repatriation tax for foreign funds, and the treatment for capital assets. I then analyze key metrics including pre-tax income, income tax provision, dividends, changes in retained earnings, and spending on property plant and equipment. I will show the interactions between the increase in …

Do Unions And Collective Bargaining Impact Economic Inequality In Oecd Nations?, Brady D. Crosby

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The decline of unionization has coincided with a dramatic increase in income and wealth inequality within countries across the world. Many theories in the existing literature have been proposed to explain both trends, including technology/automation, globalization and shifts in public policy. I analyze the impact of collective bargaining rates and union density on economic inequality. To test the connection between collective bargaining, labor unions and inequality, I use a series of statistical tests, including basic correlation tests, as well as a series of linear regression tests with Gini, union density, collective bargaining among other variables. The results show a moderately …

Incorporating Institutions And Ideology: Why Covid Didn't Change Anything, Cullen Kendrick

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In this paper, I investigate the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through an economic and philosophical lens to try and understand why government aid was removed. Looking at the problem as solely a structural issue, with Jurgen Habermas’ Between Facts and Norms and Douglas North’s Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance guiding my understanding, provides useful insights. Namely, how the informal and formal structures of society interact, and their cyclical nature. However, that perspective does not provide a complete picture. And so, I developed an understanding of ideology to investigate the origins of informal societal structures. To do this I …

Three Essays In The Economics Of Child Development And Health Inequities, Travis Whitacre

Economics Theses and Dissertations

In chapter 1, I assess the long-term education and labor market effects of missed ADHD diagnoses. Doing so is challenging for two reasons. First, a person's true ADHD status is unobserved; only their diagnosed status is known. Second, even if diagnostic errors are observed, they are likely akin to non-classical misclassification errors and therefore endogenous. To overcome these empirical challenges, I use and extend on a partial observability model with genetic data from Add Health. Through the lens of the partial observability model. I recover an estimate of true ADHD status, and the probability of underdiagnosis. Then, I estimate their …

America Without A Minimum Wage: Why The Federal Minimum Wage Should Be Abolished, Zachary Cary

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Minimum wage policy may be the greatest economic policy issue where the common man has a strong opinion. Nearly every person has a view of how minimum wage policy should be enacted, whether it be in raising the federal minimum wage, changing the scope of authority in the federal government, or another policy. However, in discussing any kind of policy, the key details of the policy must be discussed in the framework of both how it would be affected and how it would impact its stakeholders. In this policy analysis, the Iron Triangle of Public Policy – the key executive …

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.

El Trabajo De Las Mujeres: Los Impactos Del Feminismo Socialista En La Organización Sindical De Buenos Aires Después De La Crisis Orgánica De 2001 / Women’S Work: The Impacts Of Socialist Feminism On Buenos Aires Union Organizing Following The 2001 Organic Crisis, Elise Williamson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

En diciembre de 2001, en Argentina eclosionó una crisis orgánica en donde emergieron múltiples experiencias de participación social, política y cultural. En este período de dura inseguridad política y económica, se desarrolló una relación rejuvenecida entre la clase trabajadora de las fábricas que cerraban y despedían a sus empleados y los movimientos sociales (movimientos de trabajadores desocupados, asambleas de vecinos en los barrios de Buenos Aires y feminismo, entre otros). Poco tiempo después, con la recuperación económica, una nueva generación se incorporó a los nuevos empleos creados a la salida de la crisis. Esta generación, que había vivido las experiencias …

Survey Of The Labor Market For New Ph.D. Hires In Economics 2023-2024, Kashfia Kamal, Mervin Jebaraj, Raja Kali

Labor Market Survey

This year, the survey questionnaire was sent to 358 organizations. Questionnaires were returned by 146 organizations (39.6 percent). Of this year’s responses, 86 (59 percent) were from those who responded to the last survey conducted for the 2022-23 academic year. Among the academic institutions responding, the distribution of highest degrees offered was as follows: Ph.D.—49.3 percent; Master’s—10.3 percent and Bachelor’s—39 percent.

