I study the relationship between firm growth and the characteristics of newly hired workers. Using Census microdata I obtain a novel empirical result: when a given firm grows faster it hires workers with higher past wages. These results suggest that productive, fast-growing firms tend to hire...

This paper tests whether the correlation between wages and the spatial concentration of employment can be explained by unobserved worker productivity differences. Residential location is used as a proxy for a worker’s unobserved productivity, and average workplace commute time is used to test...

This paper investigates how takeovers create value. Using plant-level data, I show that acquirers increase targets’ productivity through more efficient use of capital and labor. Acquirers significantly reduce capital expenditures, wages, and employment in target plants, though output is...