Job Market Paper

1. The 1980s Recession and US Labor Market Inequality 

   with Kamelia Stavreva↗

   Draft coming soon

   Abstract

   Almost 60% of the drastic rise in 90-10 wage inequality since 1979 happened in the five-year period between 1980 and 1985, shortly after the twin recessions of the 1980s. This paper studies how this recession contributed to the abrupt transformation of the wage distribution over this period. Using new longitudinal linked employer-employee records for 5.3 million workers, we exploit variation in exposure to the recession across local labor markets to estimate the effects on workers’ labor market trajectories. We find that the recession persistently reduced earnings and employment, with the largest effects for workers at the bottom of the earnings distribution. Furthermore, it persistently reduced local labor market demand in these places, with a fifth of the recession’s unemployment shock still present a decade later. It also substantially weakened unions; extrapolating our estimates suggests that it can account for 42 percent of the national decline in union density over the decade. To understand the aggregate consequences of the recession, we construct counterfactual wage distributions under a less severe recession. Our estimates imply that the rise in wage dispersion between 1979 and 1988 would have been up to 20 percent smaller under the less severe counterfactual and that 35-40 percent of the recession’s effect on wage inequality is accounted for by its effects on unions. Our results suggest that the post-1980s rise in wage inequality was not purely the product of secular forces and that the recession meaningfully contributed to this rise by reshaping labor market institutions in the US.

Working Papers

1. The Cold War and the US Labor Market 

   with Ilyana Kuziemko↗ and Suresh Naidu↗

   Reject and Resubmit, American Economic Review

   Abstract PDF

   We argue that the Cold War contributed to the inclusive growth of the post-war decades. On the labor-demand side, we isolate exogenous shifts in military procurement across states and firms. We show that military procurement increases manufacturing employment and reduces inequality. Overall, the 1950s-to-1990s decline in defense production explains roughly one-quarter of the decline in manufacturing employment and nearly one-tenth of the rise of top-ten income share. On the labor-supply side, the Cold-War-era draft removed millions of young men from the labor force, significantly reducing young male civilian unemployment. Military procurement also increased voter support for hawkish foreign policy.

2. From Callbacks to Careers: Do Audit Studies Predict Workforce Diversity 

   with Kamelia Stavreva↗, Adina Sterling↗, and Emmanuel Yimfor↗

   Working Paper

   Abstract PDF

   Correspondence experiments are the gold standard for measuring hiring discrimination. However, two concerns persist. Callbacks measured in correspondence studies only track the initial interest of employers and not hiring itself, and the distinctive names that signal race in these experiments may signal socioeconomic status as well as race. We address both concerns by matching the firms in Kline, Rose, and Walters (2022)’s experiment to LinkedIn employment records of 9 million employees. We find that firms with larger callback gaps employ fewer Black workers. The employment gap is three times what callback gaps would predict, consistent with discrimination continuing beyond callbacks or with Black applicants sorting away from discriminatory firms. The relationship is strongest among the most discriminatory firms.. About 3% of the Black workers we identify carry the experiment’s distinctive names, yet callback gaps predict employment differences for the broader Black workforce. We release a firm-by-year panel of employment shares by race and gender for the audited firms and all Fortune 1000 firms from 2010 to 2024, together with our race-classification software, so that future correspondence experiments can be evaluated against hiring, not only callbacks.

3. Adding Salt to the Womb: The Benefits of Salt Iodization from Infancy to Adulthood 

   with Kate Musen↗

   Working Paper

   Abstract PDF

   We estimate the effects of the 1924 introduction of iodized salt in the U.S. by exploiting pre-1924 geographic variation in iodine deficiency. Iodized salt reduced infant mortality by 1.1 deaths per 1,000 births (1.6%) for counties at the 75th percentile of iodine deficiency relative to the 25th percentile. These effects are concentrated in urban counties—where iodized salt was disproportionately available—explaining 1/3 of the decline in the urban-rural infant mortality gap in the 1920s. We show that the long-term effects on labor market outcomes are consistently large among urban-born individuals, reconciling conflicting results in the literature.

Works in Progress

1. Skin Tone and Racial Inequality: Evidence from the 20th Century

   with Kamelia Stavreva↗