Public-works programs in developing countries have recently attracted a lot of attention as anti-poverty initiatives. This paper analyzes the labor-market impacts of the largest public-works program in the world, the Indian NREGS, using information about its rollout in a regression-discontinuity design. The results suggest that the overall employment and casual wage impacts are small, although ...

We use experimental data from a résumé audit to estimate the impact of particular college majors and internship experience on employment prospects. Despite applying exclusively to business-related job openings, we find no evidence that business degrees improve employment prospects. By contrast, internship experience increases the interview rate by 14 percent. The returns to internship experienc...

In Lentz and Mortensen (2005), we formulate and estimate a market equilibrium model of endogenous growth through product innovation in the spirit of Klette and Kortum (2004). In this paper, we provide a quantitative solution to the social planner’s problem in the modeled environment. We find that the optimal growth rate is over three times larger than its value in market equilibrium and that th...

In this paper we study the semiclassical asymptotics of the 6j symbols for the representation theory of the quantized enveloping algebra Uq(sl2) for q a primitive root of unity. Because of the work of Finkelberg [7], these 6j symbols can also be defined in terms of fusion product of representations of the affine Lie algebra ŝl2, defined using Wess-Zumino-Witten conformal field theory. This asso...

Previous research has identified non-diversifiable risk and a preference for “being one’s own boss” as key determinants of participation in self-employment. Using a simple model of occupational choice, I show how both factors can cause efficiency losses in a free market economy, and how linear differential occupational taxation can improve on the market outcome. A simulation exercise calibrated...

This paper builds a new microdatabase that covers 100 countries at all income levels and long-run time series in the United States (1870–2010) Mexico ( 1960–2010) to document how modern tax system arises over development. I establish set of stylized facts, which show exemption threshold decreases distribution as country develops, tracking growth employee share employment occurs gradually furthe...

Immigrants can expand labor supply and compete for jobs with native-born workers. But immigrants may also start new firms, expanding demand. This paper uses US administrative data other sources to study the role of in entrepreneurship. We ask how often companies, many these firms create, founded by individuals compare. A simple model provides a measurement framework addressing dual roles as fou...

This paper examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on aggregate employment by exploiting cross-state variation in maximum benefit duration during Great Recession. Comparing adjacent counties located neighboring states, there is no statistically significant increasing UI generosity employment. Point estimates are uniformly small magnitude, and most precise rule out employment-to-popul...

This paper estimates intertemporal labor supply responses to two-year long income tax holidays staggered across Swiss cantons. Cantons shifted from an system based on the previous two years’ a standard annual pay as you earn system, leaving years of untaxed. We find significant but quantitatively very small wage earnings with elasticity 0.025 overall. High earners and especially self-employed d...