Showing papers in "Journal of Human Resources in 2020"

Labor Market Concentration

Abstract: A product market is concentrated when a few firms dominate the market. Similarly, a labor market is concentrated when a few firms dominate hiring in the market. Using data from the leading employment website CareerBuilder.com, we calculate labor market concentration for over 8,000 geographic-occupational labor markets in the US. Based on the DOJ-FTC horizontal merger guidelines, the average market is highly concentrated. Using a panel IV regression, we show that going from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile in concentration is associated with a 17% decline in posted wages, suggesting that concentration increases labor market power.

The Consequences of Academic Match between Students and Colleges

Abstract: We consider the effects of student ability, college quality, and the interaction between the two on academic outcomes and earnings, using data on two cohorts of college enrollees. Student ability and college quality strongly improve degree completion and earnings for all students. We find evidence of meaningful complementarity between student ability and college quality in degree completion at four years and in long-term earnings, but not in degree completion at six years or STEM degree completion. This complementarity implies some trade-off between equity and efficiency for policies that move lower-ability students to higher-quality colleges. [End Page 767] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor Market Concentration, Earnings, and Inequality

Abstract: I document trends in local industrial concentration from 1976 through 2015 and estimate effects of concentration on earnings outcomes. Local concentration generally declined over that period, unlike national concentration, which declined sharply in the early 1980s before increasing to nearly its original level beginning around 1990. Increased local concentration reduces earnings and increases inequality. Because average concentration has fallen, the 90/10 earnings ratio was six percent lower and earnings one percent higher in 2015 than they would have been if local concentration were at its 1976 level. Most demographic subgroups experience mean earnings reductions, and all experience increases in inequality.

Parental Beliefs about Returns to Different Types of Investments in School Children

Abstract: Parental investments as well as school quality are important determinants of children’s later-life outcomes. In this paper, we shed light on what determines parental investments and study how parents perceive the returns to parental time investments, material investments and school quality, as well as the complementarity/substitutability between the different inputs. Using a representative sample of 1,962 parents in England, we document that parents perceive the returns to 3 hours of weekly parental time investments or £30 of weekly material investments to matter more than moving a child to a better school. Parents perceive the returns to time and material investments to be diminishing and perceive material investments as more productive if children attend higher quality schools. Perceived returns do not differ with the child’s initial human capital or gender and, surprisingly, we find no differences in perceived returns by the parents’ socioeconomic background. Consistent with parental beliefs playing an important role in parental investment decisions, perceived returns are found to be highly correlated with actual investment decisions.

Prescription Opioids and Labor Market Pains: The Effect of Schedule II Opioids on Labor Force Participation and Unemployment

Abstract: We examine the effect of prescription opioids on county labor market outcomes, using data from the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs of ten U.S. states and labor data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We achieve causal identofication by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the concentration of high-volume prescribers as instruments (using Medicare Part D prescriber data). We find strong adverse effects on labor force participation rates, employment- to-population ratios, and unemployment rates. Notably, a 10 percent increase in prescriptions causes a 0.56 percentage point reduction in labor force participation, similar to the drop attributed to the 1984 liberalization of Disability Insurance.

The Economic Burden of Crime: Evidence from Mexico

Abstract: I estimate the impact of the recent and unprecedented surge in drug-related violence in Mexico on the labor market outcomes of Mexican workers. Using a nationally representative longitudinal data set that allows me to account for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity, I find that there is a negative relationship between local violence and labor market outcomes. Self-employed individuals are the most sensitive to a violent environment, with men experiencing significantly reduced earnings and productivity, while women decrease their hours of work or exit the labor force entirely. I also find suggestive evidence that fear of victimization plays an important role explaining these changes.

