Funded Research

Our funding interests are organized around the following four drivers of economic growth: macroeconomics and inequality, market structure, the labor market, and human capital and wellbeing. We consider proposals that investigate the consequences of economic inequality, as well as group dimensions of inequality; the causes of inequality to the extent that understanding these causal pathways will help us identify and understand key channels through which inequality may affect growth and stability; and the ways in which public policies affect the relationship between inequality and growth.

Explore the Grants We've Awarded

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Aggregate Costs of Workplace Sexual Harassment

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

Workplace sexual harassment is a pervasive problem that affects women more than men and often leads to a decline in productivity and altered labor market outcomes for survivors. This project is the first to attempt to quantify the implications of workplace sexual harassment for economic growth and gender wage inequality. What are the aggregate implications of workplace sexual harassment? And how can policy effectively reduce its consequences? The authors will use employer-employee linked administrative data from Denmark, along with a survey tracking instances of workplace sexual harassment, to calibrate a quantitative model. They will measure three channels: productivity, the accumulation of human capital, and the allocation of talent. They will also measure how each of these channels affect output and wage inequality, and how harassment affects workers directly reporting harassment, as well as the spillover to other workers at the same firm. These measurements will enable the authors to see when people change jobs after harassment or don’t change jobs, and they plan to look beyond policies intended to address harassment, including policies that boost worker power and mobility.

Concentration and Racial Equity in Meat Processing

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project seeks to provide some of the first causal evidence on how concentration in the meat-processing industry affects producers, workers, and consumers across racial and income groups in the United States. Rising concentration has been especially salient in the meat-processing industry, and recent research connects market power in the product market with monopsony power in the labor market. This project will build and expand on that literature by measuring the effect of consolidation by meat processors on monopoly power in the input and product markets, and monopsony power in the labor market, and then assessing what the implications of these market conditions are on racial inequality, specifically farmer profits, conditions for workers, and prices for consumers.

Do Labor Strikes Achieve Worker Demands? Understanding Strike Outcomes and Effectiveness

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project is a data collection effort that seeks to fill an important gap: the undercounting of strikes. The author will collect data on all strikes in the United States regardless of size, duration, or whether workers are unionized or not. There is a perceived rise in collective action, but current data sources are not collecting information on the full universe of strikes. This effort will define a strike as “a temporary stoppage of work by a group of workers in order to express a grievance or to enforce a demand. Such a grievance or demand may or may not be workplace related.” A rigorous search and verification protocol by the author will ensure that a strike occurred. Data will be collected on other variables related to the strike, and all data will be publicly accessible on an interactive map. This project will extend recent research that has found strikes decreased in both amount and scale, and that strike effectiveness declined. It seeks to provide information on the outcomes of strikes for workers and their organizations, and under what conditions strikes are most effective. A notable extension is an investigation of whether strikes can respond to identity-based inequality, such as racial discrimination or sexual harassment, by studying noneconomic demands.

Racial disparities in heat exposure

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This project ties together neighborhood segregation, migration patterns, and local spending and policies to explore how “structural racism is built into physical infrastructure in cities.” The author will use granular satellite images to measure temperature in Black and White urban neighborhoods. The project will look at the degree to which neighborhoods are segregated and the level of surface imperviousness in each of those neighborhoods. The author also will map Great Migration patterns, White flight, and local government spending patterns. The research uses data from the University of Virginia’s Environmental Inequality Lab and builds on research on Northern cities’ responses to the Great Migration. Preliminary results show that historical Black migrant inflows increased the surface temperature of neighborhoods where Black households live, relative to the neighborhoods where White households live, as well as the Black-White gap in neighborhood imperviousness.

Caregiving Arrangements for Older Adults: The Roles of Family Characteristics and Public Benefits

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

Individuals and their families use a variety of caregiving arrangements, but there is little research on who is likely to use which kind of arrangement. Furthermore, existing scholarship mainly focuses on the characteristics of the care recipient, without considering how family characteristics influence choices for caregiving arrangements. This mixed-methods study will explore how family characteristics and social infrastructure programs shape caregiving arrangements for older adults in the United States. The first two papers quantify and study the relationship between family characteristics and the size and scope of several social infrastructure and caregiving arrangements. The third paper will use semi-structured interviews with families who have eldercare responsibilities, focusing on Black females in the Chicago area, to shed light on their decision-making processes. Through these interviews, the author will explore how access to public programs affects their decisions, how they were selected as caregivers, what their preferences and future expectations are, and how employment plays into their decisions. The sample will include recipients (either care recipients or caretakers) of Social Security Insurance, Social Security Disability Insurance, Old Age and Survivors Insurance, Paid Family Leave, and Home & Community Based Services waivers from Medicaid.

Collateral Consequences: How Driver’s License Suspensions Create Barriers to Work

Grant Year: 2022

Grant Amount: $15,000

Grant Type: doctoral

This research explores how nonwork policies affect work opportunities. The inability for individuals with low incomes to access transportation is a significant barrier to employment. Existing research has focused on the lack of car ownership or transportation deserts. But for millions of U.S. workers, the suspension of their driver’s licenses is a significant concern, with a large portion of those suspensions due to Failure to Comply and Failure to Appear violations. As of 2021, more than 1 million people in North Carolina (the state the author is researching) have active license suspensions as a result of these policies. For many, these policies often create a vicious cycle of debt and collateral consequences that linger for years. The author will conduct semi-structured interviews with people in North Carolina whose driver’s license has been suspended due to Failure to Comply and Failure to Appear violations to better understand the mechanisms through which driver’s license suspension structures affect individuals’ employment opportunities.

Funded research

Human Capital and Wellbeing

How does economic inequality affect the development of human capital, and to what extent do aggregate trends in human capital explain inequality dynamics?

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Funded research

Macroeconomics and Inequality

What are the implications of inequality on the long-term stability of our economy and its growth potential?

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Funded research

Market Structure

Are markets becoming less competitive and, if so, why, and what are the larger implications?

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Funded research

The Labor Market

How does the labor market affect equitable growth? How does inequality in turn affect the labor market?

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