Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'earnings'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 175
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Working PaperCorporate Share Repurchase Policies and Labor Share
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-14
Using census data, we investigate whether share repurchases are responsible for the fall in labor share in U.S. corporations. Recent legislation imposes taxes on share repurchases, motivated by the assertion that share repurchases have led to reduced labor payments. Using several empirical approaches, we find no evidence that increases in share repurchases contribute to decreases in labor share. Top share repurchasing firms since 1982 did not decrease labor share. We also rely on exogenous changes in share repurchases around EPS announcements to pinpoint causality. Policies aimed at improving labor share by discouraging share repurchases will likely not achieve their objectives.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLeveraged Payouts: How Using New Debt to Pay Returns in Private Equity Affects Firms, Employees, Creditors, and Investors
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-12
We study the causal effect of a large increase in firm leverage. Our setting is dividend recapitalizations in private equity (PE), where portfolio companies take on new debt to pay investor returns. After accounting for positive selection into more debt, we show that large leverage increases make firms much riskier, dramatically raising exit and bankruptcy rates but also IPOs. The debt-bankruptcy relationship is in line with Altman-Z model predictions for private firms. Dividend recapitalizations increase deal returns but reduce: (a) wages among surviving firms; (b) pre-existing loan prices; and (c) fund returns, which seems to reflect moral hazard via new fundraising. These results suggest negative implications for employees, pre-existing creditors, and investors.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEITC Participation Results and IRS-Census Match Methodology, Tax Year 2021
December 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-75
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), enacted in 1975, offers a refundable tax credit to low income working families. This paper provides taxpayer and dollar participation estimates for the EITC covering tax year 2021. The estimates derive from an approach that relies on linking the 2022 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) to IRS administrative data. This approach, called the Exact Match, uses survey data to identify EITC eligible taxpayers and IRS administrative data to indicate which eligible taxpayers claimed and received the credit. Overall in tax year 2021 eligible taxpayers participated in the EITC program at a rate of 78 percent while dollar participation was 81 percent.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTip of the Iceberg: Tip Reporting at U.S. Restaurants, 2005-2018
November 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-68
Tipping is a significant form of compensation for many restaurant jobs, but it is poorly measured and therefore not well understood. We combine several large administrative and survey datasets and document patterns in tip reporting that are consistent with systematic under-reporting of tip income. Our analysis indicates that although the vast majority of tipped workers do report earning some tips, the dollar value of tips is under-reported and is sensitive to reporting incentives. In total, we estimate that about eight billion in tips paid at full-service, single-location, restaurants were not captured in tax data annually over the period 2005-2018. Due to changes in payment methods and reporting incentives, tip reporting has increased over time. Our findings have implications for downstream measures dependent on accurate measures of compensation including poverty measurement among tipped restaurant workers.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTransitional 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.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEarnings Through the Stages: Using Tax Data to Test for Sources of Error in CPS ASEC Earnings and Inequality Measures
September 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-52
In this paper, I explore the impact of generalized coverage error, item non-response bias, and measurement error on measures of earnings and earnings inequality in the CPS ASEC. I match addresses selected for the CPS ASEC to administrative data from 1040 tax returns. I then compare earnings statistics in the tax data for wage and salary earnings in samples corresponding to seven stages of the CPS ASEC survey production process. I also compare the statistics using the actual survey responses. The statistics I examine include mean earnings, the Gini coefficient, percentile earnings shares, and shares of the survey weight for a range of percentiles. I examine how the accuracy of the statistics calculated using the survey data is affected by including imputed responses for both those who did not respond to the full CPS ASEC and those who did not respond to the earnings question. I find that generalized coverage error and item nonresponse bias are dominated by measurement error, and that an important aspect of measurement error is households reporting no wage and salary earnings in the CPS ASEC when there are such earnings in the tax data. I find that the CPS ASEC sample misses earnings at the high end of the distribution from the initial selection stage and that the final survey weights exacerbate this.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEstimating the Potential Impact of Combined Race and Ethnicity Reporting on Long-Term Earnings Statistics
September 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-48
We use place of birth information from the Social Security Administration linked to earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program and detailed race and ethnicity data from the 2010 Census to study how long-term earnings differentials vary by place of birth for different self-identified race and ethnicity categories. We focus on foreign-born persons from countries that are heavily Hispanic and from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We find substantial heterogeneity of long-term earnings differentials within country of birth, some of which will be difficult to detect when the reporting format changes from the current two-question version to the new single-question version because they depend on self-identifications that place the individual in two distinct categories within the single-question format, specifically, Hispanic and White or Black, and MENA and White or Black. We also study the USA-born children of these same immigrants. Long-term earnings differences for the 2nd generation also vary as a function of self-identified ethnicity and race in ways that changing to the single-question format could affect.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperSocially Responsible Investment and Gender Equality in the United States Census
August 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-44
With administrative data, we test whether institutional ownership with a social preference is related to employee-level gender equality. We show that the gender pay gap, which is an unexplained part of the lower wages of female employees, does not have a significant relation with socially responsible investments. Next, we show that female directorship strengthens the relation between socially responsible investments and the gender pay gap. When there are female directors, socially responsible investments have a robust correlation with a lower gender pay gap. This is because female directorship alleviates information asymmetry in gender equality.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDriving the Gig Economy
August 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-42
Using rich administrative tax data, we explore the effects of the introduction of online ridesharing platforms on entry, employment and earnings in the Taxi and Limousine Services industry. Ridesharing dramatically increased the pace of entry of workers into the industry. New entrants were more likely to be young, female, White and U.S. born, and to combine earnings from ridesharing with wage and salary earnings. Displaced workers have found ridesharing to be a substantially more attractive fallback option than driving a taxi. Ridesharing also affected the incumbent taxi driver workforce. The exit rates of low-earning taxi drivers increased following the introduction of ridesharing in their city; exit rates of high-earning taxi drivers were little affected. In cities without regulations limiting the size of the taxi fleet, both groups of drivers experienced earnings losses following the introduction of ridesharing. These losses were ameliorated or absent in more heavily regulated markets.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEmployer 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.View Full Paper PDF
