An important analytical obstacle is the sample selection problem. Since non-employment levels are high and workers are unlikely to represent a random sample from the population of former recipients, estimates that fail to account for sample selection could be seriously biased

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11.4 million undocumented persons reside in the United States. Congress and President Obama are considering a number of proposals to regularize the status of the undocumented population and provide a "path to citizenship." Any future change in...

This paper uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Public Use Samples of the U.S. Census to document what happened to immigrant earnings in the 1980s, and to determine if pre-1980 immigrant flows reached earnings parity with natives. The relative entry wage of successive immigrant cohorts declined by 9...

This paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the migration decision. The conditions that determine the nature of the self -selection are derived and depend on...

This paper reexamines the empirical basisfor two "facts" which seem to be found in most cross-section studies of immigrant earnings: (1) the earnings of immigrants grow rapidly as they assimilate into the U.S.; and (2) this rapid growth leads to many immigrants overtaking the earnings of the...

Previous work has documented that speaking one's native language with an accent distinct from the mainstream is associated with lower wages. In this study, we seek to estimate the causal effect of speaking with a distinctive regional accent, disentangling the effect of the accent from that of...

Among the most important changes brought about by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is the imposition of time limits. In this paper, we analyze a simple model in which a potential welfare recipient chooses how to allocate her time-limited...

The competitive shock to the U.S. manufacturing sector spurred by rising China import competition could either catalyze or stifle innovation. Using three distinct sources of variation to identify rising trade exposure, we provide a causal analysis of the effect of surging import competition on...

This paper demonstrates that labor turnover is a significant factor in understanding wage growth since it affects both wage growth across jobs and wage growth within the job. Our analysis shows that young men who quit experience significant wage gains compared to stayers and compared to their...