The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation oflevels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistencyproblems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio ofthe 90th and 10th percentiles...

A significant proportion of migrant children in China are not able to attend public schools for lack of local household registration (HuKou), and turn to privately-operated migrant schools. This paper examines the consequences of such a partially involuntary school choice, using survey data and...

The paper reexamines the employer size-wage puzzle using NLSY79 data. The empirical results show that even for those who never receive any training from their employers, size-wage premium still exists and is quantitatively important. Wage increases associated with receiving on-the-job training...

Although the majority of research on US income inequality trends is based on public-use March CPS data, a new wave of research using IRS tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster growing trends. We show that these apparently inconsistent estimates are largely...

We study a competitive labor market with imperfect information. In our basic model, the labor market consists of heterogeneous workers and ex ante identical firms who have only imperfect private information about workers' productivities. Firms compete by posting wages in order to cherry-pick...

Using nationally representative data in China, we find substantial positive partial correlations of both parents' education with one's wage. In addition, returns to father's education are higher in more monopsonistic and less meritocratic labor markets, including non-coastal regions, the...

Accurate identification of economic recessions in a timely fashion is a major macroeconomic challenge. The most successful early detector of recessions, the Sahm rule, relies on changes in unemployment rates, and is thus subject to measurement errors in the U.S. labor force statuses based on...

To measure income inequality with right censored (topcoded) data, we propose multiple imputation for censored observations using draws from Generalized Beta of the Second Kind distributions to provide partially synthetic datasets analyzed using complete data methods. Estimation and inference...

This paper studies the effect of state-owned enterprises on the dynamics of the Chinese urban labor market. Using longitudinal monthly panel data, we document very low dynamics in the labor market, especially in the state sector. We develop and calibrate an equilibrium search and matching model...

While there is considerable interest in understanding the climate-migration relationship, particularly in the context of concerns about global climatic change, little is known about underlying mechanisms. We analyze a unique and extensive set of panel data characterizing annual bilateral...