The Effect of Food Stamps on Children's Health: Evidence from Immigrants' Changing Eligibility

Abstract: The Food Stamp program is currently one of the largest safety net programs in the United States and is especially important for families with children. The existing evidence on the effects of Food Stamps on children’s and families’ outcomes is limited. I utilize a large, recent source of quasi-experimental variation—changes in documented immigrants’ eligibility across states and over time from 1996–2003—to estimate the effect of Food Stamps on children’s health. I find loss of parental eligibility has large effects on program receipt, and an additional year of parental eligibility before age five improves health outcomes at ages 6–16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent Effects of Teacher-Student Gender Matches

Abstract: Many existing studies find that females perform better when they are taught by female teachers. However, there is little evidence on what the long-run impacts may be and through what mechanisms these impacts may emerge. We exploit panel data from middle schools in Seoul, South Korea, where students and teachers are randomly assigned to classrooms. We replicate the existing literature that examines contemporaneous effects and find that female students taught by a female versus a male teacher score higher on standardized tests compared to male students even five years later. We also find that having a female math teacher in seventh grade increases the likelihood that female students attend a STEM-focused high school, take higher-level math courses, and aspire to a STEM degree. These effects are driven by changes in students' attitudes and choices.

The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Abstract: This paper provides evidence for the role of conferences in generating visibility for academic work, using a ‘natural experiment’: the last-minute cancellation –due to ‘Hurricane Isaac’–of the 2012 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting. We assembled a dataset containing outcomes of 15,624 articles scheduled to be presented between 2009 and 2012 at the APSA meetings or at a comparator annual conference (that of the Midwest Political Science Association). Our estimates are quanti…ed in

Does Pollution Drive Achievement? the Effect of Traffic Pollution on Academic Performance

Abstract: We examine the effect of school traffic pollution on student outcomes by leveraging variation in wind patterns for schools the same distance from major highways. We compare within-student achievement for students transitioning between schools near highways, where one school has had greater levels of pollution because it is downwind of a highway. Students who move from an elementary/middle school that feeds into a "downwind" middle/high school in the same zip code experience decreases in test scores, more behavioral incidents, and more absences, relative to when they transition to an upwind school. Even within zip codes, microclimates can contribute to inequality.

The Impacts of Restricting Mobility of Skilled Service Workers Evidence from Physicians

Abstract: Why do skilled services firms use noncompete agreements (NCAs), which prohibit workers from leaving firms and competing against them? We conduct a survey of physicians linking NCA use to labor-market outcomes and firm performance and show that by deterring poaching of patients NCAs increase the return to job tenure, with larger effects in states with more enforceable NCA laws. These effects are consistent with NCAs enabling practices to allocate clients to new physicians through intrafirm referrals, reducing a form of investment holdup. We discuss an array of supporting suggestive evidence, but also find NCAs provide some benefits by reducing job turnover. [End Page 1025] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How Far Is Too Far? New Evidence on Abortion Clinic Closures, Access, and Abortions

Abstract: We document the effects of abortion-clinic closures on clinic access, abortions, and births using variation generated by a law that shuttered nearly half of Texas’ clinics. We find substantial and nonlinear effects of travel distance on abortion rates: an increase in travel distance from 0–50 miles to 50–100 miles reduces abortion rates by 16 percent, and the effects of increasing distance are smaller when the nearest clinic is already more than 50 miles away. We also demonstrate the importance of congestion with a proxy capturing effects of closures that have little impact on distance but reduce clinics per capita.

Strong Employers and Weak Employees: How Does Employer Concentration Affect Wages?

