In the past, migration was an important way Americans reacted to economic shocks. When one area was hit by a decline in labor demand, residents of the area could respond by moving to an area where demand for their labor was higher. But internal migration has been falling and may be a reason why incomes for most Americans have stagnated. In an era of low labor mobility, what determines who responds to the shock via migration? This research seeks to extend recent work that has studied the impact of the well-documented shock from increased Chinese imports on the mobility of affected workers across firms, industries, and local labor markets. The authors have access to rich census data that allows them to trace individuals over time and space, and to observe many variables that may affect the likelihood of an individual’s mobility response to the trade shock—for example, demographics, historical migration flows between locations, and presence of higher education opportunities. This project will look at the net mobility of each region, and also dig into the gross inflows and outflows to better understand the underlying mechanisms.

This research asks how gender inequality influences the number of chances that individuals receive to succeed in the workplace and whether this affects skill development and/ or contributes to wage and promotion gaps. Specifically, the research seeks to add to our understanding of how gender differences may affect whether an employee’s successes and failures are attributed to luck or ability, and if that has implications for career trajectory. The project uses a unique data set of primary care physicians’ referrals to surgeons.

Pervasive earnings losses are a well-documented feature of job displacement, yet the understanding of the sources of these earnings losses is limited. The decline could be due to a lower wage at a new job, a lower likelihood of finding a new job, working fewer hours, or the loss of firm-specific rents. This project proposes to take advantage of employer-employee matched administrative data from Washington state’s unemployment insurance program to better understand the sources of earnings losses and to analyze the role of employer characteristics in job losses. Obtaining a better diagnosis of the root causes behind the long-term earnings decline can lead to better-designed policy responses.

This project will quantify the level of and inequality in employer-provided paid parental leave by fielding a survey of small and medium-sized employers in three relatively low-wage industries (including retail) in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The work is likely to make a significant contribution to our understanding of a currently hazy empirical picture of the social insurance system in the United States. Poor federal data collection on leave policy means that studies such as this one are a valuable addition. The authors will assess the availability, quality, and employee take-up of leave offered. One main advantage of funding this survey is that it will provide pre-treatment data collection for New York before the recently passed paid family leave law goes into effect in January, 2018. The investigators’ previous Rhode Island study is widely cited and useful to policymakers working on these issues, and we expect this to be similarly impactful.

The authors will construct estimates of how much parenthood contributes to the gender wage gap. Although it is well-known that the gendered returns to parenthood contribute to the gender wage gap, there are few estimates of what proportion of the gap we can attribute to different returns to parenthood for men and women. If successful, this research could provide a more complete analysis of the phenomena contributing to the gender wage gap, including returns to education. The project will provide an empirical foundation for policies that support working parents as a key mechanism for promoting gender equity. The findings will bolster the economic argument for many policies relevant to equitable growth, including child care and parental leave.

The authors will examine whether unemployment insurance benefit extensions improve job match quality. A longstanding question regarding unemployment insurance is whether recipients make use of funds to finance longer job searches, therefore finding better jobs. Most studies to date have examined wages and have found no effect, but if this project is able to find effects on match quality then it will make an important contribution. It could also be important to understanding the role that unemployment insurance plays in improving worker outcomes and overall macroeconomic performance. Unemployment insurance is typically understood by policymakers as a social insurance program. The idea that it might improve productivity by facilitating better match quality is poorly understood, and key to better understanding policy levers for macro performance.