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The expansion of available data for research has transformed empirical labor economics over the past generation. This paper briefly highlights some of the changes and describes a few examples of papers that illustrate the advances. It also documents the changing ways data have been used in the Journal of Labor Economics over the past 30 years, including a trend toward a higher fraction of papers using any data and, among those papers using any data, a higher fraction using nonpublic data, a higher fraction using international data, and more frequent use of multiple data sources. Finally, this paper describes work that came out of the recent Princeton Data Improvement Initiative--a program that considers and furthers improved data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge producers conducting research on a particular set of questions may respond to supply and demand shocks by shifting resources to a different set of questions. Cognitive mobility measures the transition from one location to another in idea space. We examine the cognitive mobility flows unleashed by the influx of Soviet mathematicians into the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The data reveal that American mathematicians moved away from fields that received large numbers of Soviet émigrés. Diminishing returns in specific research areas, rather than beneficial human capital spillovers, dominated the cognitive mobility decisions of knowledge producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the effect of minimum wage increases on work that is not covered by minimum wage laws. I find that minimum wage increases in the early 2000s resulted in small reductions in engagement in traditional self-employment. Following the development of the online gig economy in the 2010s, a 10% increase in the minimum wage increased the number of nonemployer establishments classified as transportation and warehousing services by approximately 2.7%. The counties most likely to exhibit a positive relationship between the minimum wage and participation in uncovered work are those with low labor market concentration and active Uber marketplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an index to Volume 131 of the Journal of Political Economy, providing a list of articles and notes published in the journal. It covers a wide range of topics in political economy, including wage growth, labor market conflict, business dynamism, public debt, competition, and voting rights. The index is a valuable resource for library patrons conducting research in these areas, as it offers a comprehensive overview of the research articles published in this volume. The document appears to be a list of names and affiliations, possibly of authors or contributors to the research papers, organized alphabetically. However, it does not provide any information about the content or topics of the papers. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on articles published in the "Journal of Political Economy" on labor markets. Topics discussed include the demise of a stable Phillips curve relationship, the first theory of intertemporal substitution in labor supply and the sources of fluctuations in employment over the business cycle.

This paper analyzes whether postsecondary training programs have kept up with shifts in the occupational structure of the labor market over the past decades. I compare long-term trends in the distribution of employment, degrees, and certificates across occupation groupings using data from the US census and from the nation's largest community college system. I then estimate that an occupation's share of community college completions grows by approximately half a percentage point for every percentage point increase in its share of employment. I show that this relationship is primarily driven by increases in student demand rather than by colleges expanding capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New parenthood causes large decreases in labor market incomes for mothers but not fathers, a stylized fact known as the "child penalty." We combine a simple household model with estimates of child penalties in heterosexual nonadopting, adopting, and same-sex couples to better understand what causes the child penalty in heterosexual nonadopting couples. Our results largely rule out giving birth and the father's advantage in the labor market as mechanisms, leaving preferences, gender norms, and discrimination as the main explanations. In addition, our paper provides novel evidence on the impact of children on labor market outcomes of adopting and same-sex couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence on how racial differences in the classification of learning and intellectual disabilities bias inferences on labor market outcomes of vocational rehabilitation program clients. Estimates using Rehabilitation Services Administration data from Virginia imply that Whites who have learning disabilities have worse labor market outcomes than non-Whites who have learning disabilities. We argue this unusual finding reflects racial