Do firms employing undocumented workers have a competitive advantage? Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the incidence of undocumented worker employment across firms and how it affects firm survival. Firms are found to engage in herding behavior, being...

Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper finds that, on average, across all firms, employing undocumented workers reduces a firm’s hazard of exit by 19 percent. The advantage to firms from employing undocumented workers increases as more firms in the industry do so,...

Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, the authors find that average wages among documented workers are lower in industries that employ undocumented workers and that a greater share of undocumented workers in those industries further lowers wages. In addition, undocumented workers...

Using matched employer-employee data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates how differences in wage responsiveness contribute to the determination of observed wage differentials between documented and undocumented workers. Facing fewer employment opportunities, undocumented workers...

Do firms employing undocumented workers have a competitive advantage? Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the incidence of undocumented worker employment across firms and how it affects firm survival. Firms are found to engage in herding behavior, being...

This paper uses matched individual-level data from the Current Population Survey to determine that around the 2008 recession, there was a significant upward shift in trend of the share of labor force leavers giving Schooling and Other as the reason for absence from the labor market. This trend...

The analysis in this paper provides estimates of family welfare losses generated by wage and nonlabor income declines experienced across the Great Recession and by labor market constraints existing postrecession. Welfare losses are greater as families (both married and single) move up the income...

The female/male average wage ratio has steadily risen from 1983 to 2012. In earlier work, we found that the falling wage gap from 1983 to 1993 was materially detrimental to the average dual-earner family. The female/male wage ratio continued to rise over the following two decades, accompanied by...

This paper calculates the cost of an unemployment shock in terms of family welfare for married and single families separately and by education level. We find that, overall, families face an average annualized expected dollar equivalent welfare loss of $1,156 when the unemployment rate rises by 1...

This paper calculates the change in optimal labor supply and total family welfare resulting from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). We estimate labor supply elasticities for married families in the Current Population Survey from 2015 to 2017, using a joint family utility model. These...