Till Von Wachter
Biographic Data
| ID | 1470607 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Till Von Wachter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Till |
| FAMILY NAME | Von Wachter |
| SIGNATURE | VON WACHTER T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Center for Economic and Policy Research |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefit Generosity and Labor Supply from 2002 to 2020
This paper obtains comparable estimates of the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on labor supply throughout the unemployment spell and over the business cycle using a regression kink design and 20 years of administrative data from California. For a given unemployment duration, the behavioral effect of UI benefit levels on labor supply does not vary with the business cycle from 2002 to 2019. However, due to increased coverage from ext…
Disparities in Access to Unemployment Insurance During the Covid-19 Pandemic
To what extent did jobless Americans benefit from unemployment insurance (UI) during the COVID-19 pandemic? This article documents geographic disparities in access to UI during 2020. We leverage aggregated and individual-level claims data to perform an integrated analysis across four measures of access to UI. In addition to the traditional UI recipiency rate, we construct rates of application among the unemployed, rates of first payment among app…
Shareholder Power and the Decline of Labor
Shareholder power in the US grew over recent decades due to a steep rise in concentrated institutional ownership. Using establishment-level data from the US Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business Database for 1982-2015, this paper examines the impact of increases in concentrated institutional ownership on employment, wages, shareholder returns, and labor productivity. Consistent with theory of the firm based on conflicts of interests between share…
The Persistent Effects of Initial Labor Market Conditions for Young Adults and Their Sources
Unlucky young workers entering the labor market in recessions suffer a range of medium-to long-term consequences. This paper summarizes the findings of the growing empirical literature on this subject and uses it to assess economic models of career development. The literature finds large initial effects on earnings, labor supply, and wages that tend to fade after ten to fifteen years in the labor market, and that are accompanied by changes in occ…
Unemployment Insurance Reform
The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is the largest general social insurance program for working-age individuals in the United States and currently insures more than 140 million workers against temporary income losses related to unemployment. UI has been the bedrock of U.S. social policy in recessions, but the system has remained largely unchanged since the mid-1970s despite substantial changes in the labor market that include deindustrializati…
The Short- and Long-Term Career Effects of Graduating in a Recession
This paper analyzes the magnitude and sources of long-term earnings declines associated with graduating from college during a recession. Using a large longitudinal university-employer-employee dataset, we find that the cost of recessions for new graduates is substantial and unequal. Unlucky graduates suffer persistent earnings declines lasting ten years. They start to work for lower paying employers, and then partly recover through a gradual proc…
Job Displacement and Mortality
We use administrative data on the quarterly employment and earnings of Pennsylvanian workers in the 1970s and 1980s matched to Social Security Administration death records covering 1980–2006 to estimate the effects of job displacement on mortality. We find that for high-seniority male workers, mortality rates in the year after displacement are 50%–100% higher than would otherwise have been expected. The effect on mortality hazards declines sharpl…
Following Germany's Lead
Forward-looking behavior on the part of the monetary authority makes it difficult to estimate the effect of monetary policy interventions on output. We present instrumental variables estimates of the impact of interest rates on quarterly real output for several European countries, using German interest rates as the instrument. These estimates confirm a strong forward-looking bias in least squares estimates that persists even conditional on standa…
Zero Returns to Compulsory Schooling in Germany
The Persistent Effects of Initial Labor Market Conditions for Young Adults and Their Sources
Unlucky young workers entering the labor market in recessions suffer a range of medium-to long-term consequences. This paper summarizes the findings of the growing empirical literature on this subject and uses it to assess economic models of career development. The literature finds large initial effects on earnings, labor supply, and wages that tend to fade after ten to fifteen years in the labor market, and that are accompanied by changes in occ…
Unemployment Insurance Reform
The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is the largest general social insurance program for working-age individuals in the United States and currently insures more than 140 million workers against temporary income losses related to unemployment. UI has been the bedrock of U.S. social policy in recessions, but the system has remained largely unchanged since the mid-1970s despite substantial changes in the labor market that include deindustrializati…
Zero Returns to Compulsory Schooling in Germany
Job Displacement and Mortality
We use administrative data on the quarterly employment and earnings of Pennsylvanian workers in the 1970s and 1980s matched to Social Security Administration death records covering 1980–2006 to estimate the effects of job displacement on mortality. We find that for high-seniority male workers, mortality rates in the year after displacement are 50%–100% higher than would otherwise have been expected. The effect on mortality hazards declines sharpl…
Following Germany's Lead
Forward-looking behavior on the part of the monetary authority makes it difficult to estimate the effect of monetary policy interventions on output. We present instrumental variables estimates of the impact of interest rates on quarterly real output for several European countries, using German interest rates as the instrument. These estimates confirm a strong forward-looking bias in least squares estimates that persists even conditional on standa…
The Short- and Long-Term Career Effects of Graduating in a Recession
This paper analyzes the magnitude and sources of long-term earnings declines associated with graduating from college during a recession. Using a large longitudinal university-employer-employee dataset, we find that the cost of recessions for new graduates is substantial and unequal. Unlucky graduates suffer persistent earnings declines lasting ten years. They start to work for lower paying employers, and then partly recover through a gradual proc…
Unemployment Insurance Reform
The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is the largest general social insurance program for working-age individuals in the United States and currently insures more than 140 million workers against temporary income losses related to unemployment. UI has been the bedrock of U.S. social policy in recessions, but the system has remained largely unchanged since the mid-1970s despite substantial changes in the labor market that include deindustrializati…
The Persistent Effects of Initial Labor Market Conditions for Young Adults and Their Sources
Unlucky young workers entering the labor market in recessions suffer a range of medium-to long-term consequences. This paper summarizes the findings of the growing empirical literature on this subject and uses it to assess economic models of career development. The literature finds large initial effects on earnings, labor supply, and wages that tend to fade after ten to fifteen years in the labor market, and that are accompanied by changes in occ…
Shareholder Power and the Decline of Labor
Shareholder power in the US grew over recent decades due to a steep rise in concentrated institutional ownership. Using establishment-level data from the US Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business Database for 1982-2015, this paper examines the impact of increases in concentrated institutional ownership on employment, wages, shareholder returns, and labor productivity. Consistent with theory of the firm based on conflicts of interests between share…
Disparities in Access to Unemployment Insurance During the Covid-19 Pandemic
To what extent did jobless Americans benefit from unemployment insurance (UI) during the COVID-19 pandemic? This article documents geographic disparities in access to UI during 2020. We leverage aggregated and individual-level claims data to perform an integrated analysis across four measures of access to UI. In addition to the traditional UI recipiency rate, we construct rates of application among the unemployed, rates of first payment among app…
Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefit Generosity and Labor Supply from 2002 to 2020
This paper obtains comparable estimates of the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on labor supply throughout the unemployment spell and over the business cycle using a regression kink design and 20 years of administrative data from California. For a given unemployment duration, the behavioral effect of UI benefit levels on labor supply does not vary with the business cycle from 2002 to 2019. However, due to increased coverage from ext…
Economics (9 works) · Labour economics (7 works) · Demographic economics (6 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (6 works) · Earnings (4 works) · Economic growth (4 works) · Retirement, Disability, and Employment (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality (3 works) · Political science (3 works)