Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'labor'
The following papers contain search terms that you selected. From the papers listed below, you can navigate to the PDF, the profile page for that working paper, or see all the working papers written by an author. You can also explore tags, keywords, and authors that occur frequently within these papers.
See Working Papers by Tag(s), Keywords(s), Author(s), or Search Text
Click here to search again
Frequently Occurring Concepts within this Search
Viewing papers 81 through 90 of 250
-
Working PaperLabor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act: Evidence from a Tax Notch
July 2017
Working Paper Number:
carra-2017-07
States that declined to raise their Medicaid income eligibility cutoffs to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) created a "coverage gap'' between their existing, often much lower Medicaid eligibility cutoffs and the FPL, the lowest level of income at which the ACA provides refundable, advanceable "premium tax credits'' to subsidize the purchase of private insurance. Lacking access to any form of subsidized health insurance, residents of those states with income in that range face a strong incentive, in the form of a large, discrete increase in post-tax income (i.e. an upward notch) at the FPL, to increase their earnings and obtain the premium tax credit. We investigate the extent to which they respond to that incentive. Using the universe of tax returns, we document excess mass, or bunching, in the income distribution surrounding this notch. Consistent with Saez (2010), we find that bunching occurs only among filers with self-employment income. Specifically, filers without children and married filers with three or fewer children exhibit significant bunching. Analysis of tax data linked to labor supply measures from the American Community Survey, however, suggests that this bunching likely reflects a change in reported income rather than a change in true labor supply. We find no evidence that wage and salary workers adjust their labor supply in response to increased availability of directly purchased health insurance.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Cross-Section of Labor Leverage and Equity Returns*
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-70
We study labor-induced operating leverage. Theoretically, we show that if labor markets are frictionless, two sufficient conditions for the existence of labor leverage are (a) relatively smooth wages and (b) a capital-labor elasticity of substitution strictly less than one. Our model provides theoretical support for the use of labor share'the ratio of labor expenses to value added'as a measure of labor leverage. We provide evidence for conditions (a) and (b), and we demonstrate the economic significance of labor leverage: High labor-share firms have operating profits that are more sensitive to economic shocks and have higher expected returns.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Parental Gender Earnings Gap in the United States
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-68
This paper examines the parental gender earnings gap, the within-couple differences in earnings over time, before and after the birth of a child. The presence and timing of children are important components of the gender wage gap, but there is selection in both decisions. We estimate the earnings gap between male and female spouses over time, which allows us to control for this timing choice as well as other shared external earnings shifters, such as the local labor market. We use Social Security Administration Detail Earnings Records (SSA-DER) data linked to the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine a panel of earnings from 1978 to 2011 for the individuals in the SIPP sample. Our main results show that the spousal earnings gap doubles between two years before the birth of the first child and the year after that child is born. After the child's first year of life the gap continues to grow for the next five years, but at a much slower rate, then tapers off and even begins to fall once the child reaches school-age.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperHours Off the Clock
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-44
To what extent do workers work more hours than they are paid for? The relationship between hours worked and hours paid, and the conditions under which employers can demand more hours 'off the clock,' is not well understood. The answer to this question impacts worker welfare, as well as wage and hour regulation. In addition, work off the clock has important implications for the measurement and cyclical movement of productivity and wages. In this paper, I construct a unique administrative dataset of hours paid by employers linked to a survey of workers on their reported hours worked to measure work off the clock. Using cross-sectional variation in local labor markets, I find only a small cyclical component to work off the clock. The results point to labor hoarding rather than efficiency wage theory, indicating work off the clock cannot explain the counter-cyclical movement of productivity. I find workers employed by small firms, and in industries with a high rate of wage and hour violations are associated with larger differences in hours worked than hours paid. These findings suggest the importance of tracking hours of work for enforcement of labor regulations.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperEarnings Inequality and Mobility Trends in the United States: Nationally Representative Estimates from Longitudinally Linked Employer-Employee Data
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-24
