Scholarly Publications

Oxford Academic, December 2021.

Abstract

The relative importance of racial and class inequality in incarceration in the United States has recently become the subject of much debate. In this paper, we seek to give this debate a stronger empirical foundation. First, we update previous research on racial and class inequality in people’s likelihood of being imprisoned. Then, we examine racial and class inequality in people’s risk of having a family member imprisoned or living in a high-imprisonment neighborhood. We find that racial inequality in prison admissions has fallen in the twenty-first century, while class inequality has surged. However, in recent years, Black people with high levels of education and income were more likely than white people with low levels of education and income to experience the imprisonment of a family member or to live in a neighborhood with a high imprisonment rate. These seemingly contradictory conclusions can be reconciled by the fact that enduring structures of racial domination have made class boundaries among Black people more permeable than they are among white people. Imprisonment in the United States is increasingly reserved for the poor. But because Black Americans are disproportionately connected to the poor through their families and neighborhoods, racial inequality exceeds class inequality in people’s indirect experiences with imprisonment.

The University of Chicago Press Journals, November 2021

Abstract

A large theoretical literature in sociology connects increases in incarceration to contractions in the demand for labor. But previous research on how the labor market affects incarceration is often functionalist and seldom causal. This article estimates the effect of a shock to the southern agricultural labor market during a time when planters exerted a clear influence over whether workers or potential workers were incarcerated. From 1915 to 1920, a beetle called the boll weevil spread across the state of Georgia, causing cotton yields and the demand for agricultural workers to fall. Using archival records of incarceration in Georgia, the authors find that the boll weevil infestation increased the Black prison admission rate for property crimes by more than a third. The article describes the institutional conditions under which falling labor demand should increase incarceration, clarifies the relationship between incarceration and the economic institutions that replaced slavery, and contributes to a growing literature on incarceration and exploitation in the labor market.

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, October 2021

Abstract

We link personnel records of the federal civil service to census data for 1907-1921 to study the segregation of the civil service by race under President Woodrow Wilson. Using a difference-indifferences design to compare the black-white wage gap around Wilson’s presidential transition, we find that the introduction of employment segregation increased the black wage penalty by 7 percentage points. This gap increases over time and is driven by a reallocation of already-serving black civil servants to lower paid positions. Our results thus document significant costs borne by minorities during a unique episode of state-sanctioned discrimination.

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, August 2021.

Abstract

The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 (HR 603) would increase the federal minimum wage in five annual steps, from $7.25 to $15 in 2025, with annual increases thereafter indexed to the median wage. The new floor would increase pay for nearly 32 million workers, about 21 percent of the U.S. workforce (Cooper, Mokhiber, & Zipperer, 2021). Nearly one-third of Black workers and one-fourth of Hispanic workers would receive increases. The annual pay increase for year-round full-time workers would average about $3,300 and no full-time worker would earn a poverty wage.

These impressive numbers suggest that a $15 federal minimum wage would constitute a bold policy innovation. It would exceed the previous peak minimum wage— which was about $11.50 (in 2019 dollars), reached in the late 1960s, and equal about 80 percent of the median wage in the lowest-wage states. On the other hand, the current federal minimum lies 37 percent below that previous peak, and about 18 percent below its value in 2009, the year of the last federal increase.

ILR Review, June 2021

Abstract

The US enterprise-based collective bargaining regime creates substantial limitations for organizing workers in an economy in which supply chains are increasingly disaggregated in ways that reduce worker power. Federal labor law generally preempts state and local policies that directly address private-sector bargaining. State and local governments, however, are not preempted from setting general labor standards. The authors examine four cases of recent experiments using sectoral standards at the local level. The cases show that sectoral standards have the potential to expand new forms of social bargaining through state and local public policy in areas of the country where worker organizations are already strong. Sectoral standards can do so in ways that promote worker organization and build institutional power, especially when combined with robust worker organizing. In presenting these cases, the authors show both the potential power, and limitations, of federalism in US workplace regulation.

