This research project tackles questions about how gentrification-driven property redevelopment impacts black-owned businesses compared to white-owned businesses. Gentrification studies have largely ignored businesses in favor of examining residences, but commercial enterprises play a key role in shaping neighborhood conditions. Focusing on Detroit, this sociological study combines an analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners with qualitative interviews and archival research to analyze how black-owned businesses' growth, inclusion, and access to resources compares to that of white-owned businesses during periods of local redevelopment.

This project investigates what role mentoring can play in economic mobility for disadvantaged youth. To answer the question, Bell plans to link tax records to a dataset of youth applicants to a Big Brothers Big Sisters youth mentoring program. Early economic thinking on the intergenerational perpetuation of disadvantage focused primarily on financial channels. Recent work, however, including some funded by Equitable Growth, has highlighted the importance of childhood environments as a key determinant of success. An initial study found significant positive social outcomes among youth who received mentorship at the close of the 18-month Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Outcomes of interest include college attendance, income and employment, teenage birth, incarceration, and reliance on government assistance. This project will build on Bell’s earlier work with Chetty et al. that shows children who grow up near inventors are not only more likely to become inventors, but also are more likely to invent in similar technologies. A better understanding of the role of social exposure will help identify mechanisms of mobility.

This study proposes a novel mechanism through which automation in the labor market might have an impact on wages through the threat, rather than the actuality, of automation, which threatens to significantly change the structure of the labor market. Despite widespread popular accounts of a future where few work, the literature is more circumspect. How automation will affect both the demand for labor and wages is an important area of study. The project will build a model of bargaining over wages and the automation threat, and empirically test the impact of this threat using employer-employee matched data in the United Kingdom. Using heterogeneity of firms, Arnoud will identify occupations that are vulnerable to automation and look at firms that have yet to automate, implying the existence of the threat of automation. Arnoud will further investigate the extent to which this threat channel is mediated by the bargaining power of workers due to other institutional features.

This study leverages administrative data from Colombia to estimate the impact of wealth taxes on reported wealth and on the use of tax-evasion strategies. In addition, Londoño-Vélez examines the impact of the Panama Papers, which sparked a change in public knowledge about tax evasion, on reported wealth. These results will help establish an evidence base on which to make the case for reforms to the taxation of capital income, and inform academics and policymakers on the appropriate role of wealth taxation in that mix.

Unemployment insurance was expanded several times during the Great Recession and its aftermath, with the maximum duration reaching up to 99 weeks in some states. Researchers have been debating the macroeconomic impact of those expansions on unemployment and employment, but little research exists on the macroeconomic effects of previous expansions. This project will fill this gap by looking at unemployment benefit expansions going back to 1976. Similar to previous research, the researchers will use “trigger notices” from the U.S. Department of Labor to see when programs were turned on. Their methodology, however, differs from previous research because rather than depending upon measurement error in the unemployment rate, their method allows them to look at the impacts when a program has multiple triggers. The researchers will then compare the effects of expansions during the Great Recession to previous expansions.

This project seeks to better understand the set of implicit and explicit rules that govern pay-setting within companies and explore how these policies interact with market forces to shape the earnings distribution. Using matched employer-employee data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics, the project will investigate the source of differences in wages being paid to similar workers at different establishments, after accounting for individual differences. The research will quantify how sensitive wages are to local labor market conditions, including policies, and will assess the extent of centralization of firms’ wage policies. Importantly, the research will assess whether firms’ concentration in the relevant labor market affects wage premia. The project generally aims to further our understanding of the role of labor market frictions and organizational factors in determining earnings inequality.