Essays on Labor Market Conditions, Wage Determination, and Spillovers

This dissertation examines the implications of labor market conditions for wages and societal welfare, paying special attention to spillovers. Chapter 2 investigates the effect of within-firm pay transparency policies on economy-wide average wages, introducing interactions with worker turnover that were not previously considered. The proposed theoretical framework of bargaining between firms and workers predicts that increased pay information sharing among employees raises average wages in tight labor markets, but reduces wages in slack markets. Exploiting the staggered implementation of U.S. state-level laws and applying heterogeneous treatment event-study methods, evidence corroborates the novel prediction of diverging trajectories. Chapter 3 advances the wage-scarring literature by estimating the short- and long-run spillovers from individuals who start working in an adverse market to their younger siblings’ education, grounded in theories of family resource allocation and example setting. A cohort-pairing fixed-effects approach documents sizable negative spillovers on younger siblings’ lifetime educational attainment, validated by placebo tests reversing birth order. Taken together, this dissertation uncovers tradeoffs that are essential to comprehensive welfare analyses and highlights the importance of moving beyond partial equilibrium perspectives.

Author dc:creator

• Yanqing Zhao (778177)

• Economics
• Labor

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright
• Open Access after 2028-05-01

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.25417/uic.32995340.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32995340