My Research

The Impact of Ridesharing's Introduction on American Cities

Job Market Paper

This paper examines the impact of the emergence of the gig economy on the broader labor market by exploiting the staggered introduction of the ridesharing service Uber to American Cities between 2013 and 2018. Using difference-in-differences methods, Chaisemartin and D'Haultoeuille's time-corrected Wald estimator, and Abadie et al's synthetic control method, I estimate that Uber's arrival to a city resulted in a decline in the unemployment rate by between a fifth and a half of a percentage point. This suggests that Uber allowed many workers to supplement their earnings during periods of unemployment, framing the ridesharing service as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, traditional employment. I also find some evidence that Uber had a very small positive effect on wages at the lower end of the wage distribution, suggesting that Uber may have altered worker search behavior or affected bargaining power.

Puerto Rico’s Minimum Wage: Revisiting a Price Floor with “Bite”

Published in IZA Journal of Labor Policy

Revisiting research from the 1990s from Castillo-Freeman and Krueger, I use the synthetic control method of Abadie et al. to estimate the impact of the most recent increase in the federal minimum wage on employment in Puerto Rico. I estimate that the employment/population ratio of various groups in Puerto Rico was significantly lower than that of a data-constructed synthetic Puerto Rico which did not raise its minimum wage. Placebo tests on other donor units, time periods, and population groups suggest that a significant portion of this gap is a result of the minimum wage. Groups with greater exposure to the minimum wage, such as teens and restaurant workers, experienced proportionally greater declines in employment. My results suggest an own-wage elasticity of employment in Puerto Rico of -0.68, higher than estimates from the mainland, which suggests that the employment response to minimum wages may be more dramatic at higher relative minimum wages.

Estimating the Elasticity of Labor Supply to a Firm: Results from a Field Experiment

Published in Applied Economics Letters

“New Monopsony” models imply that firms can possess wage-setting power even in competitive markets so long as they face an upward-sloping labor supply curve due to labor market frictions. However, previous research has yielded wildly different estimates of the elasticity of labor supply to a firm. Using a field experiment where identical job offers were posted with varying wages in statistically matched or the same area, I estimate that the elasticity of labor supply to a restaurant to be quite high, between 11.6 and 20.9, implying that workers are hired at wages between 92 and 95 percent of their marginal products. These results provide evidence for a model where firms only possess wage-setting power over incumbent employees, while new employees are hired at wages close to their marginal products. The policy implications of such a model are discussed.

Alternatives to Paying Efficiency Wages: Why no PEOPLEFAX?

Published in The Journal of Private Enterprise

Efficiency wage theories of unemployment predict that employers will pay employees above market-clearing wages to deter shirking by workers. However, paying supernormal wages may not be the only solution to this problem. When the Montgolfier Paper Mill encountered shirking and laborers who “left their employ[ers] when they tried to discipline them” (Horn, p. 37) in the 1780s, they instead made reforms, the most significant of which was the certificat de congé, a “record of [each employee’s] previous employment and conduct” (Rosenband 1993, p. 233) maintained by the employer. Under this system, the Montgolfiers could pay normal market wages and still cause their workers to incur penalties for shirking. Legislative barriers in several modern jurisdictions prevent employers from giving detailed feedback on past employees to potential employers.

Heritage or Hate? The Effect of Confederate Monument Removal on Racially Biased Hate Crimes

Working Paper

Abstract Beginning in the late 2010s, many municipalities have begun removing Confederate monuments, memorials, and/or flags in response to both public outcry and recent white supremacist acts of terrorism. While the stated goal of these removals is to move past a troubled episode in our nation's history, what actual effect does monument removal have on acts of racially-biased violence? Using data from the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center and a difference-in-differences research design, I find that the number of hate crimes based on race occurring in a city increases by between 20 and 40% following the city's removal of a confederate monument, even after controlling for a variety of covariates. Decomposition of these results shows that this increase only occurs when monuments are removed in states that were formally part of the Confederacy; although there is still no evidence that removal decreases hate crime even in non-Confederate areas.