differences in how disabilities are classified. Using an endogenous disability classification model, we find substantial biases in the estimated labor market coefficients. At minimum, the estimated White-Black employment gap is biased down by 3.2% and the earnings gap by 10%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of immigration on gender gaps. Using an equilibrium structural model for the US economy, I simulate the importance of two mechanisms: the differential increase in labor market competition from immigration on male and female workers and the availability of cheaper childcare services. Aggregate effects on gender and participation gaps are negligible. Females are more negatively affected by labor market competition, but the availability of cheaper childcare compensates for these effects. This generates heterogeneity in the effects along skill distribution: gender gaps are increased at the bottom and reduced at the top. Human capital adjustments are also heterogeneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews, reanalyzes, and extends to the long run the estimated effects of integration polices on the employment probability and earnings of refugees in Denmark. We first describe the dynamics of labor market outcomes of refugees in Denmark. We then find that increased language training and initial placement in strong labor markets improved refugees' long-run labor market outcomes, while cutting initial welfare payments and placing refugees near other refugees did not improve them. Policies focused on matching refugees with occupations experiencing shortages have positive short-run effects, but we cannot yet assess their long-run effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper exploits county-level variation in exposure to news about labor markets impacted by fracking to show that access to information about employment opportunities affects migration. Exposure to newspaper articles about fracking increased migration to areas mentioned in the news by 2.4% on average, concentrated among young, unmarried, less educated men. Commuting also increased, sentiment of the news matters, and TV news has an impact. Google searches for "fracking" and names of states specifically mentioned spike after news broadcasts about fracking. Counties experiencing weak labor markets are the most responsive, suggesting that these areas see large benefits to information provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether higher unskilled agricultural wages attributed to a labor market intervention incentivize farm owners to adopt labor-saving agricultural technology. Using a regression discontinuity design centered on the rollout of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee in 2006 and detailed agricultural census data, I find 10–25 percentage point shifts away from labor-intensive technologies toward labor-saving ones due to the program. These shifts are driven by India's smallest farmers and the use of basic technologies that directly replace unskilled labor. Unintended impacts such as these have the potential to shape rural landscapes over time in unexpected ways. Future policies aimed at the poorest segments of the rural population can complement labor market interventions with a renewed focus on high-quality infrastructure and preparation of unskilled workers for higher-value jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study a multidimensional women's empowerment program from India to estimate its effects on intimate partner violence faced by women. We exploit plausibly exogenous geographical variation in the implementation of the program and cohort-variation generated by eligibility rules to estimate our effects. Using a reduced form difference-in-differences design, we find evidence of lesser-reported emotional and physical violence for women potentially exposed to the program. Overall, women reported lesser intimate partner violence and controlling behavior on account of the empowerment intervention. We conjecture that improved anthropometric outcomes, higher literacy, and better labor market opportunities serve as potential mechanisms causing this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When comparing high- to low-immigrant locations, a large literature documents small effects of immigration on labor market outcomes over 10-year horizons. The literature also documents short-run negative effects of immigrant-driven labor supply shocks, at least for some groups of native workers. Taken together, these results suggest that there are mechanisms in place that help local economies recover from the short-run effects of immigrant shocks. This paper introduces a small-open-city spatial equilibrium model that allows, with simple reduced-form estimates of the effects of immigrant shocks on the outcomes of interest, the local adjustment to be decomposed through various channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the economic effects of limiting tax expenditures, how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects taxes on income and on full-time employment, and the labor market consequences of the ACA.

