Analyzing data spanning three decades covering the near universe of births, we study county-level differences in Cesarean section (C-section) rates among first-time mothers of singleton births. Our research reveals persistent geographic variation in C-section rates for both low- and high-risk groups. Counties with elevated C-section rates consistently perform more C-sections across mothers at all levels of appropriateness for the procedure. These elevated rates of C-section in high C-section counties are associated with reduced maternal and infant morbidity. We also find that C-section decisions are less responsive to underlying risks for Black mothers relative to white mothers, suggesting potential welfare-reducing disparities.

We study the relationships between ageist stereotypes - as reflected in the language used in job ads - and age discrimination in hiring, exploiting the text of job ads and differences in callbacks to older and younger job applicants from a resume (correspondence study) field experiment (Neumark, Burn, and Button, 2019). Our analysis uses computational linguistics and machine learning methods to examine, in a field-experiment setting, ageist stereotypes that might underlie age discrimination in hiring. In so doing, we develop methods and a framework for analyzing textual data, highlighting the usefulness of various computer science techniques for empirical economics research. We find evidence that language related to stereotypes of older workers sometimes predicts discrimination against older workers. For men, we find evidence that age stereotypes about all three categories we consider - health, personality, and skill - predict age discrimination, and for women, age stereotypes about personality predict age discrimination. In general, the evidence that age stereotypes predict age discrimination is much stronger for men, and our results for men are quite consistent with the industrial psychology literature on age stereotypes.

We study the effects of peer gender composition in STEM doctoral programs on persistence and degree completion. Leveraging unique new data and quasi-random variation in gender composition across cohorts within programs, we show that women entering cohorts with no female peers are 11.7pp less likely to graduate within 6 years than their male counterparts. A 1 sd increase in the percentage of female students differentially increases women's probability of on-time graduation by 4.4pp. These gender peer effects function primarily through changes in the probability of dropping out in the first year of a Ph.D. program.

This paper investigates the wage returns to schooling and actual early work experiences and how these returns have changed over the past 20 years. Using the NLSY surveys, we develop and estimate a dynamic model of the joint schooling and work decisions that young men make in early adulthood and quantify how they affect wages using a generalized Mincerian specification. Our results highlight the need to account for dynamic selection and changes in composition when analyzing changes in wage returns. In particular, we find that ignoring the selectivity of accumulated work experiences results in overstatement of the returns to education.

This paper examines the short and longer-term economic effects of the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which increased the national minimum wage to its highest level of the 20th Century and extended coverage to an additional 9.1 million workers. Exploiting differences in the "bite" of the minimum wage due to regional variation in the standard of living and industry composition, this paper finds that the 1966 FLSA increased wages dramatically but reduced aggregate employment only modestly. However, the disemployment effects were significantly larger among African-American men, forty percent of whom earned below the new minimum wage in 1966.

In many countries, grade retention is viewed as a useful tool for helping students who fall behind in their achievement. We show how the effect of grade retention varies by abilities, by timing of retention and as time since retention elapses. While existing studies of grade retention also recognize the importance of studying variation by abilities and timing, the existing methods are not well-equipped to deal with the possibility that students retained at different grades differ in unobservable abilities (dynamic selection) and the effects of retention also vary by the student's abilities and the time at which the student is retained. We extend existing factor analytic methods for identifying treatment effects to control for dynamic selection in our time-varying treatment effect setting. This approach can be understood as a hybrid between a control function and a generalization of the fixed effects approach. Applying our method to nationally-representative, longitudinal data, we find evidence of dynamic selection into retention and that the treatment effect of retention varies considerably across grades and unobservable abilities of students. Our strategy can be applied more broadly to many time-varying or multiple treatment settings.

There are persistent differences in self-reported subjective well-being across US metropolitan areas, and residents of declining cities appear less happy than others. Yet some people continue to move to these areas, and newer residents appear to be as unhappy as longer-term residents. While historical data on happiness are limited, the available facts suggest that cities that are now declining were also unhappy in their more prosperous past. These facts support the view that individuals do not maximize happiness alone but include it in the utility function along with other arguments. People may trade off happiness against other competing objectives.

A substantial empirical literature documents the rise in wage inequality in the American economy. It is silent on whether the increase in inequality is due to components of earnings that are predictable by agents or whether it is due to greater uncertainty facing them. These two sources of variability have different consequences for both aggregate and individual welfare. Using data on two cohorts of American males we find that a large component of the rise in inequality for less skilled workers is due to uncertainty. For skilled workers, the rise is less pronounced.

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) awards rise during recessions. If marginal applicants are able to work but unable to find jobs, countercyclical Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefit extensions may reduce SSDI uptake. Exploiting UI extensions in the Great Recession as a source of variation, we find no indication that expiration of UI benefits causes SSDI applications and can rule out effects of meaningful magnitude. A supplementary analysis finds little overlap between the two programs' recipient populations: only 28% of SSDI awardees had any labor force attachment in the prior calendar year, and of those, only 4% received UI.

