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Life-Cycle Effects of Women's Education on their Careers and Children
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-09
We study the causal effect of women's education on their wages, non-wage job amenities, and spillovers to children. Using a regression discontinuity at the school entry birthdate cutoff, we find that women born just before the cutoff are more likely to complete some college, and experience multi-dimensional career gains that grow over the life cycle: greater employment and earnings, as well as more professional and higher-status jobs, more socially meaningful work, and better working conditions. Children's early-life health and prenatal inputs improve in tandem with career improvements, consistent with professional advances spurring'not hindering'infant investments. Career gains are concentrated in jobs that require exactly some college, the same schooling margin shifted by the cutoff, which indicates that increased post-secondary education is the primary channel for these effects. Together, the results show that women's college attendance generates large career returns'from both wages and amenities'that strengthen over time and produce meaningful benefits for children.
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Careers of Minimum Wage Workers
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-07
We characterize the careers of minimum wage workers by merging SIPP panels covering 1992-2016 into the LEHD. A long-run analysis shows strong earnings growth for these workers in subsequent decades, becoming indistinguishable from peers earning modestly more initially. Most of this growth is due to the steep earnings trajectories of young workers. Older workers earning minimum wages show a modest dip in earnings at that moment compared to earlier and later periods. Increases in state minimum wages do not significantly alter the future careers of workers who are on the minimum wage when the increases occur.
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Trapped or Transferred: Worker Mobility and Labor Market Power in the Energy Transition
December 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-76
Using matched employer-employee data covering 1.35 million US workers separated from the fossil fuel extraction industry between 1999 and 2019, I estimate how local fossil fuel labor demand shocks affect employment and earnings. Employment probabilities fall markedly after exposure, and earnings decline gradually over the first seven years with only partial recovery by ten years since exposure to the shocks. Workers who remain in the fossil fuel sector, disproportionately men in sector-specific roles, experience nearly twice the earnings losses of those who switch sectors, possibly due to limited occupational mobility. Among non-switchers, losses are larger in labor markets with high employer concentration, indicating that scarce outside options translate into lower reemployment wages and weaker bargaining positions. Geographic movers fare worse than stayers, reflecting negative selection (younger, lower-earning) and relocation to metropolitan areas where fossil fuel or low-skilled service sectors remain highly concentrated, leaving monopsony power intact.
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Double-Pane Glass Ceiling: Commercial Engagement and the Female-Male Earnings Gap for Faculty
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-68
I use administrative data from universities (UMETRICS) linked to the universe of confidential W-2 and 1040-C tax records to measure faculty commercial engagement and its role in female-male earnings gaps. Female faculty are 20 percentage points less likely to engage commercially, with the entire gap driven by self-employment. The raw earnings gap is $63,000 on a base of $162,000 and non-university earnings account for $18,000 (29 percent) of this total. Thus, while university pay explains most of the gap, commercial engagement substantially amplifies it. Earnings gaps appear in all components of non-university pay ' self-employment, and work for incumbent, young/startup, high-tech, and non-high-tech firms ' and remain large, though attenuated, after controlling publications, patents, field, university, scientific resources, age, marital status, childbearing, and demographics. Gaps widen as faculty move up the earnings distribution, and commercial engagement becomes a larger contributor. Men and women engage with similar industries, but men earn more in all shared industries.
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Understanding Criminal Record Penalties in the Labor Market
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-39
This paper studies the earnings and employment penalties associated with a criminal record. Using a large-scale dataset linking criminal justice and employer-employee wage records, we estimate two-way fixed effects models that decompose earnings into worker's portable earnings potential and firm pay premia, both of which are allowed to shift after a worker acquires a record. We find that firm pay premia explain a small share of earnings gaps between workers with and without a record. There is little evidence of variable within-firm premia gaps either. Instead, components of workers' earnings potential that persist across firms explain the bulk of gaps. Conditional on earnings potential, workers with a record are also substantially less likely to be employed. Difference-in-differences estimates comparing workers' first conviction to workers charged but not convicted or charged later support these findings. The results suggest that criminal record penalties operate primarily by changing whether workers are employed and their earnings potential at every firm rather than increasing sorting into lower-paying jobs, although the bulk of gaps can be attributed to differences that existed prior to acquiring a record.
