How does trade liberalization affect wages? This is the first paper to consider in theory and data how the impact of final and intermediate input tariff cuts on workers' wages varies with the global engagement of their firm. Our model predicts that a fall in output tariffs lowers wages at...

Labor market tightness following the height of the Covid-19 pandemic led to an unexpected compression in the US wage distribution that reflects, in part, an increase in labor market competition. Rapid relative wage growth at the bottom of the distribution reduced the college wage premium and...

"The returns to schooling or the skill premium is a key parameter in various literatures, including globalization and inequality and international migration. This paper explores the skill premium and its link to exports in Latin America, thus linking the skill premium to the emerging literature...

Adequate wages are an important tool to shield public officials from special interests and corruption. But what is the equilibrium effect of higher wages in the presence of criminal pressure groups, who use both bribes and violence? By means of a regression discontinuity design, we show that an...

We use data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program to study the causal effects of location on earnings. Starting from a model with employer and employee fixed effects, we estimate the average earnings premiums associated with jobs in different commuting zones (CZs) and...

We revisit the estimation of industry wage differentials using linked employer-employee data from the U.S. LEHD program. Building on recent advances in the measurement of employer wage premiums, we define the industry wage effect as the employment-weighted average workplace premium in that...

We develop measures of labor-saving and labor-augmenting technology exposure using textual analysis of patents and job tasks. Using US administrative data, we show that both measures negatively predict earnings growth of individual incumbent workers. While labor-saving technologies predict...

We propose a new sorting framework: composite sorting. Composite sorting comprises of (1) distinct worker types assigned to the same occupation, and (2) a given worker type simultaneously being part of both positive and negative sorting. Composite sorting arises when fixed investments mitigate...

We document systematic differences in wage and earnings inequality between and within occupations and show that these differences are intimately related to systematic differences in labor supply across occupations. We then develop a variant of a Roy model in which earnings are a non-linear...

Using Current Population Survey data, we assess whether and to what extent the burden of wage theft -- wage payments below the statutory minimum wage -- falls disproportionately on various demographic groups following minimum wage increases. For most racial and ethnic groups at most ages we find...