Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Inequality, labor markets, Socialism on Jan 26th, 2015
Via Scott Alexander: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel goes up to the counter and gives a tremendously long custom order in German, specifying exactly how much of each sort of syrup he wants, various espresso shots, cream in exactly the right pattern, and a bunch of toppings, all added in a specific order at a specific […]
Posted in labor markets on Jan 5th, 2015
A new paper on the labor market impacts of cap and trade for NOx (a good program, by the way): Who Loses Under Power Plant Cap-and-Trade Programs? by Mark Curtis This paper tests how a major cap-and-trade program, known as the NOx Budget Trading Program (NBP), impacted labor markets in the regions where it was implemented. The […]
Posted in labor markets on Nov 11th, 2014
Each month in the United States, about 4.5 million jobs are created and about 4.5 million jobs are destroyed. Or, to put it another way, the amount of “job churn” in our economy amounts to the creation and destruction of about fifty million jobs per year. For reference, the size of the entire labor force is only […]
Posted in If I Really Hated the Poor ..., labor markets, Price System on May 5th, 2014
I’m writing final exams and hope to be back at this in due time. In the meantime, here was one particularly interesting working paper I had emailed to me today: Discrimination and the Effects of Drug Testing on Black Employment by Abigail K. Wozniak – NBER Working Paper #20095 (LS PE) Nearly half of U.S. employers test job […]
Posted in If I Really Hated the Poor ..., incentives, labor markets, Taxation on Apr 1st, 2014
That would be people like my wife who continue to work. Here is how her income is taxed: Federal tax rate of 28% (her wage puts us in this bracket) State tax rate of 6.5% Social security – her “share is 7.65%, her employer pays 7.65%, but since we know that the incidence of this […]
Posted in Education, labor markets on Jan 24th, 2014
In my inbox today (I have no idea how it even got to me, by the way, as a grad student at Cornell, they UAW tried to unionize me): Hi Michael — “Being an adjunct can be an isolating experience. Our schedules alone discourage interaction with one another. However, stories I’ve heard from fellow contingent […]
Posted in Central Planning, labor markets, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 17th, 2013
One of the myriad justifications for the passage of the PPACA, and subsequent defenses of going even further (e.g. government paying for all of our health insurance) is that by taking the burden of firms providing health insurance premiums to their workers, it will make firms more internationally competitive. Long ago, we discussed how the […]
Posted in Competition, labor markets on Dec 16th, 2013
If the populist view of wage determination is true, then we’d see that the only reason firms pay workers more than the bare minimum is to keep workers alive enough to continue exploiting. Further, if that narrative were true, then the only other reason why firms pay more than that amount is because labor market […]
Posted in Central Planning, labor markets on Sep 23rd, 2013
In a reply to our Mets and Yankees post, a commenter mentioned that poor mental health is (obviously) affiliated with poor labor market outcomes. There is actually a decent literature on this, but here is the most recent paper published on this question: The Effect of Depression on Labor Market Outcomes by Lizhong Peng, Chad […]
Posted in labor markets, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jul 22nd, 2013
Here’s a 21st century thought for you … for over a century workers’ unions have fought to shrink the workweek down to 40 (or less). Now, the great labor struggle is to fight to preserve the 40-hour week from the part-timization of the American workforce. By the way, is there any better evidence that labor […]