It is a well known fact that the extent of unionization is lower in states with Right-to-Work (RTW) laws. A framework is developed for determining whether RTW laws actually cause a decrease in the extent of unionization or whether they simply mirror preexisting tastes of workers against unions....

Despite a record of sustained growth in employment in the United States, there is long-standing concern that the new jobs are of poor quality, implying that the quality of the stock of jobs in the economy is deteriorating. In fact, it is difficult to define a new job, much less identify such...

We use an audit study approach to investigate how unemployment duration, age, and holding a low-level "interim" job affect the likelihood that experienced college-educated females applying for an administrative support job receive a callback from a potential employer. First, the results show no...

In response to the Great Recession, the availability of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits was extended to an unprecedented 99 weeks in many U.S. states in the 2009-2012 period. We use matched monthly data from the CPS to exploit variation in the timing and size of the UI benefit extensions...

We develop a model of the plaintiff's decision to file a law suit that has implications for how differences between the federal government and private litigants and litigation translate into differences in trial rates and plaintiff win rates at trial. Our case selection model generates a set of...

We study the reaction of stock prices to announcements of reductions in force (RIFs) using a sample of nearly 3878 such announcements in 1176 large firms during the 1970-97 period collected from the Wall Street Journal Index. We note that, although there has been a dramatic secular increase in...

We examine whether the decline in the availability of employer-provided health insurance is a phenomenon common to all jobs or is concentrated only on certain jobs. In particular, we investigate the extent to which employers have continued to provide health insurance on what we term reducing the...

A central feature of the litigation process that affects case outcomes is the selection of cases for litigation. In this study, we present a theoretical framework for understanding the operation of this suit selection process and its relationship to the underlying distribution of potential...