Working Papers

         The Effect of Software Adoption on Skill Demand, with Bledi Taska,  (Job Market Paper)

We study how firms change their demand for workers of different skill sets when they adopt additional software varieties. We construct software adoption events from job posting data compiled by Lightcast and use a latent variable strategy to estimate the causal impacts of these adoptions. After an adoption, analytic and social skill requirements for the job using the software increase by 0.8 and 1.1 percentage points, respectively, and the number of vacancies also rises by 30%. We then embed these effects in an equilibrium model of software adoption and occupation sorting amongst white-collar occupations, and find that falling software prices increase inequality both within and between occupations. The upskilling effects of software drive the increase in within-occupation inequality by restricting labor from moving to higher wage software jobs

         Is Affirmative Action Still Effective in the 21st Century?, with Noriko Amano and Julian Aramburu

We study Executive Order 11246, an employment-based affirmative action policy targeted at firms holding contracts with the federal government. We find this policy to be ineffective in the 21st century, contrary to positive effects found for the late 1900s (Miller (2017)). Our novel dataset combines data on federal contract acquisition and enforcement with US linked employer-employee Census data 2000–2014. We employ an event study around firms’ acquiring a contract, based on Miller (2017), and find the policy had no effect on employment shares or on hiring, for any minority group. Next, we isolate the impact of the affirmative action plan, which is EO 11246’s preeminent requirement that applies to firms with contracts over $50,000. Leveraging variation from this threshold in event study and regression discontinuity strategies, we find similarly null effects. We show that even randomized audits are not effective, suggesting weak enforcement. Our results highlight the importance of the recent budget increase for the enforcement agency, as well as recent policies enacted to improve compliance.

Work in Progress

How Pay Information Impacts Job Search , with Alice Gindin and Layla O’Kane

Job-level Skill Mismatch, with Layla O’Kane and Jumi Kim