This article examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on the allocation of labor across industries. An overlooked aspect of UI is the effect of imperfect experience rating on hiring. Firms in more stable industries generally pay more into the UI system than their workers ever receive in benefits, thus subsidizing more volatile industries. The results indicate that industry employment shares are significantly affected by UI and that there is a net shift of resources from the service industry to the construction industry. The estimates also imply that layoff unemployment is increased by about 5% because of UI-induced employment shifts.

Recently improved Swedish register data have made it possible to remedy many weaknesses of previous research on displaced workers. Using linked employer‐employee data, we identify all workers displaced in 1987, due to an establishment closure, and follow them over both a predisplacement period of 4 years and a postdisplacement period stretching until 1999. We find that the displaced workers suffer both earnings losses and worsened labor‐market position not only during a transitory period of adjustment but also in the longer run. These longer‐run effects seem to be driven by an increased sensitivity to subsequent macroeconomic shocks.

We analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 on high school completion, smoking, and obesity. First, we investigate whether GED recipients differ from other high school graduates in their smoking and obesity behaviors. Second, we explore whether the relationships between schooling and these health‐related behaviors are sensitive to controlling for background and ability measures. Third, we estimate instrumental variables models. Our results suggest that the returns to high school completion may include less smoking but the health returns to GED receipt are much smaller. We find little evidence that high school completion is associated with less obesity.

This article uses a game-theoretic, two-sided matching model and method of simulated moments estimation to study factors affecting the match of elementary teachers to their first jobs. We find that employers demonstrate preferences for teachers having stronger academic achievement (e.g., attended a more selective college) and for teachers living in closer proximity to the school. Teachers show preferences for schools that are closer geographically, are suburban, have a smaller proportion of students in poverty, and, for white teachers, have a smaller proportion of minority students. These results appear predictable but contradict findings from prior research estimating hedonic wage equations for teacher labor markets.

We report a gift exchange experiment. Firms make wage offers; workers respond by determining an effort level. Higher effort is more costly to workers, and firms have no mechanism for punishing or rewarding workers. Consistent with the gift exchange hypothesis, workers provide more effort at higher wages, but undergraduates provide substantially less effort than MBAs. Evidence suggests this results from differences in prior work experience. Firms' nonbinding effort requests are at least partially honored, resulting in increased overall effort for undergraduates. Although higher wages are relatively more costly for lower productivity firms, workers do not provide them with more effort.