Using earnings data from the U.S. Census Bureau, this paper analyzes the role of the employer in explaining the rise in earnings inequality in the United States. We first establish a consistent frame of analysis appropriate for administrative data used to study earnings inequality. We show that the trends in earnings inequality in the administrative data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program are inconsistent with other data sources when we do not correct for the presence of misused SSNs. After this correction to the worker frame, we analyze how the earnings distribution has changed in the last decade. We present a decomposition of the year-to-year changes in the earnings distribution from 2004-2013. Even when simplifying these flows to movements between the bottom 20%, the middle 60% and the top 20% of the earnings distribution, about 20.5 million workers undergo a transition each year. Another 19.9 million move between employment and nonemployment. To understand the role of the firm in these transitions, we estimate a model for log earnings with additive fixed worker and firm effects using all jobs held by eligible workers from 2004-2013. We construct a composite log earnings firm component across all jobs for a worker in a given year and a non-firm component. We also construct a skill-type index. We show that, while the difference between working at a low-or middle-paying firm are relatively small, the gains from working at a top-paying firm are large. Specifically, the benefits of working for a high-paying firm are not only realized today, through higher earnings paid to the worker, but also persist through an increase in the probability of upward mobility. High-paying firms facilitate moving workers to the top of the earnings distribution and keeping them there.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperMultinationals Offshoring, and the Decline of U.S. Manufacturing
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-22
We provide three new stylized facts that characterize the role of multinationals in the U.S. manufacturing employment decline, using a novel microdata panel from 1993-2011 that augments U.S. Census data with firm ownership information and transaction-level trade. First, over this period, U.S. multinationals accounted for 41% of the aggregate manufacturing decline, disproportionate to their employment share in the sector. Second, U.S. multinational-owned establishments had lower employment growth rates than a narrowly-defined control group. Third, establishments that became part of a multinational experienced job losses, accompanied by increased foreign sourcing of intermediates by the parent firm. To establish whether imported intermediates are substitutes or complements for U.S. employment, we develop a model of input sourcing and show that the employment impact of foreign sourcing depends on a key elasticity of firm size to production efficiency. Structural estimation of this elasticity finds that imported intermediates substitute for U.S. employment. In general equilibrium, our estimates imply a sizable manufacturing employment decline of 13%.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperDestructive Creation at Work: How Financial Distress Spurs Entrepreneurship
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-19
Using US Census employer-employee matched data, I show that employer financial distress accelerates the exit of employees to found start-ups. This effect is particularly evident when distressed firms are less able to enforce contracts restricting employee mobility into competing firms. Entrepreneurs exiting financially distressed employers earn higher wages prior to the exit and after founding start-ups, compared to entrepreneurs exiting non-distressed firms. Consistent with distressed firms losing higher-quality workers, their start-ups have higher average employment and payroll growth. The results suggest that the social costs of distress might be lower than the private costs to financially distressed firms.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperDeclining Dynamism, Allocative Efficiency, and the Productivity Slowdown
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-17
A large literature documents declining measures of business dynamism including high-growth young firm activity and job reallocation. A distinct literature describes a slowdown in the pace of aggregate labor productivity growth. We relate these patterns by studying changes in productivity growth from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s using firm-level data. We find that diminished allocative efficiency gains can account for the productivity slowdown in a manner that interacts with the within firm productivity growth distribution. The evidence suggests that the decline in dynamism is reason for concern and sheds light on debates about the causes of slowing productivity growth.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperLabor Reallocation, Employment, and Earnings: Vector Autoregression Evidence
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-11R
Analysis of the labor market has given increasing attention to the reallocation of jobs across employers and workers across jobs. However, whether and how job reallocation and labor market 'churn' affects the health of the labor market remains an open question. In this paper, we present time series evidence for the U.S. 1993-2013 and consider the relationship between labor reallocation, employment, and earnings using a vector autoregression (VAR) framework. We find that an increase in labor market churn by 1 percentage point predicts that, in the next quarter, employment will increase by 100 to 560 thousand jobs, lowering the unemployment rate by 0.05 to 0.25 percentage points. Job destruction does not predict future changes in employment but a 1 percentage point increase in job destruction leads to an increase in future unemployment 0.14 to 0.42 percentage points. We find mixed results on the relationship between labor reallocation rates and earnings: we nd that, especially for earnings derived from administrative records data, a 1 percentage point increase to either job destruction or churn leads to increased earnings of less than 2 percent. Results vary substantially depending on the earnings measure we use, and so the evidence inconsistent on whether productivity-enhancing aspects of churn and job destruction provide earnings gains for workers in aggregate. Our findings on churn leading to increased employment and a lower unemployment rate are consistent with models of replacement hiring and vacancy chains.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperLocked In? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-09
We examine how the enforceability of covenants not to compete (CNCs) affects employee mobility and wages of high-tech workers. We expect CNC enforceability to lengthen job spells and constrain mobility, but its impact on wages is ambiguous. Using a matched employer-employee dataset covering the universe of jobs in thirty U.S states, we find that higher CNC enforceability is associated with longer job spells (fewer jobs over time), and a greater chance of leaving the state for technology workers. Consistent with a 'lock-in' effect of CNCs, we find persistent wage-suppressing effects that last throughout a worker's job and employment history.View Full Paper PDF