Industrial Relations, January 2021.

Abstract

Empirical work on the minimum wage typically estimates effects averaged across high- and low-wage areas. Low-wage labor markets could potentially be less able to absorb minimum wage increases, in turn leading to more negative employment effects. In this article, we examine minimum wage effects in low-wage counties, where relative minimum wage ratios reach as high as 0.82, well beyond the state-based ratios in extant studies. Using data from the American Community Survey, the Quarterly Workforce Indicators, and the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages, we implement event study and difference-in-differences methods, estimating average causal effects for all events in our sample and separately for areas with lower and higher impacts. We find positive wage effects, especially in high-impact counties, but do not detect adverse effects on employment, weekly hours, or annual weeks worked. We do not find negative employment effects among women, Blacks, and/or Hispanics. In high-impact counties, we find substantial declines in household and child poverty. These results inform policy debates about providing exemptions to a $15 federal minimum wage in low-wage areas.

Journal of Health Economics, October 2020.

Abstract

Do minimum wages and the earned income tax credit (EITC) mitigate rising “deaths of despair?” We leverage state variation in these policies over time to estimate event study and difference-in-differences models of deaths due to drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related causes. Our causal models find no significant effects on drug or alcohol-related mortality, but do find significant reductions in non-drug suicides. A 10 percent minimum wage increase reduces non-drug suicides among low-educated adults by 2.7 percent, and the comparable EITC figure is 3.0 percent. Placebo tests and event-study models support our causal research design. Increasing both policies by 10 percent would likely prevent a combined total of more than 700 suicides each year.

Industrial Relations, September 2020.

Abstract

Empirical work on the minimum wage typically estimate effects averaged across high and low wage areas. Low wage labor markets could potentially be less able to absorb minimum wage increases, in turn leading to more negative employment effects. In this paper we examine minimum wage effects in low wage counties, where relative minimum wage ratios reach as high as .82, well beyond the state-based ratios in extant studies. Using data from the ACS, the QWI and the QCEW, we implement event study and difference-in-difference methods, estimating average causal effects for all events in our sample and separately for areas with lower and higher impacts. We find positive wage effects, especially in high impact counties, but do not detect adverse effects on employment, weekly hours or annual weeks worked. We do not find negative employment effects among women, blacks and/or Hispanics. In high impact counties, we find substantial declines in household and child poverty. These results inform policy debates about providing exemptions to a $15 federal minimum wage in low-wage areas.

Oxford Academic, December 2021.

Abstract

Empirical work on the minimum wage typically estimate effects averaged across high and low wage areas. Low wage labor markets could potentially be less able to absorb minimum wage increases, in turn leading to more negative employment effects. In this paper we examine minimum wage effects in low wage counties, where relative minimum wage ratios reach as high as .82, well beyond the state-based ratios in extant studies. Using data from the ACS, the QWI and the QCEW, we implement event study and difference-in-difference methods, estimating average causal effects for all events in our sample and separately for areas with lower and higher impacts. We find positive wage effects, especially in high impact counties, but do not detect adverse effects on employment, weekly hours or annual weeks worked. We do not find negative employment effects among women, blacks and/or Hispanics. In high impact counties, we find substantial declines in household and child poverty. These results inform policy debates about providing exemptions to a $15 federal minimum wage in low-wage areas.

Journal of Health Economics, August 2020.

Abstract

Do minimum wages and the EITC mitigate rising “deaths of despair?” We leverage state variation in these policies over time to estimate event study and difference-in-differences models of deaths due to drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related causes. Our causal models find no significant effects on drug or alcohol-related mortality, but do find significant reductions in nondrug suicides. A 10 percent minimum wage increase reduces non-drug suicides among loweducated adults by 2.7 percent; the comparable EITC figure is 3.0 percent. Placebo tests and event-study models support our causal research design. Increasing both policies by 10 percent
would likely prevent a combined total of more than 700 suicides each year.

