In this article, I propose and estimate a dynamic model of education, borrowing, and work decisions of high school graduates. I examine the effect of relaxing borrowing constraints on educational attainment by simulating increases in the amount students are permitted to borrow from government-sponsored loan programs. My results indicate that borrowing constraints have a small impact on attainment: the removal of education-related borrowing constraints raises bachelor’s degree completion by 2.4 percentage points. Tuition subsidies are necessary to obtain larger increases: I find that higher subsidies for average-ability students are the most cost effective targeted tuition subsidies.

The long-term decline in US workers’ attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. We find that the swift rise of imports from China arising from a change in trade policy accounts for nearly all of this post-2000 acceleration: union certification elections decreased substantially among workers in manufacturing industries directly exposed to imports, but also among workers indirectly exposed through their local labor market. Consistent with a simple model of workers’ decision to seek union representation, direct exposure lowered the expected wage gain from unionization, whereas indirect exposure increased the cost of job loss—both of which discourage organizing.

Workplace safety policies are designed to ensure that employers internalize the costs of injuries, but employers can undermine these policies with threats of dismissal. We show that states’ adoption of the public policy exception to at-will employment—an exception forbidding employers from firing workers for filing workers’ compensation claims or for whistleblowing—led to a substantial reduction in injuries. The widespread adoption of the public policy exception explains 14% of the decline in fatal injury rates between 1979 and 1994. Statutory protections from retaliatory firing also improved safety, but only when employers faced sufficiently strong penalties for violating them.

We analyze how the legal enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs) affects labor markets. Using newly constructed panel data, we find that higher NCA enforceability diminishes workers? earnings and job mobility, with larger effects among workers most likely to sign NCAs. These effects are far-reaching: increasing enforceability imposes externalities on workers across state borders, suggesting broad effects on labor market dynamism. We show that enforceability affects wages by reducing outside options and preventing workers from leveraging tight labor markets to increase earnings. We motivate these findings with a model of search and bargaining. Finally, higher NCA enforceability exacerbates gender and racial earnings gaps.