Alan Krueger

What would be the consequences of a long-term commitment to provide everyone enough money to meet their basic needs? We examine this hotly debated issue in the context of a unique field experiment in rural Kenya. Communities receiving UBI experienced substantial economic expansion—more enterprises, higher revenues, costs, and net revenues—and structural shifts, with the expansion concentrated in the non-agricultural sector. Labor supply did not change overall, but shifted out of wage employment and towards self-employment. We also compare the effects to those of shorter-term transfers delivered either as a stream of small payments or a large lump sum. The lump sums had similar, if not larger, economic impacts, while the short-term transfers had noticeably smaller effects, despite having delivered the same amount of capital to date. These results are consistent with a simple model of forward-looking lumpy investment, and more generally with a role for savings constraints, credit constraints, and some degree of (locally) increasing returns, among other factors.

This study summarizes and analyzes the gender and racial discrimination that musicians may face in the music labor market of the United States, with a focus on exploring gender and race interactions’ effects on the economic return of musicians. This study is based on a survey of 1,227 musicians in the United States in 2018, which was conducted by the Music Industry Research Association (MIRA) and the Princeton University Survey Research Center (SRC), in partnership with MusiCares. The survey reveals that females, who make up about one-third of the population of musicians, report experiencing high rates of discrimination and sexual harassment. When considering female musicians, 72% report that they have been discriminated against because of their gender, and 67% report that they have been the victim of sexual harassment; corresponding figures for U.S. women more generally are 28% and 42 …

This study describes and analyzes the challenges that musicians face in the United States, based on a survey of 1227 musicians, which was conducted in 2018 by the Music Industry Research Association and the Princeton University Survey Research Center, in partnership with MusiCares. It reveals that the average American musician earns income from three music-related activities per year, but for 61% of musicians this is not sufficient to meet living expenses. We explore important factors affecting music-related income, focusing on the impact of attending a high school featuring music education, of joining MusiCares membership, and the interaction between these factors and being born in the U.S.A. Attending schools with music education increases music-related earnings, while MusiCares membership has a negative association. However, when MusiCares membership is controlled for, attending a high school …

This study investigates the extent to which economic rents are shared among different types of workers within firms. We utilize administrative payroll records in order to estimate the elasticity of employee compensation with respect to the price of crude oil at petroleum extraction companies. We find that the elasticity of rent sharing is heterogeneous within firms and significantly higher for workers at the top of the earnings distribution. These results can be rationalized by a bargaining model in which insiders within a firm possess greater power to negotiate over wages.

In this work we study the role of covenants in franchise contracts that restrict the recruitment and hiring of employees from other units within the same franchise chain in suppressing competition for workers. On the basis of an analysis of 2016 Franchise Disclosure Documents, we find that “nopoaching of workers” agreements are included in a surprising 58 percent of major franchisors’ contracts, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Jiffy Lube, and H & R Block. The implications of these no-poaching agreements for models of oligopsony are also discussed. No-poaching agreements are more common for franchises in low-wage and high-turnover industries. A postscript explains that as a direct result of an early draft of this paper many, if not all, franchise no-poaching agreements have been forcibly abandoned because of actions by the Washington State Attorney General and others.

Mindestlohns senkt die Beschäftigungsquote bei Jugendlichen schätzungsweise um 0, 06 Prozentpunkte. ten innerhalb New Jerseys ähnlich sind, werden in unserer vergleichenden Analyse saisonale Beschäftigungsentwicklungen „herausgerechnet “. Drittens konnten wir fast 100% der Standorte, die wir in unserer ersten Interviewphase direkt vor der Mindestlohnanhebung befragt haben (Februar und März 1992), auch in der zweiten Phase sieben bis acht Monate später (November und Dezember 1992) erreichen. Wir haben vollständige Informationen über die Schließung von Standorten und berücksichtigen auch die daraus resultierenden Beschäftigungsänderungen in unserer Studie. Wir messen damit den Effekt der Mindestlohnerhöhung auf die gesamte Beschäftigung in unserer Stichprobe und nicht nur die Auswirkungen auf die jene Betriebe die tatsächlich weiter bestanden. Da unsere Analyse der Beschäftigungstrends nur Standorte umfasst, die bereits vor der Erhöhung des Mindestlohns bestanden, klammert sie die Auswirkungen besagter Erhöhung auf die Zahl der Neueröffnungen aus. Um den wahrscheinlichen Umfang dieses Effekts abschätzen zu können, betrachten wir in einer gesonderten Analyse den Anstieg in der Anzahl von McDonald’s-Fast-Food-Restaurants in einzelnen Bundesstaaten in Verbindung mit dem relativen Mindestlohn in diesen Staaten.

Una de las cuestiones de política económica más debatidas en los últimos tiempos ha sido la de la fijación y el aumento del salario mínimo. David Card y Alan B. Krueger, dos de los economistas más reconocidos de las últimas décadas, adquirieron una gran notoriedad precisamente por desmontar los mitos que la ciencia económica mantenía acerca de esta cuestión. Con sus rompedoras investigaciones en el campo de la economía laboral, Card y Krueger desafiaron la creencia general de que un salario mínimo más alto implica reducir las oportunidades laborales para los trabajadores de bajos ingresos. Tal cuestionamiento de la teoría económica establecida es el que se recoge por primera vez en español en Mito y medición. El estudio, que tiene importantes implicaciones para las políticas públicas y para la orientación de la investigación económica, se sirve de abundante evidencia empírica y se nutre de experiencias recientes en Estados Unidos. Para cada uno de los casos, los economistas presentan una colección de datos que demuestran que los incrementos en el salario mínimo produjeron aumentos en los ingresos, pero no implicaron pérdidas de puestos de trabajo. Card y Krueger, mediante métodos empíricos importados de las ciencias naturales, revisan críticamente toda la literatura existente sobre el salario mínimo y nos brindan una nueva batería de argumentos para defender la pertinencia de esta política.

The nature of self-employment is changing in most OECD countries. Solo self-employment is increasing relative to self-employment with dependent employees, often being associated with the development of gig economy work and alternative work arrangements. We still know little about this changing composition of jobs. Drawing on ad-hoc surveys run in the UK, US, and Italy, we document that solo self-employment is substantively different from self-employment with employees, being an intermediate status between employment and unemployment, and for some, becoming a new frontier of underemployment. Its spread originates a strong demand for social insurance which rarely meets an adequate supply given the informational asymmetries of these jobs. Enforcing minimum wage legislation on these jobs and reconsidering the preferential tax treatment offered to self-employment could discourage abuse of …