We develop a multi-sector gravity model with heterogeneous workers to quantify the aggregate and group-level welfare effects of trade. We estimate the model using the structural relationship between China-shock driven changes in manufacturing employment and average earnings across US groups...

We are the first to examine the effect of Superfund cleanups on infant health rather than focusing on proximity to a site. We study singleton births to mothers residing within 5km of a Superfund site between 1989-2003 in five large states. Our "difference in differences" approach compares birth...

We use a simple theoretical framework and a randomized manipulation of access to information on peers' wages to provide new evidence on the effects of relative pay on individual job satisfaction and job search intentions. A randomly chosen subset of employees of the University of California (UC)...

Many empirical microeconomic studies estimate econometric models that assume a single finite-valued discrete endogenous regressor (for example: different levels of schooling), exogenous regressors that are additively separable and enter the equation linearly; and coefficients (including per-unit...

Do acquirors profit from acquisitions, or do CEOs overbid and destroy shareholder value? We propose a novel approach to measuring the long-run returns to mergers. In a new data set of close bidding contests we use losers' post-merger performance to construct the counterfactual performance of...

Many countries have policies aimed at creating jobs in depressed areas with high unemployment rates. In standard spatial equilibrium models with perfectly competitive labor and land markets, local job creation efforts are distortionary. We develop a stylized model of frictional local labor...

We quantify agglomeration spillovers by estimating the impact of the opening of a large new manufacturing plant on the total factor productivity (TFP) of incumbent plants in the same county. Articles in the corporate real estate journal Site Selection reveal the county where the quot;Million...

Using box-office data for all movies released between 1982 and 2000, I test the implications of a simple model of social learning in which the consumption decisions of individuals depend on information they receive from their peers. The model predicts different box office sales dynamics...

In most Western countries illness-related absenteeism is higher among female workers than among male workers. Using the personnel dataset of a large Italian bank, we show that the probability of an absence due to illness increases for females, relative to males, approximately 28 days after a...

In most countries, average wages tend to be higher in larger cities. In this paper, we focus on the role played by the matching of workers to firms in explaining geographical wage differences. Using rich administrative German data for 1985-2014, we show that wages in large cities are higher not...