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Traditionally, labor economics studies how employers and employees respond to changes in wages, profits, prices and working conditions. Over the past two decades, labor economists have expanded the scope of their research to include much of applied economics. The areas of research spanned by our labor economists include crime, economics of the family, education, discrimination, and other traditional labor topics. Over the last few decades, a major divide arose within labor economics with some labor economists emphasizing the value of natural (and actual) experiments, while others estimating models linked to economic theory. At the University of Michigan, we have labor economists doing both kinds of work, and we get along with each other! In fact, we pride ourselves in being diverse in terms of methods we use, and topics we study.

   

   

Primary Appointment outside the Economics Department

School of Information

Ford School of Public Policy & Department of Economics (courtesy)

Institute for Social Research

School of Education & Department of Economics (courtesy)

Ford School of Public Policy & Department of Economics (courtesy)

Recent Graduate Student Placement Locations

Fed Board

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Stanford University

George Washington University

University of Arizona

Vanderbilt University

Rutgers

University of Kentucky

Dartmouth

University of Delaware

University of Memphis

American University 

Middlebury

College Board (2)

American Institutes for Research

Ford Motor Company

Yale (postdoc)

SOLO World Partners

Vanguard

SEC

RAND Corp

Mathematica

Urban Institute

Microsoft

Amazon

US Census

US Treasury

Seminars, Reading Groups, Lunches, etc.

Labor Lunch, Student Seminar (Thursdays)

Labor Seminar (Wednesday afternoons)

Selected Recent Publications

Bleakley, “Thick-market effects and churning in the labor market: Evidence from US cities,” Journal of Urban Economics, 2012. (Joint with Lin.)

Bound, “Reservoir of foreign talent," Science, 2017. (Joint with Khanna & Morales.) 

Bound, “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2019. (Joint with Binder.)

Brown, “The Effects of Respondents’ Consent to be Recorded on Interview Length and Data Quality in a National Panel Study.” Field Methods, 2015. (Joint with McGonagle & Schoeni.)

Heller, “Predicting and Preventing Gun Violence: Experimental Results from READI Chicago”  Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024. (Joint with Monica Bhatt, Max Kapustin, Marianne Bertrand & Chris Blattman.) 

Heller, “Information Frictions and Skill Signaling in the Youth Labor Market” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming. (Joint with Judd Kessler.)

McCall, "Employment and Job Search Implications of the Extended Weeks and Working While on Claim Pilot Initiatives," Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques, 2019. (Joint with Lluis.)

Mueller-Smith, “Criminal Justice Involvement, Self-employment, and Barriers in Recent Public Policy” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2023. (Joint with Keith Finlay and Brittany Street.)

Mueller-Smith, “Does Welfare Prevent Crime? The Criminal Justice Outcomes of Youth Removed from SSI” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2022. (Joint with Manasi Deshpande.)

Reynoso, “Marriage market and labor market sorting,“ Review of Economic Studies, accepted, 2023. (Joint with Calvo & Lindenlaub.)

Reynoso, “Education Quality and Teaching Practices,” Economic Journal, 2020. (Joint with Bassi & Meghir.)

Reynoso, “The impact of divorce laws on the equilibrium in the marriage market,” Journal of Political Economy, accepted, 2024.

Stephens, “Compulsory Education and the Benefits of Schooling,” American Economic Review, 2014. (Joint with Yang.)

Stephens, “Disability Benefit Take-Up and Local Labor Market Conditions,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 2018. (Joint with Charles & Li.)

Stevenson and Wolfers, “Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress,” Journal of Legal Studies, 2012.

Zafar, “Gender Differences in Job Search and the Earnings Gap: Evidence from Business Majors” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2023. (Joint with Patricia Cortes, Jessica Pan, Laura Pilossoph, and Ernesto Reuben.)

Zafar. “Ask and You Shall Receive? Gender Differences in Regrades in College”. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2023 (with Cher Li.)