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Assessing the Labor Market Consequences of Geographic Shifts Driven by Remote Worker Relocation Programs
No full textSince 2018, over 80 U.S. municipalities have introduced Remote Worker Relocation Programs to attract remote workers and revitalize local economies. Despite their growing popularity, their broader labor market impacts, including potential spillover effects on non-participating regions, remain unclear. This project will investigate who these relocated remote workers are, along with their location elasticity estimates with respect to subsidies, and the broader economic consequences of these remote workers’ geographic reallocation. Leveraging data from MakeMyMove—a unique platform connecting remote workers with communities—and People Data Lab, it will employ a staggered difference-in-differences approach and build a theoretical framework incorporating agglomeration and congestion forces. The findings will offer insights into how these programs shape economic efficiency and equity, guiding policymakers
The Effects of Child Care Subsidies on Paid Child Care Participation and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Child and Dependent Care Credit
No full textDoes Schooling Improve Cognitive Abilities at Older Ages? Causal Evidence from Nonparametric Bounds
Get PDFWe revisit much-investigated relationships between schooling and health, focusing on schooling impacts on cognitive abilities at older ages using the Harmonized Cognition Assessment Protocol in the Health & Retirement Study (HRS) and a bounding approach that requires relatively weak assumptions. Our estimated upper bounds on the population average effects indicate potentially large causal effects of increasing schooling from primary to secondary; yet, these upper bounds are smaller than many estimates from the literature on causal schooling impacts on cognition using compulsory-schooling laws. We also cannot rule out small and null effects at this margin. We do, however, find evidence for positive causal effects on cognition of increasing schooling from secondary to tertiary. We replicate findings from the HRS using older adults from the Midlife in United States Development Study Cognitive Project. We further explore possible mechanisms through which schooling may be working—such as health, SES, occupation and spousal schooling—finding suggestive evidence of effects through such mechanisms
Can Anyone Learn to Code? A Qualitative Study of Place-Based Information Technology Training Programs
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Essays in Macroeconomics and Labor Markets
No full textLabor markets are a central channel through which households are exposed to macroeconomic fluctuations. Yet our knowledge of the transmission mechanisms and frictions within labor markets that mediate economic shocks remains incomplete. In my dissertation, Essays in Macroeconomics and Labor Markets, I help improve this area by providing causal evidence through which labor markets in the United States are exposed to cyclical activity and discuss the resulting policy implications. Each of the three chapters examines a distinct friction shaping the interplay between macroeconomic fluctuations and labor markets. However, they are united by a shared methodology: each chapter develops a novel, quasi-experimental research design using rich individual level microdata, allowing the detailed study of each labor market channel. After briefly summarizing the dissertation, I describe the papers comprising each chapter in greater detail.
Chapter 1, titled “The Labor Market Spillovers of Job Destruction,” quantifies the extent to which individual employment cuts by firms can have indirect effects on workers through changes in the market equilibrium. Using variation in the nationwide layoff decisions of large firms across local labor markets, we find that labor market congestion, caused by many firms simultaneously destroying jobs, significantly amplifies the earnings losses of laid-off workers during economic downturns. We further interpret these findings through the lens of a heterogeneous-agent quantitative model with labor market frictions.
Chapter 2, “Credit Cycles, Firms, and the Labor Market,” investigates how an aggregate decline in the compensation investors demand for bearing firm default risk affects the allocation of labor. We show that loose credit market conditions lead more workers to take jobs at financially risky firms. Using variation from both labor market and credit market segmentation, we find that taking jobs at these firms increases workers’ labor income in the short run, but results in large and persistent earnings losses once credit conditions tighten.
Chapter 3, “Household Liquidity and Macroeconomic Stabilization,” studies how solvency from the CARES Act mortgage forbearance program stimulated local employment following the 2020 COVID-19 recession. Using institutional details that led to variation in financial intermediation frictions across mortgage servicers, we find that mortgage payment deferrals under the federal forbearance program accelerated the recovery of local employment once economic lockdowns were lifted. Our results underscore the importance of relieving household liquidity constraints in boosting labor demand during economic downturns
“Essential” Migrants: Evidence from the 2020 H-2B Visa Lottery
Get PDFI study how access to foreign-born workers impacts firms and local economics in times of acute crisis. The 2020 H-2B visa lottery randomly gave some U.S. firms the chance to hire low-wage, migrant workers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using administrative data across three government agencies, I find that access to H-2B workers led to decreased business closures, increased revenues, increased payroll, and increased employment in 2020. I also find suggestive evidence that these effects spilled over to non-participant firms within the same county
Do Older Workers Change Their Labor Supply in Response to Housing Wealth Shocks?
Get PDFDo older workers change their labor supply in response to unexpected housing wealth losses (or gains)? Housing wealth is the largest component in most older Americans’ portfolios, and they may seek to recoup losses by working longer to help smooth consumption in retirement. Despite its importance, prior studies have not arrived at a consensus answer. I perform three different analyses to re-approach this question using Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data: a descriptive analysis, two separate differences-in-differences-indifferences analyses exploiting the China Shock and the Great Recession, and an analysis employing autoregressive models for estimating unexpected shocks to housing price appreciation. All three analyses concur that older homeowners do not significantly change their labor supply or Social Security claiming behavior in response to unexpected housing wealth gains or losses. Subgroup analyses suggest that college-educated workers may be the most responsive, even though housing wealth makes up a lower share of their total wealth, probably due to their comparably greater employment resiliency in weak labor markets