The responses are reported for all respondents, and separately for Ph.D. Degree granting institutions and for schools whose highest degree offered is the Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree. Data for the top 30 institutions in the revised National Research Council’s …

Workforce Development: A Comparative Analysis Of Community College Governance And Funding In The Mountain West And Policy Proposals For Nevada, Peter Grema

Student Research

Nevada experienced one of the worst economic downturns in the nation following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed the vulnerability of Nevada workers. In his 2021 State of the State address, Governor Steve Sisolak highlighted aligning the state’s workforce development capacity with community colleges to best leverage federal funding and statewide infrastructure for jobs training and economic recovery. In addition, he said, “I will be asking the Legislature to work with the Nevada System of Higher Education over the next two years to develop a framework transitioning Nevada’s community colleges to a new independent authority that will focus …

Strengthening The Southern Nevada Workforce Pipeline, Katie M. Gilbertson

Student Research

Workforce development has been a keystone in the discussion of economic diversification of Las Vegas for decades. The leisure and hospitality industry is the lifeline for the Southern Nevada economy due to the reliance on tourism as the city’s main economic driver. The leisure and hospitality industry requires physical labor and more face-to-face customer interaction than other employment sectors. Thus, these jobs often do not require high educational attainment, but rather sharp soft skills like effective listening, nonverbal communication, and negotiation strategies. While these are valuable traits, the lack of educational attainment within the leisure and hospitality workforce suppresses employees’ …

Three Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Ding Liu

Economics Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is consist of three empirical studies in microeconomics. The first part explores how monopsony power affects the impact of robot adoption on US labor markets. Theoretically, I show that robots have stronger effects (either positive or negative) on employment and wages in a perfectly competitive labor market than a perfectly monopsonistic labor market. Moreover, the sign of the effects depends on whether robots and labor are substitutes or complements. The empirical results are consistent with the theory. The employment and wage effects diminish as labor market monopsony power grows and they become statistically insignificant in near-monopsonistic labor markets. …

Non-Profits And Living Wages, Jack Buckley

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Nonprofit Studies Capstone Projects

Non-Profit organizations must find ways to divide their budgets between staff wages and program services, as well as paying their staff a living wage. Unlike for-profits who can increase prices for consumers when they need to increase staff wages, non-profits do not have this luxury. The goal of this project was to collect data on how non-profits manage their budgets and if they provide staff with living wages. A survey was sent out with a total of eight responses, giving a breakdown of various non-profit’s budgets and if they pay a living wage. Overall, seven out of eight non-profits pay …

Takes Two To Tango: The Fusion Of Slow Fashion And Agroecology To Combat The Fast Fashion Industry, Sejal Krell

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Fast fashion has been around for longer than the world can remember, after all, there has always been a need for clothes. Nonetheless, it has not been until the past 50 years that fast fashion has become a titan within the industry. Many consider it to be the golden child of fashion with its low production costs, mass retailing, and low prices reaching consumers of all socioeconomic levels. However, the realities of this industry – specifically pertaining to the environment, economy, social sphere, and public health – reveal a different story, of injustice. After discussing the history and rise of …

Survey Of The Labor Market For New Ph.D. Hires In Economics 2022-23, Mervin Jebaraj, David Sorto, Raja Kali

Labor Market Survey

This year, the survey questionnaire was sent to 369 organizations. Questionnaires were returned by 144 organizations (39.0 percent). Of this year’s responses, 86 (59.7 percent) were from those who responded to the last survey conducted for the 2021-22 academic year. Among the academic institutions responding, the distribution of highest degrees offered was as follows: Ph.D.—56.3 percent; Master’s—8.3 percent and Bachelor’s—34.7 percent.

The responses are reported for all respondents, and separately for Ph.D. Degree granting institutions and for schools whose highest degree offered is the Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree. Data for the top 30 institutions in the revised National Research Council’s …

Futurological Fodder: On Communicating The Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, And Employment, Michael E. Samers Dr

Geography Faculty Publications

This article examines the debate concerning the employment implications of the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (FIR) or the increasing presence of artificial intelligence and robotics in workplaces. I analyze three ‘genres’ associated with this debate (academic studies including neo-classical and heterodox/post-human approaches, the ‘gray literature’, and popular media) and I argue that together they represent ‘futurological fodder’ or discourses and knowledges that ‘perform’ the FIR and its purported consequences. I contend further that these genres involve a complex mix of ethics and politics, and I conclude with a reflection on the political implications of the FIR debate.

