Professor Matthew Freedman is an economist in Cornell University's Department of Economics whose interests lie at the intersection of labor economics, public finance, and urban economics. Note: For the 2011-2012 academic year, Professor Freedman will be a visiting associate research scholar at Princeton University's Industrial Relations Section and a visiting assistant professor in Princeton's Department of Economics.
Working Papers
Targeted Business Incentives and Local Labor Markets (2012)
This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to examine the effects of geographically targeted business...
Teaching New Markets Old Tricks: The Effects of Subsidized Investment on Low-Income Neighborhoods (2011)
This paper examines the effects of investment subsidized by the federal government’s New Markets Tax...
Agency and Compensation: Evidence from the Hotel Industry (with Renata Kosova) (2011)
We examine how agency problems in the workplace affect compensation policies by taking advantage of...
Forthcoming Papers
Agglomeration, Product Heterogeneity, and Firm Entry (with Renata Kosova), Journal of Economic Geography (2012)
This paper investigates the interaction between product heterogeneity and geographic agglomeration. Using data for nearly...
Decomposing the Sources of Earnings Inequality: Assessing the Role of Reallocation (with Fredrik Andersson, Elizabeth Davis, Julia Lane, Brian McCall, and L. Kristin Sandusky), Industrial Relations (2012)
This paper exploits longitudinal employer-employee matched data from the U.S. Census Bureau to investigate the...
Published Papers
Low-Income Housing Development and Crime (with Emily Owens), Journal of Urban Economics (2011)
This paper examines the effect of rental housing development subsidized by the federal government’s Low-Income...
Lost Jobs and Health Insurance: An Analysis of the Impact of Employment Volatility on Firm-Provided Health Insurance Coverage (with Fredrik Andersson, Iben Bolvig, and Julia Lane), Applied Economics (2011)
It is an established fact that there are high levels of employment volatility in the...
Reaching for the Stars: Who Pays for Talent in Innovative Industries? (with Fredrik Andersson, John Haltiwanger, Julia Lane, and Kathryn Shaw), The Economic Journal (2009)
Innovative firms need to hire and motivate highly talented workers. This article connects the potential...
Product Market Competition and Human Resource Practices in the Retail Food Sector (with Elizabeth Davis, Julia Lane, Brian McCall, Nicole Nestoriak, and Timothy Park), Industrial Relations (2009)
In the wake of Wal-Mart and other mass merchandisers’ entry into food retailing, the nature...
Job Hopping, Earnings Dynamics, and Industrial Agglomeration in the Software Publishing Industry, Journal of Urban Economics (2008)
This paper investigates the implications of industrial clustering for labor mobility and earnings dynamics in...
Technical Papers
LEHD OnTheMap Technical Documentation (with Fredrik Andersson, Marc Roemer, and Lars Vilhuber) (2008)
OnTheMap has been a very popular web-based, interactive mapping application since its formal launch under...
Related Work
ILR Impact Brief - Industry Clusters Affect Job Mobility and Earnings Growth, ILR Policy & Issue Briefs (2008)
Industry clusters are associated with greater job hopping and faster growth in workers’ earning power...
Research Contributions
Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America? (2006)
Every day, in every sector of our economy, a business shuts down while another starts...