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Transitional Costs and the Decline of Coal: Worker-Level Evidence
September 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-53
We examine the labor market impacts of the U.S. coal industry's decline using comprehensive administrative data on workers from 2005-2021. Coal workers most exposed to the industry's contraction experienced substantial earnings losses, equivalent to 1.6 years of predecline wages. These losses stem from both reduced employment duration (0.37 fewer years employed) and lower annual earnings (17 percent decline) between 2012-2019, relative to similar workers less exposed to coal's decline. Earnings reductions primarly occur when workers remain in local labor markets but are not employed in mining. While coal workers do not exhibit lower geographic mobility, relocation does not significantly mitigate their earnings losses.
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Employer Dominance and Worker Earnings in Finance
August 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-41
Large firms in the U.S. financial system achieve substantial economic gains. Their dominance sets them apart while also raising concerns about the suppression of worker earnings. Utilizing administrative data, this study reveals that the largest financial firms pay workers an average of 30.2% more than their smallest counterparts, significantly exceeding the 7.9% disparity in nonfinance sectors. This positive size-earnings relationship is consistently more pronounced in finance, even during the 2008 crisis or compared to the hightech sector. Evidence suggests that large financial firms' excessive gains, coupled with their workers' sought-after skills, explain this distinct relationship.
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U.S. Worker Mobility Across Establishments within Firms: Scope, Prevalence, and Effects on Worker Earnings
May 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-24
Multi-establishment firms account for around 60% of U.S. workers' primary employers, providing ample opportunity for workers to change their work location without changing their employer. Using U.S. matched employer-employee data, this paper analyzes workers' access to and use of such between-establishment job transitions, and estimates the effect on workers' earnings growth of greater access, as measured by proximity of employment at other within-firm establishments. While establishment transitions are not perfectly observed, we estimate that within-firm establishment transitions account for 7.8% percent of all job transitions and 18.2% of transitions originating from the largest firms. Using variation in worker's establishment locations within their firms' establishment network, we show that having a greater share of the firm's jobs in nearby establishments generates meaningful increases in workers' earnings: a worker at the 90th percentile of earnings gains from more proximate within-firm job opportunities can expect to enjoy 2% higher average earnings over the following five years than a worker at the 10th percentile with the same baseline earnings.
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The Spillover Effects of Top Income Inequality
June 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-29
Top income inequality in the United States has increased considerably within occupations. This phenomenon has led to a search for a common explanation. We instead develop a theory where increases in income inequality originating within a few occupations can 'spill over' through consumption into others. We show theoretically that such spillovers occur when an occupation provides non divisible services to consumers, with physicians our prime example. Examining local income inequality across U.S. regions, the data suggest that such spillovers exist for physicians, dentists, and real estate agents. Estimated spillovers for other occupations are consistent with the predictions of our theory.
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Poach or Promote? Job Sorting and Gender Earnings Inequality across U.S. Industries
April 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-23
I outline the sociological theory that would predict that external labor markets ' those in which more positions are filled with new hires rather from firm-internal promotions ' heighten gender based discrimination and contribute to earnings inequality. I test this theory by treating industries as miniature labor markets within the US with varying levels of gender inequality and different hiring practices. Using high quality administrative data from 1985 to 2013, including detailed work histories from this period, I compare the earnings of alike men and women across industries with different levels of reliance on external markets at different times. I find that men experience greater unexplained earnings relative to women ' unexplained in that it is not accounted for by work history or observable demographic characteristics ' when a greater share of earnings increase events occur outside the firm.
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