Abstract: We analyze the effect of local-level labor market concentration on wages Using Census data over the period 1977–2009, we find that: (1) local-level employer concentration exhibits substantial cross-sectional and time-series variation and increases over time; (2) consistent with labor market monopsony power, there is a negative relation between local-level employer concentration and wages that is more pronounced at high levels of concentration and increases over time; (3) the negative relation between labor market concentration and wages is stronger when unionization rates are low; (4) the link between productivity growth and wage growth is stronger when labor markets are less concentrated; and (5) exposure to greater import competition from China (the “China Shock”) is associated with more concentrated labor markets These five results emphasize the role of local-level labor market monopsonies in influencing firm wage-setting behavior and can potentially explain some of the stagnation of wages in the United States over the past several decades

The Impact of Low-Ability Peers on Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes: Random Assignment Evidence on the Effects and Operating Channels

Abstract: This paper presents new experimental estimates of the impact of low-ability peers on own outcomes using nationally representative data from China. We exploit the random assignment of students to junior high school classrooms and find that the proportion of low-ability peers, defined as having been retained during primary school (“repeaters”), has negative effects on non-repeaters’ cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. An exploration of the mechanisms shows that a larger proportion of repeater peers is associated with reduced after-school study time. The negative effects are driven by male repeaters and are more pronounced among students with less strict parental monitoring at home.

Does Employment Respond Differently to Minimum Wage Increases in the Presence of Inflation Indexing

Abstract: The minimum wage literature focuses heavily on "the" employment elasticity of minimum wage increases In contrast, this study focuses on heterogeneity in minimum wage policy Specifically, we study whether minimum wage increases lead to differential employment effects in states where minimum wages are indexed to inflation We find evidence they do To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to empirically study inflation indexing On balance, our results imply that the immediate disemployment effect of an increase in the minimum wage in a state that indexes its minimum wages to inflation is around three times the magnitude of the disemployment effect associated with a nominal increase in the minimum wage Our finding is robust across both "canonical" and "county-pair" models, though it does not hold in our most restrictive specification Examining the timing of the employment response reveals the disemployment effect associated with a change in the minimum wage is concentrated in the first 14 quarters after a state begins indexing minimum wages to inflation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locus of Control and Investment in Training

Abstract: This paper extends standard models of work-related training by explicitly incorporating workers' locus of control into the investment decision. Our model both differentiates between general and specific training and accounts for the role of workers and firms in training decisions. Workers with an internal locus of control are predicted to engage in more general training than are their external co-workers because their subjective expected investment returns are higher. In contrast, we expect little relationship between specific training and locus of control because training returns largely accrue to firms rather than workers. We then empirically test the predictions of our model using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP).

Food for thought? Experimental Evidence on the Learning Impacts of a Large-Scale School Feeding Program

Abstract: There is very limited experimental evidence of the impact of large-scale, government-led school meals programs on child educational achievements in Sub-Saharan Africa. We address this gap by reporting treatment effects from a nationwide randomized trial of the Government of Ghana’s school feeding program (GSFP) on children’s math and literacy, cognition (problem-solving ability and working memory), and composite scores of overall attainments. Based on the government’s plans to re-target and scale up the GSFP, food insecure schools and related communities across the country were randomly assigned to school feeding. After two years of implementation, program availability led to moderate increases in test scores for the average pupil in school catchment areas, ranging between 0.12 and 0.16 standard deviations. Analysis focusing on per-protocol population subgroups unveiled substantial heterogeneity: school feeding led to remarkable learning and cognitive gains for girls, poorest children, and children from the northern regions. Program effects were at least twice as large as for the average child. Increases in enrolment, grade attainment, and shifts in time use toward schooling time constituted potential mechanisms for impact. We conclude the program combined social protection with equitable human capital accumulation, thus contributing to the imperative of “learning for all†set in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Heterogeneous Employment Effects of Job Search Programmes: A Machine Learning Approach

Abstract: We systematically investigate the effect heterogeneity of job search programmes for unemployed workers. To investigate possibly heterogeneous employment effects, we combine non-experimental causal empirical models with Lasso-type estimators. The empirical analyses are based on rich administrative data from Swiss social security records. We find considerable heterogeneities only during the first six months after the start of training. Consistent with previous results of the literature, unemployed persons with fewer employment opportunities profit more from participating in these programmes. Furthermore, we also document heterogeneous employment effects by residence status. Finally, we show the potential of easy-to-implement programme participation rules for improving average employment effects of these active labour market programmes.