This paper estimates the effect of human capital on countries' youth unemployment ratio by using country average scores from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the unemployment ratio of the same birth cohort. The identification strategy is based on variations in skills within country × year and across PISA cohorts. We estimate that a 1 standard deviation increase in reading literacy decreases the unemployment ratio by 1.2 percentage points, which is accounted for by a significant increase in employment. We find some evidence that educational and labor market institutions play a role in the association between skills and unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I provide a new method for correcting and assessing bias from measurement error in land area and apply it to estimating two important sets of parameters: the relationship between farm size and productivity and farm production function coefficients. Traditionally, researchers have measured area using farmer self-reporting, which is prone to (nonclassical) measurement error. In response, recent papers use area estimates from global positioning system (GPS) devices. However, GPS estimates may also have errors. I show that instrumenting GPS estimates with self-reported area resolves bias from measurement error in both measures, provided that (log) GPS estimates have classical measurement error. Applying this approach to data from Tanzania, I find that using either GPS estimates or self-reported area leads to bias, and the bias is actually worse when using GPS estimates. Measurement error in GPS-estimated area biases the farm size-productivity relationship by 22%–26% (4%–10% for self-reported), though the inverse farm size-productivity "puzzle" remains even when I correct this bias using my instrumental variables approach. In production function estimates, measurement error in GPS-estimated area biases the Cobb-Douglas coefficient on land down by 39% (27% for self-reported) and labor up by 44% (47% for self-reported). I show that the results also have implications for measuring misallocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the degree of monopsony power in the US higher-education labor market by using school-specific labor demand instruments to directly estimate the residual labor supply curves facing individual universities. The results indicate that schools have significant monopsony power over tenure-track faculty but face perfectly elastic residual labor supply curves for non-tenure-track faculty. There is some evidence for three sources of monopsony power often discussed in the literature—employer concentration, search frictions/job-switching costs, and differentiated jobs. The results also suggest that monopsony over tenure-track faculty may have contributed to the trend toward hiring more non-tenure-track faculty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No region of the United States fared worse over the postwar period than the Rust Belt. This paper analyzes how much of its decline can be accounted for by the persistent labor market conflict that characterized Rust Belt union-management relations. We develop a multisector, multiregion, dynamic general equilibrium model in which labor market conflict leads to strikes, wage premia, lower investment, and lower productivity growth. These lead to shrinking Rust Belt industries and to workers moving out of the Rust Belt. Labor conflict accounts for half of the decline in the region's share of manufacturing employment. Foreign competition plays a smaller role, and its effects are concentrated after most of the region's decline had already occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two 1992 papers, Card and Krueger used labor market outcomes to study the productivity of school spending. Following their lead, we examine the effects of post-1990 school finance reforms on students' educational attainment and labor market outcomes. Using a state-by-cohort panel design, we find that reforms increased high school completion and college-going, concentrated among Black students and women, and raised annual earnings. The reforms also increased the return to education, particularly for Black students and men, driven by the return to high school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New regimes of labor and mobility control are taking shape across the global north in a militarized form that mimics South Africa's history of apartheid. Apartheid was a South African system of influx and labor control that attempted to manage the "threat" posed by black people by incarcerating them in zones of containment while also enabling the control and policed exploitation of black people as workers, on which the country was dependent. The paper argues, first, that the rise of a system of global apartheid has created a racialized world order and a hierarchical labor market dependent on differential access to mobility; second, that the expansion of systems of resource plunder primarily by agents of the global north into the global south renders localities in the global south unsustainable for ordinary life; and, third, that in response, the global north is massively investing in militarized border regimes to manage the northern movement of people from the global south. The paper argues that "global apartheid" might replace terms such as "transnationalism," "multiculturalism," and "cosmopolitanism" in order to name the structures of control that securitize the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the north and imprison the south, and that create a new militarized form of apartheid on a global level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that job mobility is a valuable channel that employed workers use to mitigate bad labor market shocks. I estimate a model of wage dynamics jointly with a dynamic model of employment and job mobility. The key feature of the model is the specification of wage shocks at the worker-firm-match level, for workers can respond to these shocks by changing jobs. I find that, relative to the variance of individual-level shocks, the variance of match-level shocks is large and the consequent value of job mobility is substantial, particularly for workers whose match-specific wages are low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the paper "The U.S. Structural Transformation and Regional Convergence: A Reinterpretation." The first contribution of this paper is to present a model featuring a third ingredient that seems essential to matching all four of the key facts of the structural transformation. The new explanation includes a downward shift in the farm-labor supply curve, so that the decline in farm employment is consistent with an increase in farm wages. Throughout the literature on agricultural adjustment and migration, the concern was evident that there were many restraints on the transfer of labor out of farming. These restraints included the level of unemployment-during the 1930s there were years in which there was net migration to farms-the low levels of education of farm people, the lack of a true national employment service, and the relatively high costs of migration, both material and psychic. It was perhaps not surprising that when the annual rate of change in farm employment exceeded 4 percent, requiring rates of migration of 5 percent or more because of the growth of the farm labor force, as was true during the 1960s, a substantial margin between non-farm and farm earnings was required.

