This paper estimates returns to scale for manufacturing industries around the turn of the twentieth century in the United States by exploiting an industry-city panel data for the years 1880-1930. We estimate decreasing returns to scale on average over the period, contrary to most of the existing...

The U.S. limits work visas for low-skill jobs outside of agriculture, with a binding quota that firms access via a randomized lottery. We evaluate the marginal impact of the quota on firms entering the 2021 H-2B visa lottery using a novel survey and pre-analysis plan. Firms exogenously...

Two million Mexicans were granted lawful permanent residency in the U.S. under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). We find that occupation and program use variables in a prominent proxy for legal status poorly detect this event. A decade after legalization, the share of...

We estimate the effects of permanent legal status on the health of children born to immigrants in the United States using variation from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). Our empirical approach compares trends in birth outcomes for foreign-born Mexican mothers across...

Is the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) a measure of achievement or ability? The answer to this question is critical for drawing inferences from studies in which it is employed. In this paper, we test for a relationship between schooling and AFQT performance in the NLSY 79 by comparing...