Locked in? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers

Abstract: 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.

Knocking on parents’ doors: regulation and intergenerational mobility

Abstract: We exploited two major reforms in the regulation of professional services implemented in Italy since the 2000s in order to examine the impact on the intergenerational transmission of occupations. We built an OECD-style indicator of strictness of regulation for 14 occupations and three different cohorts (i.e. before and after each reform). Then, using a difference-in-differences strategy, we exploited the differential effect of regulation on the occupations considered compared with employees in similar occupations, before and after each reform. We found that the progressive liberalization of professional services affected the allocation of individuals across occupations, leading to a substantial decrease in the propensity to follow the same career as one’s parents. The impact of regulation on the likelihood of being employed in the same occupation as one’s parents is greater in soft sciences and in areas where the demand for professional services is higher; at individual level, it is greater for less able individuals.

Parental Leave, (In)formal Childcare and Long-Term Child Outcomes

Abstract: We provide a novel interpretation of the estimated treatment effects from evaluations of parental leave reforms. Accounting for the counterfactual mode of care is crucial in the analysis of child outcomes and potential mediators. We evaluate a large and generous parental leave extension in Austria exploiting a sharp birthday cutoff-based discontinuity in the eligibility for extended parental leave and geographical variation in formal childcare. We find that estimated treatment effects on long-term child outcomes differ substantially according to the availability of formal childcare and the mother's counterfactual work behavior. We show that extending parental leave has significant positive effects on children's health and human capital outcomes only if the reform induces a replacement of informal childcare with maternal care. We conclude that care provided by mothers (or formal institutions) is superior to informal care-arrangements.

Long-Term Impacts of Class Size in Compulsory School

Abstract: How does class size in compulsory school affect people’s long-run education and earnings? We use maximum-class-size rules and Norwegian administrative registries, allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48. We do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class-size reduction in compulsory school. For a one-person reduction in class size we reject effects on income as small as 0.12 percent in primary school and 0.15 percent in middle school. Population differences in parental background, school size, or competitive pressure do not appear to reconcile our findings with previous studies.

The Age Twist in Employers’ Gender Requests: Evidence from Four Job Boards.

Abstract: On one Mexican and three Chinese job boards, firms’ explicit gender requests shift dramatically away from women and towards men when firms are seeking older (as opposed to younger) workers. Observed characteristics of job ads can account for 65 percent of this “age twist”; within this “explained” component, employers’ requests for older male managers and for young women in customer contact and helping positions account for more than half. Based on its timing, the remainder of the twist, which occurs within job titles, appears to be connected to a differential effect of parenthood on firms’ requests for men versus women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How Do Peers Impact Learning? An Experimental Investigation of Peer-to-Peer Teaching and Ability Tracking

Abstract: Classroom peers are believed to influence learning by teaching each other, and the efficacy of this teaching likely depends on classroom composition in terms of peers’ ability. Unfortunately, little is known about peer-to-peer teaching because it is never observed in field studies. Furthermore, identifying how peer-to-peer teaching is affected by ability tracking—grouping students of similar ability—is complicated by the fact that tracking is typically accompanied by changes in curriculum and the instructional behavior of teachers. To fill this gap, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which subjects learn to solve logic problems and examine both the importance of peer-to-peer teaching and the interaction between peer-to-peer teaching and ability tracking. While peer-to-peer teaching improves learning among low-ability subjects, the positive effects are substantially offset by tracking. Tracking reduces the frequency of peer-to-peer teaching, suggesting that low-ability subjects suffer from the absence of high-ability peers to teach them.