Frontiers in Psychology, May 2020.

Abstract

Efforts to improve police–community relationships have increased initiatives that aim to build trust and mutual respect between officers and the communities they serve. Existing literature examines the impact of internal departmental dynamics and individual-level characteristics on officers’ endorsement of community-oriented policing strategies. Research has indicated that when officers feel fairly treated within their agencies and when they are less psychologically and emotionally distressed, they report stronger support for policing tactics that increase fairness in police processes and decision making. This mixed-method study is the first to examine the reciprocal relationship by asking: How do procedurally just and community-oriented policing strategies impact officer well-being and occupational stress? Sworn officers in a medium-sized California department completed a survey assessing their views on their agency, various police tactics, the communities they serve, and their physical and mental health. Results showed that officers’ increased support for community-oriented and procedurally just police strategies are significantly associated with decreased job stress, depression, anxiety, and negative affect, controlling for race, gender, perceived job dangerousness, cynicism, and how many years they had served as a police officer. In-depth interviews with officers in the department revealed three explanatory mechanisms for these statistical relationships. First, the tenets of procedural justice provided officers with tactics that reduce the threat and stress of intergroup interactions. Second, community-oriented policing activities increased opportunities for officers to have positive interactions with the communities they work in, mitigating the distrust, cynicism, and detachment fostered by enforcement activities. Last, procedural justice and community-oriented police strategies empowered officers to counter negative stereotypes about police and reaffirm their self-image. Taken together, these survey and interview findings highlight the mutuality of democratic policing and officer wellness.

Annual Review of Economics, 11:929-58. August 2019.

Abstract

We discuss the potential role of universal basic incomes (UBIs) in advanced countries. A feature of advanced economies that distinguishes them from developing countries is the existence of well-developed, if often incomplete, safety nets. We develop a framework for describing transfer programs that is flexible enough to encompass most existing programs as well as UBIs, and we use this framework to compare various UBIs to the existing constellation of programs in the United States. A UBI would direct much larger shares of transfers to childless, nonelderly, nondisabled households than existing programs, and much more to middle-income rather than poor households. A UBI large enough to increase transfers to low-income families would be enormously expensive. We review the labor supply literature for evidence on the likely impacts of a UBI. We argue that the ongoing UBI pilot studies will do little to resolve the major outstanding questions.

Economic Policy Institute, April 2019.

Abstract

Teachers, students, parents, and community supporters protested cutbacks in public education spending and a squeeze on teacher pay that have persisted well into the economic recovery from the Great Recession. Spending reductions affect resources available to schools, which influence numerous decisions such as whether the school has adequate support personnel, reasonable class sizes, and competitive compensation for both teachers and nonteacher staff. Spending cuts over the recovery were not the result of weak state economies. Rather, many state legislatures and governors cut spending in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. This report underscores the crisis in teacher pay by updating our data series on the teacher wage and compensation penalty—the percent by which public school teachers are paid less in wages and compensation than other college-educated workers—and by providing new regression-based estimates of the teacher weekly wage penalty in each state.

Economic Geography, 95(2):204-206. March 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2018.1536857

Abstract

A review of Money and Finance after the Crisis: Critical Thinking for Uncertain Times. Edited by Brett Christophers, Andrew Leyshon, and Geoff Mann.

Journal of Labor Economics, 37:S85-S123. January 2019

Abstract

Intergenerational income transmission varies across commuting zones (CZs). I investigate whether children’s educational outcomes help to explain this variation. Differences among CZs in the relationship between parental income and children’s human capital explain only one-ninth of the variation in income transmission. A similar share is explained by differences in the return to human capital. One-third reflects earnings differences not mediated by human capital, and 40% reflects differences in marriage patterns. Intergenerational mobility appears to reflect job networks and the structure of local labor and marriage markets more than it does the education system.

Journal of Public Economics, 167(2018):190-204. November 2018.

