We use university parking permits to study how firms and employees split the value of employee benefit tax subsidies. Starting in 1998, the IRS allowed employees to pay for parking passes with pre-tax income. This subsidized the parking pass purchases of faculty and staff, but did not affect...

Internal labor markets are those where workers are hired into entry level jobs and higher levels are filled from within. Wages are determined internally and may be quite free of market pressure. External labor markets imply that workers move somewhat fluidly between firms and wages are...

Employer-provided benefits are a large and growing share of compensation costs. In this paper, I consider three factors that can affect the value created by employer-sponsored benefits. First, firms have a comparative advantage (for example, due to scale economies or tax treatment) in purchasing...

Each year, graduate students entering the academic job market worry that they will suffer due to uncontrollable macroeconomic risk. Given the importance of general human capital and the relative ease of publicly observing productivity in academia, one might expect unlucky graduating cohorts'...

In the context of growing worldwide inequality, it is important to know what happens when the demand for low-skilled workers changes. Because natural resource shocks are global in nature, but have highly localized impacts on labor prospects in resource extraction areas, they offer a unique...

We show that exposure to an industry during upbringing is closely related to later-in-life entrepreneurial choices and success. A majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers’ industry of employment. The probability of entrepreneurship...

"Are ticket scalpers good for teams? Should parents push their kids to excel at sports? Why do Koreans dominate women's golf, while Kenyans and Ethiopians dominate marathon racing? Why would Michael Jordan, the greatest player in basketball, pass to Steve Kerr for the game-winning shot?0 Paul...

The growth of the “gig” economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favor women. We explore this by examining labor supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the U.S. We document a roughly 7% gender earnings gap amongst...

We document three new facts about entrepreneurship. First, a majority of male entrepreneurs start a firm in the same or a closely related industry as their fathers' industry of employment. Second, this tendency is correlated with intelligence: higher-IQ entrepreneurs are less likely to follow...