The Local Labor Market Effects of Modern Manufacturing Capital: Evidence from France

By Philippe Aghion, Celine Antonin, Simon Bunel, and Xavier Jaravel

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Using an event study methodology and comprehensive micro data from the French manufacturing sector, we analyze the local labor market effects of investments in modern manufacturing capital, including modern automation technologies. We estimate that commut...

Robots and Female Employment in German Manufacturing

By Liuchun Deng, Steffen Müller, Verena Plümpe, and Jens Stegmaier

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We analyze the impact of robot adoption on female employment. Our analysis is based on novel micro data on robot use by German manufacturing establishments linked with social security records. An event study analysis for robot adoption shows increased chu...

Measuring Business Trends and Outlook through a New Survey

By Catherine Buffington, Lucia Foster, and Colin Shevlin

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The Census Bureau's new Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) provides timely information from businesses on their current trends and expectations over core concepts such as prices, employment, and revenue. The BTOS collects qualitative information in...

Payroll Employment at the Weekly Frequency

By Tomaz Cajner, Leland D. Crane, Ryan A. Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas, and Christopher Kurz

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Nontraditional data can provide critical economic insights in real time. We document the development of weekly employment indexes based on microdata from the payroll processor ADP. These data have provided insights into labor market developments in the fa...

Are Business Applications Early Economic Indicators?

By Jose Asturias, Emin Dinlersoz, John Haltiwanger, and Rebecca Hutchinson

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Are business applications early indicators of economic activity? Our analysis indicates that monthly year-over-year growth in applications for likely employer businesses significantly leads growth in total nonfarm employment and has a positive correlation...

Knowledge about Federal Employment Nondiscrimination Protections on the Basis of Sexual Orientation

By Billur Aksoy, Christopher S. Carpenter, and Dario Sansone

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Using a US nationally representative online sample, we measure the level of knowledge on employment nondiscrimination laws. Although Americans are well informed about sex, race, and disability being protected characteristics, only about 71 percent think t...

Distributional Impacts of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement

By Brian K. Kovak and Peter M. Morrow

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We examine the effects of the 1988 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on employment and earnings inequality among low-, medium-, and high-income Canadian workers initially employed in manufacturing. Although the FTA tariff cuts drove large changes in tr...

Labor Mobility and Unemployment over the Business Cycle

By Andrea Foschi, Christopher L. House, Christian Proebsting, and Linda L. Tesar

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We estimate the responsiveness of net labor migration to regional differences in unemployment rates across the United States since the mid-1970s. Our baseline estimate suggests an elasticity of roughly -0.3. For typical labor force participation ratios, a...

The Self-Employment Effects of Secure Communities in the United States

By Raffi E. García and Alejandro Gutiérrez-Li

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Illegal immigration has increased substantially in recent years. In this paper, we analyze how Secure Communities (SC), a major internal immigration enforcement program, affected self-employment participation and income in the United States between 2008 a...

Presidential Address: Does Monetary Policy Matter? The Narrative Approach after 35 Years

By Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer

American Economic Review, June 2023

The narrative approach to macroeconomic identification uses qualitative sources, such as newspapers or government records, to provide information that can help establish causal relationships. This paper discusses the requirements for rigorous narrative ...

Do Technological Improvements in the Manufacturing Sector Raise or Lower Employment?

By Yongsung Chang and Jay H. Hong

American Economic Review, March 2006

We find that technology's effect on employment varies greatly across manufacturing industries. Some industries exhibit a temporary reduction in employment in response to a permanent increase in TFP, whereas many more industries exhibit an employment incre...

Labor Market Responses to Unemployment Insurance: The Role of Heterogeneity

By Serdar Birinci and Kurt See

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2023

We document considerable scope of heterogeneity within the unemployed, especially when they are divided along eligibility for and receipt of unemployment insurance (UI). We study the implications of this heterogeneity on UI's insurance-incentive trade-off...

Macroeconomic Implications of Uniform Pricing

By Diego Daruich and Julian Kozlowski

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2023

We compile a new database of grocery prices in Argentina. We find uniform pricing both within and across regions—i.e., prices almost do not vary within the stores of a chain. In line with uniform pricing, prices in stores of chains operating in one regi...

The Macroeconomic Impact of Europe's Carbon Taxes

By Gilbert E. Metcalf and James H. Stock

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2023

We estimate the macroeconomic impacts of carbon taxes on GDP and employment growth rates using 30 years of data on carbon taxation in various European countries. We find no evidence for a negative impact on employment or GDP growth but rather find a zero ...

Working for References

By Samuel Häfner and Curtis R. Taylor

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, August 2023

We analyze the incentive and welfare consequences of job references in a large economy marked by moral hazard, limited liability, exogenous job separation, and structural unemployment. In the firm-optimal equilibrium, employers provide references whenever...

The Unequal Consequences of Job Loss across Countries

By Antoine Bertheau, Edoardo Maria Acabbi, Cristina Barceló, Andreas Gulyas, Stefano Lombardi, and Raffaele Saggio

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2023

We document the consequences of losing a job across countries using a harmonized research design applied to seven matched employer-employee datasets. Workers in Denmark and Sweden experience the lowest earnings declines following job displacement, while w...

Who Runs the AEA?

By Kevin D. Hoover and Andrej Svorenčík

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2023

The leadership structure of the American Economic Association is documented using a biographical database covering every officer and losing candidate for AEA offices from 1950 to 2019. The analysis focuses on institutional affiliations by education and em...

Learning the language

[Research Highlight]

September 01, 2023

Blake Heller discusses the impact of adult English language training programs on immigrant earnings and civic engagement.

A Signal to End Child Marriage: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

By Nina Buchmann, Erica Field, Rachel Glennerster, Shahana Nazneen, and Xiao Yu Wang

American Economic Review, October 2023

Child marriage remains common even where female schooling and employment opportunities have grown. We experimentally evaluate a financial incentive to delay marriage alongside a girls' empowerment program in Bangladesh. While girls eligible for two years ...