Abstract

We study peer effects in absenteeism among workplace colleagues. Gatekeeping is an essential task in many insurance systems. In this study we exploit exogenous shifts of general practitioners (GPs) occurring when physicians quit or retire. We find that these shifts induce changes in absenteeism for affected workers. By utilizing high-quality Norwegian matched employer-employee data with detailed individual information on certified sick leave during the period 2003–2012, we can study how the transfer of workers between GPs affects co-workers’ absenteeism. We identify strong causal positive peer effects in absenteeism: a one day change in focal worker sickness absence transfers to a 0.41?day shift in peer absence.

Urban Research & Practice, 0(0), 1–2. April 2018. https://doi.org/10.1080/17535069.2018.1462962

Abstract

Detroit is the urban question America has been asking itself for decades. Over the past century, the city has symbolized American prosperity and the power of unions; the stark gap between Black and white urban experience; the fiscal and economic failure of the postindustrial city; and now the dystopia of large-scale urban abandonment. The Detroit that Kimberly Kinder describes in DIY Detroit is a city in which vast spaces are ungoverned by functional property markets and unserved by city workers or infrastructure.

In M. Davidson & K. Ward (Eds.), Cities under Austerity: Restructuring the US Metropolis. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 2018.

Abstract

Across the world’s most industrialized economies, the financial crisis of 2007 caused a contraction of state budgets and stimulated attempts to reform debt-burdened governments. In the United States, a system of fiscal federalism meant this turn towards austerity took a uniquely fragmented and geographically diverse form. Drawing on case studies of recent urban restructuring, Cities under Austerity challenges dominant understandings of austerity as a distinctly national condition and develops a conceptualization of the new US urban condition that reveals its emerging political and social fault lines. The contributors empirically detail the restructuring that is taking place across the United States, its underlying logics, its local impacts and the ongoing processes of challenge and resistance that influences how it is shaping the lives of citizens. The new American political economy, it is argued, needs to be understood as composed of a mosaic of urban experiences that both build upon a differentiated foundation and creates new divergences. As state reforms continue to interact with this diverse urban political economy of the United States, this collection provides a state-of-the-art survey on how postcrisis convergences and divergences in urban economies and urban politics have laid the foundations for the new political geography of the United States.

ILR Review, 71(1):35-63. January 2018.

Abstract

The authors analyze 884 Internet-based restaurant menus from inside and outside San Jose, California, which they collected before and after the city implemented a 25% minimum wage increase in 2013. Their findings suggest that nearly all of the cost increase was passed through to consumers, as prices rose 1.45% on average. Minimum wage price elasticities averaged 0.058 for all restaurants and ranged from 0.044 to 0.109, depending on the type of restaurant. The authors’ estimate of payroll cost increases net of turnover savings is consistent with these findings. Equally important, border effects for restaurants are smaller than is often conjectured. Price differences among restaurants that are one-half mile from either side of the policy border are not competed away, indicating that restaurant demand is spatially inelastic. These results imply that city-wide minimum wage policies need not result in substantive negative employment effects nor shifts of economic activity to nearby areas.

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 36 (4):880-908. Fall 2017.

Abstract

Many Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients do not find new jobs before exhausting their benefits, even when benefits are extended during recessions. Using Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) panel data covering the 2001 and 2007 to 2009 recessions and their aftermaths, we identify individuals whose jobless spells outlasted their UI benefits (exhaustees) and examine household income, program participation, and health-related outcomes during the six months following UI exhaustion. For the average exhaustee, the loss of UI benefits is only slightly offset by increased participation in other safety net programs (e.g., food stamps), and family poverty rates rise substantially. Self-reported disability also rises following UI exhaustion. These patterns do not vary dramatically across household demographic groups, broad income level prior to job loss, or the two business cycles. The results highlight the unique, important role of UI in the U.S. social safety net.

In The 51%: Driving Growth through Women’s Economic Participation, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach & Ryan Nunn, eds., The Hamilton Project/Brookings Institution. October 2017.

