This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on industry employment, using a structural model based on data from the Census Bureau’s Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey. This model was developed in an earlier paper (Morgenstern, Pizer, and Shih (2002) - MPS). We...

We propose uncertainty shocks as a new shock that drives business cycles. First, we demonstrate that microeconomic uncertainty is robustly countercyclical, rising sharply during recessions, particularly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Second, we quantify the impact of time-varying...

This paper makes use of a newly constructed Census Bureau dataset that follows the universe of sole proprietors, employers and non-employers, over 10 years and links their transitions to their activity as employees earning wage and salary income. By combining administrative data on sole...

Survey misreporting is known to be pervasive and bias common statistical analyses. In this paper, I first use administrative data on SNAP receipt and amounts linked to American Community Survey data from New York State to show that survey data can misrepresent the program in important ways. For...

There remains considerable debate in the theoretical and empirical literature about the differences in the cyclical dynamics of firms by firm size. This paper contributes to the debate in two ways. First, the key distinction between firm size and firm age is introduced. The evidence presented in...

A ubiquitous and largely unquestioned assumption in studies of housing markets is that there is perfect information about local amenities. This paper measures the housing market and health impacts of 1,600 openings and closings of industrial plants that emit toxic pollutants. We find that...

This paper documents the relative importance of labor cost differences, distance to suppliers, and communication technology in a rm's domestic and foreign sourcing decisions. Using an original dataset of U.S. manufacturers' decisions to contract for manufacturing services, I show that domestic...

Over a million people reported their race as American Indian in the 2000 U.S. Census but did not report that race in the 1990 Census. We investigate three questions related to this extraordinary population change: (1) Which subgroups of American Indians had the greatest numerical growth? (2)...

Health insurance markets in the United States are characterized by imperfect information, complex products, and substantial search frictions. Insurance agents and brokers play a significant role in helping employers navigate these problems. However, little is known about the relation between the...

A growing literature in economics and other disciplines has tied exposure to early health shocks, particularly in utero influenza, to reductions in a variety of socioeconomic and health outcomes over the life course. However, no current evidence exists that examines this health shock on...