Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman Recent documents in Matthew Freedman en-us Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:36:32 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/8 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/8 Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:32:57 PDT It is an established fact that there are high levels of employment volatility in the United States. Despite the importance of employer-provided benefits in the U.S. insurance system, the impact of prior job instability on one's future ability to obtain insurance coverage is not well understood. This paper finds a negative relationship between the volatility of a worker's employment and her likelihood of receiving firm-provided health insurance. Previous employment volatility reduces each of the four factors necessary to receive such insurance: a worker's subsequent chances of getting a job, her chances of getting a job in a firm that offers coverage, her chances of staying with the firm long enough to become eligible for coverage, and her ability to take up insurance if offered. The most important impact is on the last: her ability to take up insurance if offered. Lack of employment is not the only, and not even the largest, barrier to individual coverage under this system. This finding has important policy implications, particularly given the recent tendency of employers to shift the cost of insurance premiums onto their employees. Matthew Freedman Published Papers http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/7 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/7 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:28:39 PDT Every day, in every sector of our economy, a business shuts down while another starts up, jobs are created while others are cut, and workers are hired while others are laid off. This constant flux, or turbulence, is a defining characteristic of our free market system, yet it mostly inspires angst about unemployment, loss of earnings, and the overall competitiveness of corporations. But is this endless cycle of fluctuation really so bad for America? Might something positive be going on in the economy as a result of it?In this penetrating work, three esteemed economists seek to answer these questions by exploring the real impact of volatility on American workers and businesses alike. According to the authors, while any number of events--shifts in consumer demand, changes in technology, mergers and acquisitions, or increased competition--can contribute to economic turbulence, our economy as a whole is, by and large, stronger for it, because these processes of creation and destruction make it more flexible and adaptable. The authors also acknowledge and document the adverse consequences of this turbulence on different groups of workers and firms and discuss the resulting policy challenges. Basing their argument on an up-close look into the dealings and practices of five key industries--financial services, retail food services, trucking, semiconductors, and software--the authors demonstrate the positive effects of turbulence on career paths, employee earnings, and firm performance.The first substantial attempt to disentangle and make clear the complexities of this phenomenon in the United States, Economic Turbulence will be viewed as a major achievement and the centerpiece of any discussion on the subject for years to come. Matthew Freedman Research Contributions http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/6 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/6 Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:32:46 PDT In the wake of Wal-Mart and other mass merchandisers' entry into food retailing, the nature of competition in the industry has changed radically. Using longitudinal data on workers and firms to construct measures of compensation and churning for traditional food retailers, this paper examines how these measures change in response to mass merchandiser entry. While there is considerable heterogeneity across retail food establishments, human resource practices are persistent even in the face of new external competition. Matthew Freedman Published Papers http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/5 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/5 Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:57:15 PDT Industry clusters are associated with greater job hopping and faster growth in workers' earning power relative to the experience of workers at less spatially concentrated companies. Workers in these clusters tend to accept lower starting salaries than peers at more isolated firms in anticipation of rapid gains that accompany movement from job to job within the cluster and the accumulation of industry-specific knowledge. Higher earnings observed among workers in clustered firms may also reflect choices made by workers with certain characteristics to seek employment in an area with a high concentration of similar firms and by companies with certain characteristics to locate in such an area. Matthew Freedman Related Work http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/4 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/4 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:38:22 PDT The rise of super-centers and the entry of Wal-Mart into food retailing have dramatically altered the competitive environment in the industry. This paper explores the impact of such changes on the labor market practices of traditional food retailers. We use longitudinal data on workers and firms to construct new measures of compensation and employment, and examine how these measures evolve within and across firms in response to changes in product market structure. An additional feature of the analysis is to combine rich case study knowledge about the retail food industry with the new matched employer-employee data from the Census Bureau. Matthew Freedman Published Papers http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/3 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/3 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:30:03 PDT Policymakers, faced with increasing demands to make decisions at a local level, are turning to statistical agencies to provide local data. Advances in matching technology, combined with the reduced cost of archiving, indexing, storing, and curating large-scale datasets, now mean that it is technically feasible to provide information at fine levels of geographic detail by means of combining administrative and survey datasets at lower cost and with potentially greater coverage. This article describes an approach that uses administrative data from U.S. unemployment insurance records to enhance the coverage and accuracy of work location information in the American Community Survey. Matthew Freedman Published Papers http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/2 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/2 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:26:07 PDT Innovative firms need to hire and motivate highly talented workers. This article connects the potential returns to innovation to the structure of compensation for skilled employees. We show that the software firms that operate in software sectors with high potential upside gains to innovation pay more to 'star' workers than do other firms that operate in stable markets. Firms operating in product domains with highly skewed positive returns pay employees more in up-front starting salaries and offer higher compensation growth. The large estimated effects on earnings are robust to the inclusion of a wide range of controls for worker and firm characteristics. Matthew Freedman Published Papers http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/1 http://works.bepress.com/matthew_freedman/1 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:23:25 PDT This paper investigates the implications of industrial clustering for labor mobility and earnings dynamics in one large and increasingly important high-technology sector. Taking advantage of longitudinal employee-employer matched data, I exploit establishment-level variation in agglomeration to explore how clustering in the software publishing industry affects labor market outcomes. The results show that clustering makes it easier for workers to job hop within the sector. Higher earnings levels in more agglomerated areas are partly attributable to sorting across locations among workers and firms in the industry on the basis of observable and unobservable characteristics. Controlling for this heterogeneity, workers in clusters have relatively steep earnings-tenure profiles, accepting lower wages early in their careers in exchange for stronger earnings growth and higher wages later. These findings are consistent with theoretical models in which agglomeration improves labor market coordination and facilitates greater learning and human capital formation. Matthew Freedman Published Papers