Exogenous shocks often impact a local labor market more than at the national level. This study improves upon the standard Difference in Difference (DD) approach by examining exogenous shocks using a Generalized Difference in Difference (GDD) econometric approach that identifies the effects of...

This paper uses survey data on employment immigrants in Australia and the United States to identify the main determinants of the size and skill composition of employment immigrants to developed countries. Our approach emphasizes the key roles of world prices of skills and country proximity. Our...

Using a rich sample of admission records from New Orleans Touro Infirmary, we examine the in-hospital mortality risk of free and enslaved patients. Despite a higher mortality rate in the general population, slaves were significantly less likely to die in the hospital than the whites. We analyze...

This study provides the first nation-wide analysis of the labor market implications of occupational licensing for the U.S. labor market, using data from a specially designed Gallup survey. We find that in 2006, 29 percent of the workforce was required to hold an occupational license from a...

Using confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau, we investigate the performance of female-owned businesses making comparisons to male-owned businesses. Using regression estimates and a decomposition technique, we explore the role that human capital, especially through prior work...

We use 1980, 1990 and 2000 Census data to study the impact of source country characteristics on the labor supply assimilation profiles of married adult immigrant women and men. Women migrating from countries where women have high relative labor force participation rates work substantially more...

We specify and implement a test for the importance of network effects in determining the establishments at which people work, using recently-constructed matched employer-employee data at the establishment level. We explicitly measure the importance of network effects for groups broken out by...

In this paper we compare estimates of immigrants' labor supply assimilation profiles using the Current Population Survey Annual Demographic Files (March ADS) and the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups (ORGs). We use a measure that is seemingly consistent across both surveys:...

In recent years, Spain has received unprecedented immigration flows. Between 2001 and 2006 the fraction of the population born abroad more than doubled, increasing from 4.8% to 10.8%. For Spanish provinces with above-median inflows (relative to population), immigration increased the high school...