Week by Week General Topics
- Inequality and Social Mobility: Basic Measures
- Skills and Schooling
- Preferences/Skills/Preference and Habit Formation
- Skills, Tasks and Occupations
- Discrimination and Disparities
- Role of Firms/Monopsony
- Lifecycle Models and Dynamics
- Family Influence
- Neighborhood and Peer Effects: Chetty and Beyond
- Evaluating the Welfare State
Plan of the Class
Inequality, Social Mobility (within and across generations)
- Measures
- Income
- Wages and Wage Growth
- Health
- Employment and Social Engagement (Labor)
- Wealth
- Peers and Neighbors
- By Race/Gender
- To what extent do public transfers/family transfers compensate for disadvantage?
- How do welfare rules/taxes incentivize or de-incentivize:
- Fertility?
- Labor supply?
- Marriage?
- Tax rates on the poor?
- Consequences of Transfers? To what extent do we:
- Destroy autonomy, dignity and agency?
- Is the welfare state creating welfare dependency? (Social norms/Lindbeck and stigma)
- The shaping of preference and habit formation
- Work ethic
- In welfare state
- In socialist countries
- Source of A
- Skills
- Schooling
- OJT and LBD
- Search in job market and sorting
- Parents and parenting in learning
- Preferences: How much of outcome is due to preferences (e.g., labor supply) or due to prices playing into preferences?
- How formed? Who is responsible for them?
- Preferences/Traits
- Big 5
- IQ
- Cognition
- Meaning of a test scores: invariance, comparability. Are value-added models meaningful?
- External factors (at micro level)
- Prices (including price of credit)
- Unemployment and macro shocks
- Discrimination
- Monopoly and monopsony
- Genetic endowments
- How much of inequality is due to coercion? Chosen (by actions and investments) inequality?
- Do people get their “just deserts?”
- Skills
- Family
- Marriage markets and sorting
- Proper measure of welfare
- Fertility
- Child quality and child investment
- Role of genes and the genetic lottery
- Neighborhoods, Peers, and Sorting
- Is zip code destiny? (Chetty and Chetty-based literature)
- Homophily and sorting
- The Welfare State
- How effectively does it promote equality and social mobility?
- Through what channels?
- Welfare dependence
Reports by Week
Week 1, March 30, 2022: Inequality and Social Mobility. Skills and Schools
- Joint Economic Committee. 2019. “Measuring Income Concentration: A Guide for the Confused.” United States Congress. Last accessed March 3, 2022.
- Measuring Income Concentration: A Guide for the Confused, Joint Economic Committee (2019)
- Auten, Gerald, and David Splinter. 2019b. “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends.”Unpublished manuscript, Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Treasury Department.
- Saez and Zucman, Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016, 131(2): 519-578 [Appendix & data webpage].
- Slides: Three Narratives on Income Inequality: Importance of Good Data Analysis, Methodology, and Theory, Coleman (2022)
- Summary of student discussion / questions: Student Discussion Week 1
- Student Report Summary, Week 1
Week 2, April 6, 2022
- Fitzgerald, John, and Robert Moffitt. 2022. “The Supplemental Expenditure Poverty Measure: A New Method of Measuring Poverty.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity BPEA Conference, Washington, DC, March 24-25, 2022.
- Meyer, Bruce. “Comment on Fitzgerald and Moffitt.”
- Student Report Summary, Week 2
Week 3, April 13, 2022
- Keane, Michael and Kenneth Wolpin. (1997). “The Career Decisions of Young Men,” Journal of Political Economy, 105(3):473-522.
- The Career Decisions of Young Men, Keane and Wolpin (1997)
- Student Report Summary, Week 3
Week 4, April 20, 2022
- Acemoglu, Daron, and Pascual Restrepo. (2020). “Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets.” Journal of Political Economy, 128(6):2188-2244.
- Acemoglu, Daron and Pascual Restrepo. (2021). “Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in US Wage inequality.” NBER Working Paper No. 28920.
- Student Report Summary, Week 4
Week 5, April 27, 2022: Role of Firms and Monopsony
- Berger, David, Kyle Herkenhoff, and Simon Mongey. (2022). “Labor Market Power.” American Economic Review, 112(4):1147-93.
- Krueger, Alan B., and Orley Ashenfelter. (2018). “Theory and Evidence on Employer Collusion in the Franchise Sector.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, No. 24831.
- Card, David. (2022). “Who Set Your Wage?” American Economic Review, 112(4):1075-90
- Conference on Monopsony in Labor Markets
- Ashenfelter, Orley, David Card, Henry S. Farber, and Michael R. Ransom. (2021). “Monopsony in the Labor Market New Empirical Results and New Public Policies,” NBER Working Paper No. 29522.
