Labor Market Discrimination and the Racial Unemployment Gap: Can Monetary Policy Make a Difference?

By Isabel Cairó and Avi Lipton

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

Black workers experience higher, more volatile unemployment than white workers, a racial dis- parity unexplained by observables. A New Keynesian model with a frictional labor market, endogenous separations, and employer discrimination explains these out...

Guaranteed Employment in Rural India: Intrahousehold Labor and Resource Allocation Consequences

By Jorge Luis García

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2026

I investigate the intrahousehold labor and resource allocation consequences of an employment guarantee targeting rural households in India. The guarantee insures household earnings, replacing women as added workers and shutting down a motive for saving. D...

The Long Shadow of School Closures: Impacts on Students’ Educational and Labor Market Outcomes

By Jeonghyeok Kim

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Each year, about a thousand public schools in the US close, displacing hundreds of thousands of students. I examine the impact of public school closures on displaced students using linked schooling and labor market data from Texas. Using within-school a...

The Declining Local Bias of Entrepreneurship in the United States

By Innessa Colaiacovo, Margaret Dalton, Sari Pekkala Kerr, and William R. Kerr

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Multiple studies document a local bias of entrepreneurship (LBE) in recent decades, where self-employed entrepreneurs are systematically more likely than wage workers to operate in their region of birth. This paper documents an important new fact: The LBE...

Declining Occupations and Career Outcomes in Norway

By Erling Barth, Maria Forthun Hoen, Sari Pekkala Kerr, and William Kerr

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Occupational change is a central feature of modern labor markets. This paper examines the career consequences in Norway of being initially employed in an occupation that subsequently declines during 2007–2024. Workers initially employed in occupations t...

Refining the Definition of the Unbanked

By Elena Falcettoni and Vegard M. Nygaard

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

We propose a new way to classify individuals without a bank account, accounting for their actual interest in being banked. Analogous to how unemployment statistics are defined, we differentiate individuals that do not have a bank account and would like to...

Who Remains Unbanked in the United States and Why?

By Paul Calem, Christopher Henderson, and Jenna Wang

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper examines factors associated with unbanked status among US households from 2015 to 2019 using FDIC survey data with fixed effects and multilevel modeling. With rising incomes reducing unbanked percentages overall, unbanked status became more con...

Beyond the Campus: Indirect Effects of University Openings in Uganda

By Tess Lallemant and Brian Dillon

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Over the last two decades, the number of higher education institutions in low- and middle-income countries has grown rapidly. In this paper we study how the opening of a university affects employment and education outcomes in small cities across Uganda. W...

Employment Preferences of Favela Residents

By Mayara Felix, Beatriz Marcoje, Ieda Matavelli, and Maria Clara Rodrigues

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

We document employment preferences of workers at the margin of informality using open-ended questions and discrete choice experiments in Brazil's largest favela complex. Stated preferences emphasize pay and tangible job attributes rather than meaning or p...

How Do State Child Tax Credits Affect Employment and Poverty?

By Matthew Unrath, Nathan Tollett, Jacob Goldin, Tatiana Homonoff, Neel Lal, and Katherine Michelmore

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper projects the employment, poverty, and fiscal effects of introducing unconditional child allowances in states lacking such programs. We use survey data to identify eligible parents, calculate the policy's change to their work incentives, and pre...

Race, Ethnicity, and Nonpayment of Unemployment Insurance: The Role of the Employer

By Marta Lachowska and Stephen A. Woodbury

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

We examine worker-employer disputes over unemployment insurance (UI) claims and their relationship to benefit nonpayment. Administrative UI records allow us to use workers who file multiple claims to control for unobserved worker heterogeneity. We observe...

Unlocking Occupational Opportunity: The Labor Market Effects of DACA

By Aimee Chin, Kalena E. Cortes, and Camila Morales

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

US hiring laws shape the types of jobs undocumented migrants can access, often limiting them to roles with low detection risk. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted temporary work authorization to undocumented childhood arrival...

Beyond Time and Money: Parental Occupation and Early Childhood Development

By Hyun Soo Suh

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

This paper examines how parental occupation shapes early cognitive and noncognitive child development. Using the Millennium Cohort Study and the British Household Panel Survey, I document that parents allocate time in home production and market work diffe...

Social Security and Retirement of Older Blacks and Hispanics

By Emma Aguila and Zeewan Lee

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2026

Little research has examined how income inequalities by race/ethnic origin shape retirement decisions. Using Health and Retirement Study data from 2000–2020 linked to restricted Social Security Administration records, we calculate Social Security wealth...

The effect of prison sentences on financial crime

[Research Highlight]

May 21, 2026

Evidence from Finland suggests that incarceration for fraud defendants reduces recidivism and discourages misconduct among defendants’ colleagues.

Work from Home and Disability Employment

By Nicholas Bloom, Gordon B. Dahl, and Dan-Olof Rooth

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

There has been a dramatic rise in disability employment since the pandemic, while work from home (WFH) has risen fourfold. This paper asks whether the two are causally related. Controlling for compositional changes and labor market tightness, a 1 percenta...

The Impact of Unions on the Wage Distribution: Evidence from Higher Education

By Michael Baker, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas, and Derek Messacar

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2026

We estimate the impact of unionization on the wage distribution of Canadian university faculty using longitudinal administrative data on salaries and exploiting the staggered rollout of unionization across institutions. We find that unionization compresse...

Mergers, Foreign Competition, and Jobs: Evidence from the US Appliance Industry

By Felix Montag

American Economic Review, June 2026

Policy choices often create trade-offs between workers and consumers. I examine how foreign competition alters the consumer welfare and domestic employment effects of mergers. I construct a model incorporating consumer demand, endogenous product portfolio...

Human Capital and Racial Inequality in the US Labor Market

By Owen Thompson

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2026

If racial gaps in measures of human capital like educational attainment and standardized test scores were eliminated, what would happen to racial disparities in wages, employment, and other labor market outcomes? A credible answer to this question is foun...