Alberta Centre for Labour Market Research

2024-04-01

Consumption Dynamics and Welfare Under Non-Gaussian Earnings Risk

CORRECT ORDER OF AUTHORS: Fatih Guvenen, Serdar Ozkan, and Rocio Madera. The order of coauthors has been assigned randomly using AEA’s Author Randomization Tool. Recent empirical studies document that…

2024-08

Risk Attitudes and Informal Employment in Ukraine

Using data from the four waves of the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - ULMS (2003, 2004, 2007 and 2012), we analyze whether workers with a higher willingness to take risks are more likely to…

2024-08

Inefficient Labor Market Sorting

A growing empirical literature attributes much of the productivity advantages of large, "superstar" firms to their adoption of best practice management techniques that allow them to better identify…

2024-08

Employer Dominance and Worker Earnings in Finance

Large firms in the U.S. financial system achieve substantial economic gains. Their dominance sets them apart while also raising concerns about the suppression of worker earnings. Utilizing administrative…

2024-08-06

The impact of aggregate fluctuations across the UK income distribution

In this paper, we examine the response of earnings and employment to fluctuations in aggregate economic activity (GDP) across the income distribution. Using data from the UK’s Labour Force Survey, we…

2024-08

Looks and Gaming: Who and Why?

We investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the time people devote to video/computer gaming. Average American teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming, while for adults…

2024-08

The Returns to Skills During the Pandemic: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

The Covid-19 pandemic represents one of the most significant labor market shocks to the world economy in recent times. We present evidence from a field experiment to understand whether and why skilled…

2024-08

The Rise of Teamwork and Career Prospects in Academic Science

Teamwork has become more important in recent decades. We show that larger teams generate an unintended side effect: individuals who finish their PhD when the average team in their field is larger have…

2024-08-22

The Productivity Impact of Global Warming: Firm-Level Evidence for Europe

In this paper, we investigate the impact of rising temperatures on firm productivity using longitudinal firm-level balance-sheet data from private sector firms in 14 European countries, combined with…

2024

Is my wage fair? Validating fairness perceptions among women and men

This paper examines gender differences in perceptions of the fairness of one's own pay. Theoretically, we draw on two so far separate strands of literature, on women's alleged greater tolerance for lower…

2024-08

Why Do Employers Establish Retirement Savings Plans? Evidence from State “Auto-IRA” Policies

Several states have recently attempted to boost retirement saving by adopting “auto-IRA” policies that require employers not currently offering an employer-sponsored retirement plan (ESRP) to either…

2024-08

Who Benefited from World War II Service and the GI Bill? New Evidence on Heterogeneous Effects for US Veterans

We study the impacts of WWII service and access to GI Bill benefits on the educational and labor market outcomes of individuals of various ethnic and racial groups. We address selection into military…

2024-08

Pension Reforms and Inequality in Germany: Micro-Modelling

Germany, like many other countries, has undergone a series of pension reforms since the 1980s which generally decreased benefit generosity and increased the retirement age due to demographic pressures.…

2024-08

The Anatomy of U.S. Sick Leave Schemes:Evidence from Public School Teachers

We study how public school teachers use paid leave. Most U.S. sick leave schemes operate as individualized credit accounts—paid leave is earned and unused leave accumulates, producing an employee-specific…

2024

Rating Systems and the End-Game Effect: When Reputation Works and when It Doesn’t

Do rating systems provide incentives to sellers when they are about to exit a market? Using data from Airbnb, this paper examines how end-of-game considerations affect hosts’ effort decisions. We take…

Retirement and investment decisions: evidence from the receipt of a liquidity infusion

I study household investment decisions to shed light on how people approach and plan for retirement. To address this topic I exploit a particular institutional context. In Italy, private and public sector…

2024-08

The Impact of Cloud Computing and AI on Industry Dynamics and Concentration

We examine the rise of cloud computing and AI in China and their impacts on industry dynamics after the shock to the cost of Internet-based computing power and services. We find that cloud computing is…

2024-08

Positive Incentives: The Income Effect and The Optimal Regulation of Crime

Theories of crime in economics focus on the roles of deterrence and incapacitation in reducing criminal activity. In addition to deterrence, a growing body of empirical evidence has shown that both income…

2024

Alternative Measures of Teachers’ Value Added and Impact on Short and Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from Random Assignment

A recent critique of using teachers’ test score value-added (TVA) is that teacher quality is multifaceted; some teachers are effective in raising test scores, others are effective in improving long-term…

2024

Online versus In-Person Services: Effects on Patients and Providers

Online delivery of one-to-one services offers potential cost savings and increased convenience, yet relatively little is known about its impacts on providers and consumers. This paper studies the online…

2024-08-04

The Domino Effect: Exploring Residential Mobility in the Aftermath of Municipal Mergers

In this paper, we investigate the impact of municipal mergers on residential mobility in a quasi-natural experiment setting by examining how local economic environment and neighborhood composition respond…