We study how labor market conditions affect unionization decisions. Tight labor markets might spur unionization, e.g., by reducing the threat of unemployment after management opposition or employer retaliation in response to a unionization attempt. Tightness might also weaken unionization by...

This paper examines evidence regarding the impact of the changed labor market on the higher educational system. Four basic propositions can be drawn from the paper's findings. Firstly, the labor market for the highly educated underwent a downturn in the 1970s, reducing the relative earnings of...

Socioeconomic inequalities in child development crystallize at early stages, with associated disparities in parental investment in children. A key to understanding the data patterns is to document the sources underlying the observed inequalities. We first show that there are dramatic differences...

I study a search equilibrium model of the labor market in which workers have stubborn beliefs about their labor market prospects, i.e. beliefs about their probability of finding a job and the wage they will earn that do not respond to aggregate fluctuations in fundamentals. I show that, when...

This paper tests for and measures monopsony power in the U.S. higher education labor market. It does so by directly estimating the residual labor supply curves facing individual four-year colleges and universities using school-specific labor demand instruments. The results indicate that schools...

For-profit providers are becoming an increasingly important fixture of US higher education markets. Students who attend for-profit institutions take on more educational debt, have worse labor market outcomes, and are more likely to default than students attending similarly-selective public...

After three decades of decline, the amount of time spent by parents on childcare in the U.S. began to rise dramatically in the mid-1990s. Moreover, the rise in childcare time was particularly pronounced among college-educated parents. Why would highly educated parents increase the amount of time...

Forty years ago, 96% of six-year-old children were enrolled in first grade or above. As of 2005, the figure was just 84%. The school attendance rate of six-year-olds has not decreased; rather, they are increasingly likely to be enrolled in kindergarten rather than first grade. This paper documents...

This paper uses a unique data set to assess whether donors' contributions to a nonprofit institution are affected by the perception that the institution might confer a reciprocal benefit. We study alumni contributions to an anonymous research university. Inter alia, the data include information...

The standard neo-classical model of wage setting predicts short-term effects of temporary labor market shocks on careers and low costs of recessions for both more and less advantaged workers. In contrast, a vast range of alternative career models based on frictions in the labor market suggests...