- Azar, José, Ioana Marinescu, and Marshall Steinbaum. (2020). “Labor Market Concentration.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Bachmann, Ronald, Gökay Demir, and Hanna Frings. (2021). “Labor Market Polarization, Job Tasks and Monopsony Power.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Balasubramanian, Natarajan, Jin Woo Chang, Mariko Sakakibara, Jagadeesh Sivadasan, and Evan Starr. (2020). “Locked In? The Enforceability of Covenants Not to Compete and the Careers of High-Tech Workers.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Bassier, Ihsaan, Arindrajit Dube, and Suresh Naidu. (2021). “Monopsony in Movers: The Elasticity of Labor Supply to Firm Wage Policies.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Benmelech, Efraim, Nittai K. Bergman, and Hyunseob Kim. (2020). “Strong Employers and Weak Employees: How Does Employer Concentration Affect Wages?” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Hirsch, Boris, Elke J. Jahn, Alan Manning, and Michael Oberfichtner. (2020). “The Urban Wage Premium in Imperfect Labor Markets.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Krueger, Alan B., and Orley Ashenfelter. (2021). “Theory and Evidence on Employer Collusion in the Franchise Sector.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Naidu, Suresh, and Eric A. Posner. (2021). “Labor Monopsony and the Limits of the Law.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Ransom, Tyler. (2021). “Labor Market Frictions and Moving Costs of the Employed and Unemployed.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Rinz, Kevin. (2020). “Labor Market Concentration, Earnings, and Inequality.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Webber, Douglas A. (2020). “Labor Market Competition and Employment Adjustment Over the Business Cycle.” Forthcoming, Journal of Human Resources.
- Student Report Summary, Week 5
Week 6, May 4, 2022: Life-cycle Dynamics
- Blundell, Richard, Monica Costa Dias, Costas Meghir, and Jonathan Shaw. (2016). “Female Labor Supply, Human Capital, and Welfare Reform.” Econometrica, 84(5):1705-1753.
- Blundell, Richard. (2014). “Income Dynamics and Life‐cycle Inequality: Mechanisms and Controversies.” The Economic Journal, 124(576):289-318.
- Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. (2002). “The Inheritance of Inequality,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16(3): 3-30.
- Student Report Summary, Week 6
Week 7, May 11, 2022: Family Influence and Genetics
- Houmark, Mikkel Aagaard, Victor Ronda, and Michael Rosholm. 2020. “The Nurture of Nature and the Nature of Nurture: How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills.” Institute of Labor Economics. IZA Discussion Paper. DP No. 13780.
- Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna, and Anastasia Terskaya. 2019. “Sibling Differences in Educational Polygenic Scores: How Do Parents React?” Institute of Labor Economics. IZA DP No. 12375.
- Barth, Daniel, Nicholas W. Papageorge, and Kevin Thom. (2020). “Genetic Endowments and Wealth Inequality.” Journal of Political Economy, 128(4):1474-1522.
- Student Report Summary, Week 7
Week 8, May 18, 2022: Family Influence, Investment, and Intergenerational Mobility
- Becker, Gary S., Scott Duke Kominers, Kevin M. Murphy, and Jörg L. Spenkuch. (2018). “A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility.” Journal of Political Economy,126(S1):S7-S25.
- A Theory of Intergenerational Mobility. Becker, Kominers, Murphy, and Spenkuch. (2018).
- Solon, Gary. (2004). “A model of intergenerational mobility variation over time and place.” In Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe, edited by Miles Corak, 38-47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Neighborhood Effects and Child Outcomes: Evaluating the Recent Empirical Literature by Michael Galperin
- Heckman, James J. (2018). “Comments on ‘Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective’,” Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Princeton University, March 28, 2018.
- Lecture I Video: “The Intergenerational Persistence of Racial Disparities“
- Lecture II Video: “Neighborhood Effects: Childhood Environment and Upward Mobility” with commentary from Prudence Carter (UC Berkeley), William Galson (Brookings Institution), James J. Heckman (University of Chicago), and William Julius Wilson (Harvard University).
- Winship, Scott. 2018. “Economic Mobility in America a State of the Art Primer,” Archbridge Institute. Economic and Social Mobility Research.
- Part 1: Economic Mobility in America a State of the Art Primer Part 1: Contemporary Levels of Mobility
- Part 2: Economic Mobility in America a State of the Art Primer Part 2: The United States in Comparative Perspective
- Part 3: Economic Mobility in America a State of the Art Primer Part 3: Trends in the United States
- Eshaghnia, Sadegh, James J. Heckman, and Goya Razavi. (2022). “The Willingness to Pay for School Quality, Neighborhood Attributes, and Later Life Outcomes,” Unpublished manuscript, The University of Chicago, Center for the Economics of Human Development.