Churn, defined as replacing departing workers with new ones as workers move to more productive uses, is an important feature of labor dynamics. The majority of hiring and separation reflects churn rather than hiring for expansion or separation for contraction. Using the JOLTS data, we show that...

Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distorting production choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiring below efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affect productivity. These theoretical...

This paper investigates how job creation and destruction behavior varies by employer size in the U.S. manufacturing sector during the period 1972 to 1988. The paper also evaluates the empirical basis for conventional claims about the job-creating prowess of small businesses. The chief findings...

I estimate the relative magnitudes of worker switching costs and how much the employer switching of experienced engineers responds to outside wage offers. Institutional features imply that voluntary turnover dominates switching in the market for Swedish engineers from 1970--1990. I use data on...

This paper asks whether startups react more to changing investment opportunities than more mature firms do. We use the fact that a region's pre-existing industrial structure creates exogenous variation in the severity of its exposure to nation-wide manufacturing shocks to develop an instrument...

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine retirement and related labor market outcomes for the Early Boomer cohort, those in their mid-fifties at the onset of the Great Recession. Outcomes are then compared with older cohorts at the same age. The Great Recession...

Four years after the beginning of the Great Recession, the labor market remains historically weak. Many observers have concluded that "structural" impediments to recovery bear some of the blame. This paper reviews such structural explanations. I find that there is little evidence supporting...

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these...

Mentoring has become an extremely popular policy for improving the retention and performance of new teachers, but we know little about its effects on teacher and student outcomes. I study the impact of mentoring in New York City, which adopted a nationally recognized mentoring program in 2004. I...

Our paper contributes to the studies on the relationship between workers' human capital and their decision to become self-employed as well as their probability to survive as entrepreneurs. Analysis from a panel data set of research analysts in investment banks over 1988-1996 reveals that star...