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Journal Article
Post-Pandemic Labor Shortages Have Limited the Effect of Monetary Policy on the Labor Market
The labor market has so far shown remarkable resilience to the Federal Reserve’s recent monetary policy tightening. Severe labor shortages in the post-pandemic era have led many employers to hold on to workers and hire less-skilled workers—even though they expect demand for their goods or services to weaken in the future. As a result, unemployment remains low, and labor productivity has declined.
Working Paper
Economic Benefits and Social Costs of Legalizing Recreational Marijuana
We analyze the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana on state economic and social outcomes (2000–20) using difference-in-differences estimation robust to staggered timing and heterogeneity of treatment. We find moderate economic gains accompanied by some social costs. Post-legalization, average state income grew by 3 percent, house prices by 6 percent, and population by 2 percent. However, substance use disorders, chronic homelessness, and arrests increased by 17, 35, and 13 percent, respectively. Although some of our estimates are noisy, our findings suggest that the economic ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Housing First Programs on Future Homelessness and Socioeconomic Outcomes
Housing First programs provide housing assistance without preconditions for homeless individuals as a platform for rehabilitation. Despite the programs’ increasing popularity, limited evidence exists on their effects on socioeconomic outcomes. Using a novel dataset combining administrative records from multiple public agencies in Los Angeles County and a random case manager assignment design, I estimate that Housing First assistance reduces homelessness and crime, increases income and employment, and does not have a detectable effect on healthcare utilization. Cost-benefit analysis implies ...
Journal Article
Do Immigration Restrictions Affect Job Vacancies? Evidence from Online Job Postings
The U.S. workforce relies heavily on immigration. However, a series of policy changes and the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rare decline in immigrant arrivals from 2016 to 2021. This period of reduced immigration coincided with and exacerbated already severe shortages in the U.S. labor market, leading employers and firms to look for new sources of labor. At the same time, online job postings became more prevalent as a method of searching for labor. These postings provide rich data that could help reveal how different dimensions of labor demand change in response to declining immigration.Elior ...
Working Paper
The Effect of Immigration on Local Labor Markets: Lessons from the 1920s Border Closure
In the 1920s, the United States substantially reduced immigration by imposing country-specific entry quotas. We compare local labor markets differentially exposed to the quotas due to variation in the national origin mix of their immigrant populations. U.S.-born workers in areas losing immigrants did not gain in income score relative to workers in less exposed areas. Instead, in urban areas, European immigrants were replaced with internal migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Canada. By contrast, farmers shifted toward capital-intensive agriculture, and the immigrant-intensive mining ...
Journal Article
Immigration Shortfall May Be a Headwind for Labor Supply
U.S. labor markets are currently experiencing unprecedented labor shortages. Reduced immigration flows in recent years have contributed to these labor supply shortages and tightened labor markets. Industries, occupations, and regions that rely more heavily on foreign workers have been particularly affected.
Working Paper
Immigration Disruptions and the Wages of Unskilled Labor in the 1920s
An era of mass immigration into the United States ended with the onset of World War I in Europe, followed by the passage of restrictive immigration laws in 1921 and 1924. We analyze various sources of wage data collected in the 1910-1929 period to explore the impact of this significant disruption of the flow of immigration on the wages of unskilled labor. Our approach to identification entails examining differences in wages across local labor markets and industries differentially exposed to the disruptions in immigration due to different ethnic compositions oftheir immigrant populations in ...