Tag Archives: firms

Firms and Labor Market Inequality: Evidence and Some Theory

From David Card, Ana Rute Cardoso, Joerg Heining, and Patrick Kline: We review the literature on firm-level drivers of labor market inequality. There is strong evidence from a variety of fields that standard measures of productivity – like output per worker … Continue reading

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The Rise of Domestic Outsourcing and the Evolution of the German Wage Structure

From Deborah Goldschmidt and Johannes Schmieder: The nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the last decades, with firms increasingly relying on contractors, temp agencies and franchises rather than hiring employees directly. We investigate the impact of … Continue reading

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It’s Where You Work: Increases in Earnings Dispersion across Establishments and Individuals in the U.S.

From Erling Barth, Alex Bryson, James C. Davis, Richard Freeman: This paper links data on establishments and individuals to analyze the role of establishments in the increase in inequality that has become a central topic in economic analysis and policy debate. … Continue reading

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Market-based Lobbying: Evidence from Advertising Spending in Italy

From Stefano DellaVigna, Ruben Durante, Brian Knight, Eliana La Ferrara: An extensive literature has studied lobbying by special interest groups. We analyze a novel lobbying channel: lobbying businessmen-politicians through business proxies. When a politician controls a business, firms attempting to curry … Continue reading

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The Effect of Uncertainty on Investment: Evidence from Texas Oil Drilling

From Ryan Kellogg: This paper estimates the response of investment to changes in uncertainty using data on oil drilling in Texas and the expected volatility of the future price of oil. Using a dynamic model of firms’ investment problem, I find … Continue reading

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The Future of Capital Income Taxation

From Alan Auerbach: The case against capital income taxation is stronger now than when Pechman wrote [in 1900], given the difficulty of collecting capital income taxes in a world of financial innovation and capital mobility. […] The rising importance of financial … Continue reading

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Washington just awarded the largest state tax subsidy in U.S. history

From the Washington Post: With the stroke of a pen, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) on Monday signed into law the largest corporate tax break any state has ever given to a single company. And it took just three days … Continue reading

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Bargaining and the Gender Wage Gap: A Direct Assessment

From David Card, Ana Rute Cardoso, and Pat Kline: An influential recent literature argues that women are less likely to initiate bar- gaining with their employers and are (often) less effective negotiators than men. We use longitudinal wage data from Portugal, matched … Continue reading

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Worker Flows Over the Business Cycle: the Role of Firm Quality

Lisa Kahn and Erika McEntarfer have an interesting paper on worker flows, firm quality, and the business cycle. They define firm quality as average pay (and their findings are robust to using other sensible definitions). Here’s one of their key … Continue reading

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Firms & Rising Inequality

Some of the most prominent theories of rising wage inequality emphasize changes in the supply of highly-educated workers, skill-biased technical change, changing labor market institutions, as well as variation in wages across occupations, industries, and geography. David Card has highlighted some … Continue reading

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