We examine how a 16-week cut in potential unemployment insurance (UI) duration in Missouri affected search behavior of UI recipients and the aggregate labor market. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD), we estimate marginal effects of maximum duration on UI and nonemployment spells of 0.45 and 0.25, respectively. We simulate the unemployment rate implied by the RDD estimates assuming no market-level externalities. The implied response closely approximates the decline in the unemployment rate following the benefit cut, suggesting that, even in a period of high unemployment, the labor market absorbed the influx of workers without crowding out other job seekers.

We employ a revealed preference test to distinguish between wage posting and wage bargaining. Using a sample of dual jobholders in Washington State, we estimate the sensitivity of wages and separation rates to wage shocks in a secondary job. In lower parts of the wage distribution, improvements in the outside option lead to higher separations rates but not to higher wages, consistent with wage posting. In the highest wage quartile, improved outside options translate to higher wages but not higher separation rates, consistent with bargaining. In the aggregate, bargaining appears to be a limited determinant of wage setting.

Schelling (“Dynamic Models of Segregation,” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1 (1971), 143–186) showed that extreme segregation can arise from social interactions in white preferences: once the minority share in a neighborhood exceeds a “tipping point,” all the whites leave. We use regression discontinuity methods and Census tract data from 1970 through 2000 to test for discontinuities in the dynamics of neighborhood racial composition. We find strong evidence that white population flows exhibit tipping-like behavior in most cities, with a distribution of tipping points ranging from 5% to 20% minority share. Tipping is prevalent both in the suburbs and near existing minority enclaves. In contrast to white population flows, there is little evidence of nonlinearities in rents or housing prices around the tipping point. Tipping points are higher in cities where whites have more tolerant racial attitudes.

We estimate the magnitudes of reduced earnings, work hours, and wage rates of workers displaced during the Great Recession using linked employer-employee panel data from Washington state. Displaced workers’ earnings losses occurred mainly because hourly wage rates dropped at the time of displacement and recovered sluggishly. Lost employer-specific premiums explain only 17 percent of these losses. Fully 70 percent of displaced workers moved to employers paying the same or higher wage premiums than the displacing employers, but these workers nevertheless suffered substantial wage rate losses. Loss of valuable specific worker-employer matches explains more than one-half of the wage losses.