Increased use of robots has roused concern about how robots and other new technologies change the world of work. Using numbers of robots shipped to primarily manufacturing industries as a supply shock to an industry labor market, we estimate that an additional robot reduces employment and wages...

This study uses Current Population Survey cohort data and the National Longitudinal Survey for men aged 14-24 in 1966 to examine the earnings growth of college graduates relative to high school graduates during the 1970s depressed market for graduates. The principal finding is that the...

This study documents the rapid spread of higher education around the world and the consequent reduced share of the US in the world's university students and graduates. It shows that the proportion of young persons who go to college has risen in many advanced countries to exceed that in the US...

China's new Labor Contract Law took effect on January 2008 and required firms to give migrant workers written contracts, strengthened labor protections for workers and contained penalties for firms that did not follow the labor code. This paper uses survey data of migrant workers in the Pearl...

Little is known about the payoffs to apprenticeship training in the German speaking countries for the participants. OLS estimates suggest that the returns are similar to those of other types of schooling. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the types of apprenticeships offered, and...

The economies of the less developed countries are about to face perhaps the greatest challenge in their histories: generating a sufficient number of jobs at reasonable wages to absorb their rapidly growing populations into productive employment. In terms of absolute magnitude, this challenge has...

This paper attempts to distinguish between two alternative views of the labor market problems faced by young workers in a number of industrialized countries in the 1970s and early 1980s. The first view is that the low relative earnings and high unemployment rates experienced by these workers...

Much work on crime has focused on the effect of criminal sanctions on crime, ignoring (except as a control variable) the effect of labor market conditions on crime. This study reviews studies of time series, cross area, and individual evidence pertaining to the effect of unemployment and other...

This paper seeks to discover the criteria by which workers are judged to be "troubled," to examine the severity of the economic problems facing "troubled" groups, and to determine whether the condition of these people is relatively permanent or the result of transitory setbacks. The paper...

One of the most important questions regarding black economic gains post-1964 is whether they are permanent or transitory. This study examines the relative economic progress of black cohorts and of individual black workers in longitudinal samples to evaluate the permanence of changes. It finds...