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Report
The Distributional Impact of the Minimum Wage in the Short and Long Run
We develop a framework with rich worker heterogeneity, firm monopsony power, and putty-clay technology to study the distributional impact of the minimum wage in the short and long run. Our production technology is disciplined to be consistent with the small estimated employment effects of the minimum wage in the short run and the large estimated elasticities of substitution across inputs in the long run. We find that in the short run, a large increase in the minimum wage has a small effect on employment and therefore increases the labor income of the workers who were earning less than the new ...
Working Paper
The Gender Pay Gap: Micro Sources and Macro Consequences
Using linked employer-employee data from Brazil, we document a large gender pay gap due to women working at lower-paying employers with better amenities. To interpret these facts, we develop an equilibrium search model with endogenous firm pay, amenities, and employment. We provide a constructive proof of identification of all model parameters. The estimated model suggests that amenities are important for men and women, that compensating differentials explain half of the gender pay gap, and that there are significant output and welfare gains from eliminating gender differences. However, ...
Working Paper
Hysteresis via Endogenous Rigidity in Wages and Participation
We document that the past three ?jobless? recoveries also featured asymmetries in labor force participation and labor compensation, with each falling to new lows during each cycle. We model these asymmetries as resulting from a strategic complementarity in firms' wage setting and workers' job search strategies. Strategic complementarity results in a continuum of possible equilibria with higher-wage equilibria welfare dominating lower-wage equilibria. Assuming that no economic agent deviates from an existing strategy unless deviation is a unilateral best response, the model exhibits (1) ...
Working Paper
These Caps Spilleth Over: Equilibrium Effects of Unemployment Insurance
The design of US unemployment insurance (UI) policy--which features benefits assigned as a percentage of past wages up to a cap--engenders tests for spillovers from policy variation to workers who are not directly treated. We test for and find a pattern of spillovers from state-level UI policy changes that cannot be neatly reconciled with workhorse or cutting-edge models of UI spillovers. Instead, we show that the documented pattern conforms with the predictions of a canonical model of information frictions: wage posting with random search. Taken together, our results provide novel evidence ...
Working Paper
Outsourcing Policy and Worker Outcomes: Causal Evidence from a Mexican Ban
A weakening of labor protection policies is often invoked as one cause of observed monopsony power and the decline in labor’s share of income, but little evidence exists on the causal impact of labor policies on wage markdowns. Using confidential Mexican economic census data from 1994 to 2019, we document a rising trend over this period in on-site outsourcing. Then, leveraging data from a manufacturing panel survey from 2013 to 2023 and a natural experiment featuring a ban on domestic outsourcing in 2021, we show that the ban drastically reduced outsourcing, increased wages, and reduced ...