Abstract

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a refundable tax credit that promotes work. Research has shown that it also reduces poverty and improves health and education outcomes. The maximum credit for families with two or fewer children has remained flat in inflation-adjusted terms since 1996. Over the same period, earnings prospects have stagnated or diminished for many Americans, and prime-age employment rates have fallen. This paper proposes to build on the successes of the EITC with a ten percent acrossthe-board increase in the federal credit. This expansion would provide a meaningful offset to stagnating real wages, encourage more people to enter employment, lift approximately 600,000 individuals out of poverty, and improve health and education outcomes for millions of children.

Urban Studies, 54(9): 2123-2138. July 2017.

Abstract

The Great Recession unleashed a wave of fiscal stress in the USA, with austerity measures such as spending cuts, service reductions and privatisation predictably taking centre stage. Decades of federal withdrawal from urban policy and funding, combined with state retrenchment, have contributed to a landscape of urban fiscal stress exacerbated by the prolonged effects of the post-2007 recession. This article examines the experience of fiscal crisis in four US cities (Detroit, Dallas, Philadelphia, and San Jose), focusing on the narratives used by city and state government leadership to publicly describe local crises. Shared elements of the framing of urban fiscal crisis in this diverse set of cities provide insight into the unfolding of austerity in local politics. Blame for the crisis has centred less on social spending than in previous crises, and more on local governance failures, public pension commitments, and ongoing global economic precarity. Crisis governance has become widespread, even in fiscally resilient cities, driven by a vision of lean government in a ‘new normal’. While retrenchment effectively shrinks the state through spending cuts and privatisation, the governing power of cities is also being diminished by the narrative of fiscal responsibility reflected in the national move toward public pension restructuring and expanded state interventionism.

American Economic Review, 107(6):1656-84. June 2017.

Abstract

Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff (2014a, b) study value-added (VA) measures of teacher effectiveness. CFR (2014a) exploits teacher switching as a quasi-experiment, concluding that student sorting creates negligible bias in VA scores. CFR (2014b) finds VA scores are useful proxies for teachers’ effects on students’ long-run outcomes. I successfully reproduce each in North Carolina data. But I find that the quasi-experiment is invalid, as teacher switching is correlated with changes in student preparedness. Adjusting for this, I find moderate bias in VA scores, perhaps 10-35 percent as large, in variance terms, as teachers’ causal effects. Long-run results are sensitive to controls and cannot support strong conclusions.

ILR Review 70(3):559-592. May 2017.

Abstract

The authors assess the critique by Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2014) of minimum wage studies that found small effects on teen employment. Data from 1979 to 2014 contradict NSW; the authors show that the disemployment suggested by a model assuming parallel trends across U.S. states mostly reflects differential pre-existing trends. A data-driven LASSO procedure that optimally corrects for state trends produces a small employment elasticity (–0.01). Even a highly sparse model rules out substantial disemployment effects, contrary to NSW’s claim that the authors discard too much information. Synthetic controls do place more weight on nearby states—confirming the value of regional controls—and generate an elasticity of ?0.04. A similar elasticity (?0.06) obtains from a design comparing contiguous border counties, which the authors show to be good controls. NSW’s preferred matching estimates mix treatment and control units, obtain poor matches, and find the highest employment declines where the relative minimum wage falls. These findings refute NSW’s key claims.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 3(3):22–49. April 2017.

Abstract

The years since the 2009 end of the Great Recession have been disastrous for many workers, particularly those with low human capital or other disadvantages. One explanation attributes this to deficient aggregate labor demand, to which marginal workers are more sensitive. A second attributes it to structural changes. Cyclical explanations imply that if aggregate labor demand is increased then many of the post-2009 patterns will revert to their pre-recession trends. Structural explanations suggest recent experience is the “new normal.” This paper reviews data since 2007 for evidence. I examine wage trends to measure the relative importance of supply and demand. I find little wage pressure before 2015, pointing to demand as the binding constraint. The most recent data show some signs of tightness, but still substantial slack.