We present and calibrate a dynamic model that characterizes the labor market for computer scientists. In our model, firms can recruit computer scientists from recently graduated college students, from STEM workers working in other occupations or from a pool of foreign talent. Counterfactual simulations suggest that wages for computer scientists would have been 2.8-3.8% higher, and the number of Americans employed as computers scientists would have been 7.0-13.6% higher in 2004 if firms could not hire more foreigners than they could in 1994. In contrast, total CS employment would have been 3.8-9.0% lower, and consequently output smaller.

A standard object of empirical analysis in labor economics is a modified Mincer wage function in which an individual's log wage is specified to be a function of education, experience, and an indicator variable identifying race. We analyze this approach in a context in which individuals live and work in different locations (and thus face different housing prices and wages). Our model provides a justification for the traditional approach, but with the important caveat that the regression should include location-specific fixed effects. Empirical analyses of men in U.S. labor markets demonstrate that failure to condition on location causes us to (i) overstate the decline in black-white wage disparity over the past 60 years, and (ii) understate racial and ethnic wage gaps that remain after taking into account measured cognitive skill differences that emerge when workers are young.

The option to obtain a General Education Development (GED) certificate changes the incentives facing high school students. This paper evaluates the effect of three different GED policy innovations on high school graduation rates. A six point decrease in the GED pass rate due to an increase in passing standards produced a 1.3 point decline in overall dropout rates. The introduction of a GED certification program in high schools in Oregon produced a four percent decrease in graduation rates. Introduction of GED certificates in California increased dropout rates by 3 points. The GED program induces high school students to drop out.

We investigate whether selective intermarriage and endogenous ethnic identification interact to hide some of the intergenerational progress achieved by the Mexican-origin population in the United States. In part, we do this by comparing an "objective" indicator of Mexican descent (based on the countries of birth of the respondent and his parents and grandparents) with the standard "subjective" measure of Mexican self-identification (based on the respondent's answer to the Hispanic origin question). For third-generation Mexican-American youth, we show that ethnic attrition is substantial and could produce significant downward bias in standard measures of attainment which rely on ethnic self-identification.

"This article utilizes an exact match file between the 1978 March [U.S.] Current Population Survey and administrative records from the Social Security Administration to analyze errors in the reporting of annual income using nonparametric methodology.... Three new findings are of interest: there is higher measurement error in cross-sectional samples than in panels. The negative relationship between measurement error and earnings is driven largely by overreporting among low earners. Median response errors are not related to earnings."

"This article investigates the effects of welfare payments, wages, and unemployment on women's probability of interstate migration [in the United States]. It also investigates if the income attraction of locations varies with recency of labor market experience. Welfare gains increase the probability of interstate migration. Welfare effects are largest for single mothers with small children and stronger among women with no recent labor market experience. The welfare effects, albeit small, are larger than the wage effects. The wage effects are weaker among women with no recent work experience. Ethnic-specific analyses suggest differences in migration behavior among Anglos, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans."

This article "discusses aggregate-level interactions between Jewish immigration and economic growth both in the Jewish sector of Mandatory Palestine and in Israel". The reciprocal effects of population and economic growth are discussed in two sections on population as an engine of growth and was the size of the population dependent on the economy. The author concludes that "causality between population and [gross national] product runs both ways.... For the whole period 1922-1982, it is very clear that immigration pushed the rate of increase of capital stock. For the period from 1954 on, immigration responded to the growth rate of per capita income or consumption."

"This article investigates the role of surprises in marital dissolution [in the United States]. Surprises consists of changes in the predicted earning capacity of either spouse. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 is used. We find that an unexpected increase in the husband's earning capacity reduces the divorce hazard, while an unexpected increase in the wife's earning capacity raises the divorce hazard. Couples sort into marriage according to characteristics that are likely to enhance the stability of the marriage. The divorce hazard is initially increasing with the duration of marriage, and the presence of children and high levels of property stabilizes the marriage."

"This article uses the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Public Use Samples of the U.S. census to document what happened to immigrant earnings in the 1980s and to determine if pre-1980 immigrant flows reached earnings parity with natives. The relative entry wage of successive immigrant cohorts declined by 9% in the 1970s and by an additional 6% in the 1980s. Although the relative wage of immigrants grows by 10% during the first 2 decades after arrival, recent immigrants will earn 15%-20% less than natives throughout much of their working lives."

An analysis of the economic impact of divorce settlements in the United States is presented using data for a white cohort taken from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. "The effects of spouses' incomes on the divorce transfer are estimated and used to simulate the welfare effects of divorce on husbands, wives, and children under alternative assumptions about marriage contracts and the ability of a couple to continue coordinating resources in the aftermath of divorce. We find a positive (negative) relationship between divorce transfers and the growth of husband's (wife's) earnings during marriage. The estimated expenditure on children in the divorce state is only half the accustomed level during marriage."

Expert performance is often evaluated assuming that good experts have good outcomes. We examine expertise in medicine and develop a model that allows for two dimensions of physician performance: decision making and procedural skill. Better procedural skill increases the use of intensive procedures for everyone, while better decision making results in a reallocation of procedures from fewer low-risk to high-risk cases. We show that poor diagnosticians can be identified using administrative data and that improving decision making improves birth outcomes by reducing C-section rates at the bottom of the risk distribution and increasing them at the top of the distribution.