We assess a prominent argument for local economic policies that favor locally-owned businesses - namely, that locally-owned firms are more likely to internalize the costs to the community of decisions to reduce employment and hence help to insulate cities from adverse economic shocks. We test...

We contrast the spatial mismatch hypothesis with what we term the racial mismatch hypothesis -- that the problem is not a lack of jobs, per se, where blacks live, but a lack of jobs into which blacks are hired, whether because of discrimination or labor market networks in which race matters. We...

We present evidence on changes in workplace segregation by education, race, ethnicity, and sex, from 1990 to 2000. The evidence indicates that racial and ethnic segregation at the workplace level remained quite pervasive in 2000. At the same time, there was fairly substantial segregation by...

We specify and implement a test for the presence and importance of labor market network based on residential proximity in determining the establishments at which people work. Using matched employer-employee data at the establishment level, we measure the importance of these network effects for...

"The absence of a competitive market and the presence and strength of public-sector labor unions make it likely that public-sector pay reflects an element of rent extraction by government workers. In this paper, we test a specific hypothesis that connects such rent extraction to the level of...