Are Professors Worth It? The Value-Added and Costs of Tutorial Instructors

Abstract: A substantial share of university instruction happens in tutorial sessions—small group instruction given parallel to lectures. We study whether instructors with a higher academic rank teach tutorials more effectively in a setting where students are randomly assigned to tutorial groups. We find this to be largely not the case. Academic rank is unrelated to students' current and future performance and only weakly positively related to students' course evaluations. Building on these results, we discuss different staffing scenarios that show that universities can substantially reduce costs by increasingly relying on lower-ranked instructors for tutorial teaching.

Why are Low-Wage Workers Signing Noncompete Agreements?

Abstract: Noncompete agreements (NCAs), which contractually limit where an employee may work in the event of a job separation, have been recognized as tools employers use to protect nonphysical production assets and to reduce turnover. However, recent evidence that NCAs are widely and increasingly used in low-wage jobs suggests our understanding of NCA use remains incomplete. In this paper, we show that NCAs arise when employers and employees are limited in their ability to transfer utility via the wage. Our model of the labor market predicts that, when such limitations are present, the terms of trade may dictate that NCAs are used to transfer utility from the employee to the employer, even when NCAs reduce the pair’s surplus. We find support for our model’s predictions using a new survey of owners of independent hair salons, an industry in which NCAs are widely used. We find that declines in two distinct measures of the terms of trade for employees, and decreases in transferability of utility (measured by the state minimum wage), are associated with increases in NCA use. Furthermore, we generate a test for identifying when NCAs reduce a pair’s surplus, and we identify a subset of firms in our sample, characterized by limited access to credit, for which this is the case. Finally, we revisit a recent study of the employment effect of the minimum wage: consistent with our model, we find that minimum wage increases have a negative effect on employment in states where NCAs are not enforced, and no effect in states where they are strictly enforced. ∗Email addresses: matthew.johnson@duke.edu and lipsitm@miamioh.edu. We wish to thank Kevin Lang, David I. Levine, Andrew Newman, Juan Ortner, and Johannes Schmieder for invaluable guidance, and Liz Ananat, Dan Black, Kerwin Charles, Bill Even, Benjamin Ogden, Jim Rebitzer, and seminar participants at Boston University, UC Santa Barbara, and Miami University for helpful comments. A big thanks to the Professional Beauty Association for their help designing and distributing our survey, especially Chelsea McFarland and Myra Irziarry, and to Serena Chreky and Frank Zona for explaining many details of the salon industry. Thanks to Norman Bishara for sharing his noncompete enforcement data with us. Michael Reynolds at NORC provided valuable comments on the survey. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Boston University Institute for Economic Development. All errors belong to us.

Do Low-Wage Employers Discriminate against Applicants with Long Commutes? Evidence from a Correspondence Experiment

Abstract: I use a correspondence study of the low-wage labor market in Washington, DC to test whether employers discriminate against applicants who live farther from the job location. Fictional resumes randomly assigned to addresses far from the job location receive 14 percent fewer callbacks than those with addresses in nearby but similarly affluent neighborhoods. Living five to six miles away from the job results in a penalty equal to that received by applicants with stereotypically black names. On the other hand, holding commute distance constant, I find no statistical evidence that employers respond to a neighborhood's affluence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Effect of Immigration on Natives’ School Performance: Does Length of Stay in the Host Country Matter?

Abstract: Using a rich data set of primary school students, this paper estimates the effects of immigrant concentration in the classroom on the academic achievement of natives. In contrast with previous contributions, it exploits rare information on age-at-migration to estimate separate spillover effects by duration of stay of immigrant classmates. To identify treatment effects, it uses cohort-by-cohort deviations in immigrant concentration within schools combined with attractive features of the Dutch school system. Overall, the paper finds no effect of the concentration of immigrant students on natives’ test scores. However, although immigrant students who have been in the country for some time have virtually no effect on natives, the analysis finds a small negative effect of recent immigrants in the classroom on natives’ test scores. The effect is significant only for language test scores, but insignificant for mathematics test scores. When significant, effect sizes are quite small compared to other educational interventions and classroom peer effects estimated in other contexts.