Studies examining the effectiveness of welfare-to-work programs present findings that are mixed and sometimes at odds, in part due to research design, data, and methodological limitations of the studies. We aim to substantially improve on past approaches to estimate program effectiveness by...

We analyze the way women's education influences the effect of children on their level of labor market involvement. We propose an econometric model that accounts for the endogeneity of labor market and fertility decisions, for the heterogeneity of the effects of children and their correlation...

Despite evidence that skilled labor is increasingly concentrated in cities, whether regional wage inequality is predominantly due to differences in skill levels or returns is unknown. We compare Appalachia, with its wide mix of urban and rural areas, to other parts of the U.S., and find that...

This paper uses administrative data from Missouri to examine the sensitivity of job training program impact estimates based on alternative nonexperimental methods. In addition to simple regression adjustment, we consider Mahalanobis distance matching and a variety of methods using propensity...

This paper examines the relationship between technology adoption and workforce skill in US manufacturing plants. Using information on the use and adoption of seven different information technologies, we find that the relationship between technology adoption and workforce skill varies across the...

In this paper we empirically examine differences in search behavior between men and women. We assess hypotheses regarding duration of search, wages and tenure. The hypotheses are derived from two models: the equilibrium search model with discriminatory firms by Black (1995) and an opportunity...

Much is known about private returns to education in the form of higher earnings. Less is known about social value, over and above the private, market value. Associations between education and socially-desirable outcomes are strong, but disentangling the effect of education from other causal...

This paper presents nonexperimental net impact estimates for the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), the primary federal job training program in the U.S, based on administrative data from 12 states, covering approximately 160,000 WIA participants and...

We use panel data from NLSY79 to analyze the effects of the timing and spacing of births on the labor supply of married women in a framework that accounts for the endogeneity of labor market and fertility decisions, the heterogeneity of the effects of children and their correlation with the...