Jobs, Workers and Changes in Earnings Dispersion

The 'fractal' nature of the rise in earnings dispersion is one of its key features and remains a puzzle. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on the causes of changes in earnings dispersion, focusing on the role of labour reallocation. Once we drop the assumption that all firms pay a given worker the same, the allocation of workers to firms matters for the dispersion of earnings. This perspective highlights two new factors that can affect the dispersion of earnings: rates of job and worker reallocation, and the nature of the process allocating workers to jobs. We set out a framework capturing this idea and quantify the impact of reallocation on earnings dispersion, using a dataset that comprises almost the universe of workers and the universe of employers in Maryland. We show that these factors have potentially large effects in general on earnings dispersion. In the case of Maryland over the period 1985-1994, the changing allocation of workers to jobs played a significant role in explaining movements in the dispersion of earnings.Earnings inequality, labour reallocation, matched worker and firm panels

Do as the Neighbors Do: The Impact of Social Networks on Immigrant Employees

Substantial immigrant segregation in the United States, combined with the increase in the share of the U.S. foreign-born population, have led to great interest in the causes and consequences of immigrant concentration, including those related to the functioning of labor markets. This paper provides robust evidence that both the size and the quality of an immigrant enclave affects the labor market outcomes of new immigrants. We develop new measures of the quality, or information value, of immigrant networks by exploiting data based on worker earnings records matched to firm and Census information. We demonstrate the importance of immigrant employment links: network members are much more likely than other immigrants to be employed in the same firm as their geographic neighbors. Immigrants living with large numbers of employed neighbors are more likely to have jobs than immigrants in areas with fewer employed neighbors. The effects are quantitatively important and robust under alternative specifications. For example, in a high value network – one with an average employment rate in the 90th percentile – a one standard deviation increase in the log of the number of contacts in the network is associated with almost a 5% increase in the employment rate. Earnings, conditional on employment, increase by about 0.7%.Social networks, immigrant enclaves, labor market intermediaries

Do as the Neighbors Do: The Impact of Social Networks on Immigrant Employment

Substantial immigrant segregation in the United States, combined with the increase in the share of the U.S. foreign-born population, have led to great interest in the causes and consequences of immigrant concentration, including those related to the functioning of labor markets. This paper provides robust evidence that both the size and the quality of an immigrant enclave affects the labor market outcomes of new immigrants. We develop new measures of the quality, or information value, of immigrant networks by exploiting data based on worker earnings records matched to firm and Census information. We demonstrate the importance of immigrant employment links: network members are much more likely than other immigrants to be employed in the same firm as their geographic neighbors. Immigrants living with large numbers of employed neighbors are more likely to have jobs than immigrants in areas with fewer employed neighbors. The effects are quantitatively important and robust under alternative specifications. For example, in a high value network – one with an average employment rate in the 90th percentile – a one standard deviation increase in the log of the number of contacts in the network is associated with almost a 5% increase in the employment rate. Earnings, conditional on employment, increase by about 0.7%.social networks, immigrant enclaves, labor market intermediaries

Cities, Matching and the Productivity Gains of Agglomeration

The striking geographical concentration of economic activities suggests that there are substantial benefits toagglomeration. However, the nature of those benefits remains unclear. In this paper we take advantage of a newdataset to quantify the role of one of the main contenders - the matching of workers and jobs. Using individuallevel data for two large US states we show that thicker urban labour markets are associated with moreassortative matching between workers and firms. Another critical condition is required for this to generatehigher productivity: complementarity of worker and firm quality in the production function. Usingestablishment level productivity regressions, we show that such complementarity is found in our data. Puttingtogether the production and matching relationships, we show that production complementarity and assortativematching is an important source of the urban productivity premium.Urban Productivity, Matching, Agglomeration

Chromatic thresholds in dense random graphs

The chromatic threshold $\delta_\chi(H,p)$ of a graph $H$ with respect to the random graph $G(n,p)$ is the infimum over $d > 0$ such that the following holds with high probability: the family of $H$-free graphs $G \subset G(n,p)$ with minimum degree $\delta(G) \ge dpn$ has bounded chromatic number. The study of the parameter $\delta_\chi(H) := \delta_\chi(H,1)$ was initiated in 1973 by Erd\H{o}s and Simonovits, and was recently determined for all graphs $H$. In this paper we show that $\delta_\chi(H,p) = \delta_\chi(H)$ for all fixed $p \in (0,1)$, but that typically $\delta_\chi(H,p) \ne \delta_\chi(H)$ if $p = o(1)$. We also make significant progress towards determining $\delta_\chi(H,p)$ for all graphs $H$ in the range $p = n^{-o(1)}$. In sparser random graphs the problem is somewhat more complicated, and is studied in a separate paper.Comment: 36 pages (including appendix), 1 figure; the appendix is copied with minor modifications from arXiv:1108.1746 for a self-contained proof of a technical lemma; accepted to Random Structures and Algorithm

Systemic Lying

This Article offers the foundational account of systemic lying from a definitional and theoretical perspective. Systemic lying involves the cooperation of multiple actors in the legal system who lie or violate their oaths across cases for a consistent reason that is linked to their conception of justice. It becomes a functioning mechanism within the legal system and changes the operation of the law as written. By identifying systemic lying, this Article challenges the assumption that all lying in the legal system is the same. It argues that systemic lying poses a particular threat to the legal system. This means that we should know how to identify it and then try to address it once we see it happening. Accordingly, this Article presents a guide to identifying a set of symptoms that are the hallmarks of systemic lying and posits a unitary cause, although not a one-size-fits-all solution. Through a series of case studies, it shows that systemic lying emerges as a saving mechanism that mediates between culture and law. Rather than allow the law to take its course and deliver what would be perceived as unjust outcomes, participants lie and preserve the façade of a system that delivers results consonant with popular moral intuitions. Systemic lying is both persistent and powerful because it achieves a type of licitness that individual lies or underground deception lack. At the same time, it poses a unique threat to the legitimacy of the system by signifying that truth is not paramount in the courtroom