We develop a model in which firms hire heterogeneous workers but must offer all workers insurance benefits under similar terms. In equilibrium, some firms offer free health insurance, some require an employee premium payment and some do not offer insurance. Making the employee contribution...

We develop a model in which firms hire heterogeneous workers but must offer all workers insurance benefits under similar terms. In equilibrium, some firms offer free health insurance, some require an employee premium payment and some do not offer insurance. Making the employee contribution...

When economists analyze a well-conducted RCT or natural experiment and find a statistically significant effect, they conclude the null of no effect is unlikely to be true. But how frequently is this conclusion warranted? The answer depends on the proportion of tested nulls that are true and the...

Under the standard competitive model, a tax change affecting workers with highly inelastic labor supply, will lower earnings by the entire nominal employer share of the tax increase. If wages play a motivational role but the market still clears, the range of possible outcomes is broader but...

If education increases human capital, subsidizing education can generate economic growth and combat poverty. Estimates of its return suggest that education is a good social investment. In sorting models, the return reflects in part the information about productivity revealed by the worker's...

Lazear has argued that hours constraints, in general, and mandatory retirement, in particular, form part of an efficient labor market contract designed to increase output by inhibiting worker shirking. Since the contract is efficient, legislative interference is welfare reducing. However, in any...

We consider large, permanent shocks to individual occupations whose arrival date is uncertain. We are motivated by the advent of self-driving trucks, which will dramatically reduce demand for truck drivers. Using a bare-bones overlapping generations model, we examine an occupation facing...

This paper examines nonsequential search when jobs vary with respect to nonpecuniary characteristics. In the presence of frictions in the labor market, the equilibrium job distribution need not show evidence of compensating wage differentials. The model also generates several pervasive features...

We show that in labor market models with adverse selection, otherwise observationally equivalent workers will experience less wage growth following a period in which they change jobs than following a period in which they do not. We find little or no evidence to support this prediction. In most...

We develop a model of self-sustaining discrimination in wages, coupled with higher unemployment and shorter employment duration among blacks. While white workers are hired and retained indefinitely without monitoring, black workers are monitored and fired if a negative signal is received. The...