Academics, the media, and policymakers have all raised concerns about the implications of human workers being replaced by machines or software. Few have discussed the implications of the reverse: firms' ability to replace capital with workers. We show that this flexibility can help new firms...

We estimate the causal effect of permanent and premature exits from the labor force on mortality. To overcome the problem of negative health selection into early retirement, we exploit a policy change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to exit the...

Using a randomized experiment with an automobile manufacturing firm in China, we measure the effects of letting workers evaluate their managers on worker and firm outcomes. In the treatment teams, workers evaluate their supervisors monthly. We find that providing feedback leads to significant...

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment and respiratory health for remote workers (i.e. those who can work from home) and non-remote workers in the United States. Using a large, nationally-representative, high-frequency panel dataset from March through July of 2020,...

We document that declining hours worked are the primary driver of widening inequality in the bottom half of the male labor earnings distribution in the United States over the past 52 years. This decline in hours is heavily concentrated in recessions: hours and earnings at the bottom fall sharply...

What are the characteristics of workers in jobs likely to be initially affected by broad social distancing and later by narrower policy tailored to jobs with low risk of disease transmission? We use O NET to construct a measure of the likelihood that jobs can be conducted from home (a variant of...

We develop a tractable general equilibrium model for understanding within- and between-occupation changes in skill use over time. We apply the model to skill-use measures from the third, fourth, and revised fourth editions of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and data from the 1960, 1970,...

This paper studies empirically the links between international trade and labor income risk faced by workers in the United States. We use longitudinal data on workers to estimate time-varying individual income risk at the industry level. We then combine our estimates of persistent labor income...

Workers have responded differently to declining union density in the US and UK. US workers have unfilled demand for unions whereas many UK workers free-ride at unionized workplaces. To explain this difference, we create a scalar measure of worker needs for representation and relate desire for...

Does democracy encourage free trade? It depends. Broadening the franchise involves transferring power from non-elected elites to the wider population, most of whom will be workers. The Hecksher-Ohlin-Stolper-Samuelson logic says that democratization should lead to more liberal trade policies in...