We investigate an unexplored avenue through which unemployment insurance increases unemployment. As unemployment insurance benefits rise, workers lose incentive to "preempt" impending layoffs by changing jobs. We formalize this prediction in a job search model and investigate it empirically by...

The authors estimate a wage model that includes an array of variables measuring the fraction of time worked during each year of the career. This array fully characterizes past employment experience, regardless of how sporadic it has been. Their model yields substantially higher estimated returns...

Using National Longitudinal Survey data, the authors estimate proportional hazard models in order to learn whether it is more difficult for employers to identify female nonquitters than male nonquitters. They find that women may be a higher risk than men in the overall sample because they are...

Tenure responses in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the National Longitudinal Surveys are often inconsistent with calendar time. These inconsistencies pose special problems in the PSID because job changes cannot be identified directly, so researchers must infer them from...

Students often accumulate substantial work experience before leaving school. Because conventional earnings functions do not control for in-school work experience, their estimates of the return to schooling include the benefit of work experience gained along the way. Using data from the National...