I study the consequences of letter grades serving as coarse measures of academic achievement using university administrative data that record both the letter grade and the precise mark (0–100) received for each course that a given student takes. I exploit a regression discontinuity design with marks as the running variable. I find that receiving a better grade in a single class results in USD 32 greater monthly earnings after graduation, a 1.4% increase. I also find that marginal students who receive a worse grade take significantly easier courses and earn lower grades in future semesters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how large shocks on the Egyptian labor market following the 2011 uprising impacted youths' time allocation. We estimate the effects of reported changes in the father's working conditions on youths' work participation and school enrollment in bivariate probit models, using the 2012 round of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey. Our contribution lies in exploring the association between mother's empowerment and shock transmission. We find that reported positive changes reduce daughters' participation in intensive domestic work but only when the mother has a high level of bargaining power. This suggests that a woman's say in household decisions can affect the reallocation of resources following a change in the family income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of spillover effects of minimum wages and threat effects of unionization in changes in wage inequality in the United States between 1979 and 2017. A distribution regression framework is introduced to estimate both types of spillover effects. Threat effects double the contribution of deunionization to the increase in male wage inequality. Spillover effects magnify the explanatory power of declining minimum wages to two-thirds of the increase in inequality at the bottom end of the female wage distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noncognitive characteristics and personality traits can be strong predictors of economic and social outcomes of individuals. In this paper, using data on cognitive ability and psychologist-assessed "sociability" and "adaptability" linked to administrative data for the male 1932–33 birth cohort in Norway, we analyze how these three characteristics affect men's probability to migrate across labor markets. We find that higher adaptability, the capacity to adjust to new environments and situations, and higher cognitive ability are significant predictors of the probability to migrate. Adaptability is a particularly strong migration predictor for individuals with low cognitive ability or low socioeconomic background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have examined how individual components of the job search process influence the probability of reemployment. A reduced-form model of job search is estimated that takes account of the fact that users of a particular method of job search are not a random subset of all searchers. The empirical model produces estimates of the parameters governing the choice of search method, the contact rate per method, the process by which job offers are generated, and the acceptance or rejection of offers. Particular attention is paid to the role of observed characteristics in explaining differences in search behavior between the employed and unemployed. The results of this paper show that individuals who search for a new job while working are, on average, more successful at finding a job than otherwise similar unemployed searchers. As was indicated above, there are two possible explanations for this finding. One is that employed search is more effective than unemployed search, perhaps because of better search technology (e.g., access to internal career ladders and better contacts) or the stigma associated with unemployment. If this explanation is correct, then a typical unemployed job seeker would have a better chance of finding a desirable job by accepting the first offer received and continuing to search while employed. However, such behavior may not be optimal for the individual if there are important differences in search costs between the employed and unemployed. The other explanation is based on unobserved heterogeneity: employed searchers may simply search harder or may be better searchers than the unemployed in ways that are not captured by observed variables. In other words, employment status may be correlated with (or serves as a signal of) search ability or effort. In this case, there is no presumption that employed search is more effective than unemployed search for any particular individual; unobserved differences across individuals are respon... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the research works of Charles Plott, D. Kahneman, J. Knetsch and R. Thaler concerning the factors that determine market outcomes. The Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler paper explores whether the introduction of fairness can help explain behavior by firms that could not be easily explained by standard economic analyses. The summary of experimental economic evidence presented by Charles Plott suggests that market models based on rational choice principles do rather well for a certain class of problems but that there are a number of areas where the jury is still out. The importance of Kahneman et al. paper is that it lays out a set of testable propositions that are based on the deviations between a new transaction from a reference transaction. On the basis of these propositions the authors offer testable hypotheses such as firms will not raise prices if there is an increase in demand unaccompanied by an increase in cost, will not introduce an auction as a method of allocating scarce consumer goods, and will not cut wages of existing employees if there is excess supply of labor. According to Kahneman et al., firms will not follow these and other practices because customers or employees consider them to be unfair, and hence firms may be hurt sufficiently in the future to offset any short-run gains they may achieve.