Embracing Entrepreneurship, Naomy Sengebwila, Naomy Nyendwa Sengebwila

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Embracing Entrepreneurship

How Christian Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship can Lead to Sustainable Communities in Zambia and Globally

Embracing Entrepreneurship

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Perkins School of Theology Southern Methodist University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry by

Name of Student

Naomy Nyendwa Sengebwila

Name of Student: Naomy Nyendwa Sengebwila

Date: 03/31/2021

How Christian Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Can Lead to Sustainable Communities in Zambia and globally

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …

Brain Drain In Mississippi, Clifford Adam Conner

Honors Theses

Brain drain is the out-migration of educated individuals from an area. It is a problem with which Mississippi is overly familiar. This thesis uses data gathered from a survey of 965 respondents to identify who is leaving the state and for what reasons. The data gathered suggest confirmation that brain drain is an issue for the state, with roughly two-thirds of respondents having left the state or seriously considering doing so. The impetus for this varies with each individual, but respondents underscore economic and societal factors within Mississippi as pushing them away from the state. Quality of life factors are …

Occupational Licensing And Immigrants, Hugh Cassidy, Tennecia Dacass

Economics Faculty Scholarship

This study examines the incidence and impact of occupational licensing on immigrants using two sources of data: the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We find that immigrants are significantly less likely to have a license than similar natives and that this gap is largest for men, workers in the highest education level, and nonnaturalized immigrants. The licensing rate increases with years since migration and shows large variation by immigrants’ region of origin. A lack of English proficiency reduces the probability that an immigrant has a license. The wage premium from having a license is …

Survey Of The Labor Market For New Ph.D. Hires In Economics 2021-2022, Mervin Jebaraj, David Sorto, Raja Kali

Labor Market Survey

This year, the survey questionnaire was sent to 368 organizations. Questionnaires were returned by 144 organizations (39.1 percent). Of this year’s responses, 53 (36.8 percent) were from those who responded to the last survey conducted for the 2020-21 academic year. Among the academic institutions responding, the distribution of highest degrees offered was as follows: Ph.D.—51.4 percent; Master’s—11.8 percent and Bachelor’s—35.4 percent.

The responses are reported for all respondents, and separately for Ph.D. Degree granting institutions and for schools whose highest degree offered is the Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree. Data for the top 30 institutions in the revised National Research Council’s …

The Productivity Wage Gap, Monopsony, And Labor Share Decline: An Analysis Of Wage Suppression Perpetuated By Power, Alexandra Coulter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that wage suppression along with the decline in the labor share is caused by a rise in monopsony power realized as a significant increase in the profit share. It attributes the rise in monopsonistic behavior to the development and expansion of the modern corporation. This thesis investigates the reasons for wage suppression, identifies causes of the declining labor share left as exogenous in mainstream models, examines traditional economic wage determination and search models, and evaluates the political economy implications. This work reviews literature on imperfect competition, the corporation, contracts, search and match models, and the motivation of …

Employee Ownership And Moral Hazard: How Broad-Based Equity Sharing Can Lower Agency Costs And Reduce Inequality, Colin Clinton Hudson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Providing incentives to top managers by offering equity has become the norm; this practice, however, does not hold for all levels of employees. After tax incentives for employee ownership were introduced through the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, there has been little legislative support to encourage companies to implement broad-based equity sharing programs. Moreover, decades of neoliberal policies have incentivized the pursuit of short-term profits and speculation, which contribute to economic instability and explain the growing gap between productivity and real wages observed since the late 1970s. Developments in the literature contend that employee ownership aligns the goals …

Children’S Health And Maternal Work Activities, Termeh Tavangar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I estimate the effect of poor child health on maternal labor force participation. Mothers of health-impaired children may decide not to work and stay at home to take care of their children. Alternatively, mothers may choose to enter the labor force to pay for these children’s additional resources. Which action dominates is the empirical question I answer in this paper. I control for the potential endogeneity of a child’s health status by using an instrumental variables approach. I find that if mothers have a child in poor health, the probability that the mother works is decreased by thirteen percentage points, …

Biased Technical Change, Institutional Shift, And The Functional Distribution Of Income: Who Benefits From Economic Growth?, Adam Szymanski-Burgos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Starting from the mid 1970s and early 1980’s, the US and other advanced economies observed a widening divergence between the growth of average and median real hourly labor compensation and the average growth of labor productivity. This decoupling between labor compensation and productivity indicates a decline in the labor share of national income. Opposite to movements in the labor share, the share of national income remunerated as capital income has increased with the rise of capital incomes concentrated largely in corporate sector profits. Key developments since the middle of the 20th century have coincided with the onset of medium-run fluctuations …