Migration is a key mechanism through which local labor markets adjust to economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze the migration response of American workers to two of the most important shocks that hit US manufacturing since the 1990s: Chinese import competition and the introduction of...

Rising self-employment rates in U.S. tax data that are absent in survey data have led to speculation that tax records capture a rise in new "gig" work that surveys miss. Drawing on the universe of IRS tax returns, we show that trends in firm-reported payments to "gig" and other contract workers...

Small and young businesses are essential for job creation, innovation, and economic growth. Even most of the superstar firms start their business life small and then grow over time. Small firms have less internal resources, which makes them more fragile and sensitive to macroeconomic conditions....

Nearly a quarter of Mexico's workforce is self employed. But in the U.S. rates of self employment among Mexican Americans are only 6 percent, about half the rate among non-Latino whites. Using data from the Mexican and U.S. population census, we show that neither industrial composition nor...

There has been an increasing reliance on sales taxation in both the states and counties in the United States. In this paper, we are examining the relationship between state and local sales taxation and business activity in the U.S. by utilizing county-level data for the period 2002-2011. We have...

We hand-collect and standardize information describing all 3,055 antitrust lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) between 1971 and 2018. Using restricted establishment-level microdata from the U.S. Census, we compare the economic outcomes of a non-tradable industry in states...

Employment and participation rates for US prime age women rose steadily during the second half of the 20th century. In the last 30 years, however, those rates stagnated, even as employment and participation rates for women in other industrialized countries continued to rise. I discuss the role...

Using Current Population Survey data, we assess whether and to what extent the burden of wage theft -- wage payments below the statutory minimum wage -- falls disproportionately on various demographic groups following minimum wage increases. For most racial and ethnic groups at most ages we find...

Using longitudinal data on the location of mobile devices, we provide new evidence on the evolution of onsite work (OSW) over the course of the pandemic and its aftermath. We start with a large sample of individuals who, based on their mobile device activity, had a job at which they worked...

How do firms mitigate the impact of rising temperatures on employment? Using establishment-level data, we show that firms operating in multiple counties in the United States respond to heat shocks by reducing employment in the affected locations and increasing it in unaffected locations, whereas...