Knowledge that Transforms

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.

We investigate the returns to adolescent friendships on earnings in adulthood using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Because both education and friendships are jointly determined in adolescence, OLS estimates of their returns are likely biased. We implement a novel procedure to obtain bounds on the causal returns to friendships: we assume that the returns to schooling range from 5 to 15% (based on prior literature), and instrument for friendships using similarity in age among peers. Having one more friend in adolescence increases earnings between 7 and 14%, substantially more than OLS estimates would suggest.

This paper utilizes wealth shocks from winning lottery prizes to examine the causal effect of financial resources on fertility. We employ extensive panels of administrative data encompassing over 0.4 million lottery winners in Taiwan and implement a triple-differences design. Our analyses reveal that a substantial lottery win can significantly increase fertility, the implied wealth elasticity of which is around 0.06. Moreover, the primary channel through which fertility increases is by prompting first births among previously childless individuals. Finally, our analysis reveals that approximately 25% of the total fertility effect stems from increased marriage rates following a lottery win.

Natives are expected to respond to the wage impact of immigration by moving across markets. We argue that the observed impact depends not only on the size of the native response but also on which natives choose to respond. Specifically, a nonrandom response produces a selection bias. We document its empirical relevance by showing that the strong feminization of the French immigrant workforce reduced the employment of native women, leading to sizable compositional shifts and no correlation between immigration and female wages. Adjusting for selection bias results in a wage elasticity that becomes negative for women and similar to men.

We investigate the causal impact of a generous unconditional cash transfer at birth on children’s health and academic performance. Using rich administrative data, we take advantage of the unexpected introduction of a baby bonus in Spain in 2007 and implement a difference-in-discontinuity approach comparing children born in the surrounding months in different years. We find little impact on children’s health and test scores. We also fail to find meaningful changes in household structure, maternal employment, parental time, or child-related monetary investments. Our results contribute to understanding which interventions are effective at fostering children’s health and human capital formation.

We characterize the joint evolution of cross-sectional inequality in earnings, other sources of income and consumption across generations in the U.S. To account for cross-sectional dispersion, we estimate a model of intergenerational persistence and separately identify the influences of parental factors and of idiosyncratic life-cycle components. We find evidence of family persistence in earnings, consumption and saving behaviours, and marital sorting patterns. However, the quantitative contribution of idiosyncratic heterogeneity to cross-sectional inequality is significantly larger than parental effects. Our estimates imply that intergenerational persistence is not high enough to induce further large increases in inequality over time and across generations.

Using full count US census data, we study the impact of early twentieth-century state-industry-specific minimum wage laws that primarily targeted female employees. Our triple-difference estimates suggest a null impact of the minimum wage laws, potentially reflecting disemployment effects and the positive selection bias of the workers remaining in the labor force. When comparing county-industry trends between counties straddling state borders, female employment is lower by around 3.1% in affected county-industry cells. We further investigate the implications for own-wage elasticity of labor demand as a function of cross-industry concentration, the channels of substitution between men and women, and heterogeneity by marital status.

Many workers are evaluated on their ability to engage with customers. We measure the impact of gender-based customer discrimination on the productivity of online sales agents in sub-Saharan Africa. Using a novel framework that randomly varies the gender of names presented to customers without changing worker behavior, we find the assignment of a female-sounding name leads to 50 percent fewer purchases. Customers also lag in responding, are less expressive, and avoid discussing purchases. We show similar results for customers around the world and across workers. Removing customer bias, we find women would be more productive than their male coworkers.

Using Danish registry data linked to the Labor Force Survey, we provide the first rigorous evidence with external validity on the hours-career nexus (positive association between hours and career success). Guided by three theories (human capital; rat race; tournament), we unpack the hours-career nexus through examining: the differential effect of hours in the present firm and elsewhere; hours relative to peers’ hours; standard vs. evening/night/weekend hours; and the importance of sustaining long hours. Supplemented by the time use survey, we show the gender gap in hours and career success is due mostly to gendered division of labor in household production.