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...

A central issue in estimating the employment effects of minimum wages is the appropriate comparison group for states (or other regions) that adopt or increase the minimum wage. In recent research, Dube et al. (Rev Econ Stat 92:945-964, 2010) and Allegretto et al. (Ind Relat 50:205-240, 2011)...

We revisit the minimum wage-employment debate, which is as old as the Department of Labor. In particular, we assess new studies claiming that the standard panel data approach used in much of the "new minimum wage research" is flawed because it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity. These...

We provide updated evidence on the effects of living wage laws in U.S. cities, relative to the earlier research covering only the first six or seven years of existence of these laws. There are some challenges to updating the evidence, as the CPS data on which it relies changed geographic coding...

We use a new database, the National Establishment Time Series (NETS), to revisit the debate about the role of small businesses in job creation. Birch (e.g., 1987) argued that small firms are the most important source of job creation in the U.S. economy. But Davis et al. (1996a) argued that this...