This paper establishes the existence of a previously overlooked relationship between agglomeration and hours worked. Among nonprofessionals, hours worked decrease with the density of workers in the same occupation. Among professionals, the relationship is positive. This relationship is stronger for the young than for the middle-aged. Moreover, young professional hours worked are especially sensitive to the presence of rivals. The paper shows that these patterns are consistent with the selection of hard workers into cities and with the high productivity of agglomerated labor. The behavior of young professionals is also consistent with the presence of keen rivalry in larger markets, a kind of urban rat race.

A long-standing assumption among economists is that nursing home quality is common across Medicaid and private-pay patients within a shared facility. However, there has been only limited empirical work addressing this issue. Using a unique individual level panel of residents of nursing homes from seven states, we exploit both within-facility and within-person variation in payer source and quality to examine this issue. We also test the robustness of these results across states with different Medicaid and private-pay rate differentials. Across various identification strategies, our results are consistent with the assumption of common quality across Medicaid and private-paying patients within facilities.