This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of Uber’s driver-partners, based on both survey data and anonymized, aggregated administrative data. Uber has grown at an exponential rate over the last few years, and drivers who partner with Uber appear to be attracted to the platform in large part because of the flexibility it offers, the level of compensation, and the fact that earnings per hour do not vary much with hours worked, which facilitates part-time and
variable hours. Uber’s driver-partners are more similar in terms of their age and education to the general workforce than to taxi drivers and chauffeurs. Uber may serve as a bridge for many seeking other employment opportunities, and it may attract well-qualified individuals because, with Uber’s star rating system, driver-partners’ reputations are explicitly shared with potential customers. Most of Uber’s driver-partners had full- or part-time employment prior to joining Uber, and many continued in those positions after starting to drive with the Uber platform, which makes the flexibility to set their own hours all the more valuable. Uber’s driver-partners also
often cited the desire to smooth fluctuations in their income as a reason for partnering with Uber.
Alan Krueger
Description of files: TWINS90.DAT This is an ASCII file that contains a public use file with selected variables from the 1990 twins data Ashenfelter and Krueger used. The variables are separated by columns. The input statement in PUBLIC.SAS lists the proper order of the variables; this can easily be adapted if you want to use a program other than SAS. PUBLIC.SAS This is a mainframe SAS program that reads in the data from TWINS90.DAT. This program labels the variables. It also runs regressions from selected Tables in Ashenfelter and Krueger (1993). PUBLIC.LOG This contains the SAS listing file of PUBLIC SAS. TWIN2.SAS This is a SAS program that created the data in TWINS90.DAT.
The wage structure in the U.S. public sector responded sluggishly to
substantial changes in private sector wages during the 1970s and 1980s.
Despite a large expansion in the college/high school wage differential during
the 1980s in the private sector, the public sector college wage premium
remained fairly stable. Although wage differentials by skill in the public
sector were fairly unresponsive to changes in the private sector, overall pay
levels for state and local government workers were quite sensitive to local
labor market conditions. But federal government regional pay levels appear
unaffected by local economic conditions. Several possible explanations are
considered to account for the rigidity of the government internal wage
structure, including employer size, unionization, and nonprofit status. None
of these factors adequately explains the pay rigidity we observe in the
government.
In the last decade, state courts in many areas of the United States have
ruled in favor of employees alleging they were improperly dismissed. Many
economists have contended that any judicial or legislative departure from the
employment-at—will doctrine is regressive and inefficient because it restricts
employment flexibility and freedom of contract. This paper advances an
evolutionary theory of unjust-dismissal legislation in which employer groups
eventually support unjust-dismissal legislation in response to the threat of
large and variable damage awards imposed by the judicial system. Legislation
is sought to clearly define property rights and to limit employer liability.
In comparison to the common law, the unjust-dismissal laws that have been proposed are likely to result in smaller awards, reduce uncertainty, resolve disputes rapidly, and reduce legal and other transactions costs. An
institutional and empirical analysis supports the conclusion that the proposal
of unjust-dismissal legislation is a response to court rulings that weaken and
obfuscate the employers’ right to dismiss employees at will. This evidence is
inconsistent with the conventional political-economy view of unjust-dismissal
legislation.
This study provides the first nation-wide analysis of the labor market implications of occupational licensing for the U.S. labor market, using data from a specially designed Gallup survey. We find that in 2006, 29 percent of the workforce was required to hold an occupational license from a government agency, which is a higher percentage than that found in studies that rely on state-level occupational licensing data. Workers who have higher levels of education are more likely to work in jobs that require a license. Union workers and government employees are more likely to have a license requirement than are nonunion or private sector employees. Our multivariate estimates suggest that licensing has about the same quantitative impact on wages as do unions -- that is about 15 percent, but unlike unions which reduce variance in wages, licensing does not significantly reduce wage dispersion for individuals in licensed jobs.
We estimate that permitting inmate labor would likely increase national output, but by
less than 0.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. The largest social benefits from inmate labor
are likely to come about from decreased recidivism, although the effect of inmate labor on
subsequent crime and recidivism rates has not been adequately studied. The potential inmate
workforce is low skilled. We estimate that permitting inmate labor could reduce wages of high
school dropouts in the private workforce by 5 percent. To improve the economic contribution of
inmate labor, we propose that private firms be allowed to bid for inmate labor, and that inmate
workers be subject to all relevant labor legislation, including the right to collective
representation. Alternative strategies for reducing recidivism and integrating offenders into
mainstream society upon release, such as education and training, should also be considered,
perhaps in conjunction with inmate labor.
This paper takes a retrospective look at the U.S. government’s effort to rescue and restructure General Motors and Chrysler in the midst of the 2009 economic and financial crisis. The paper describes how two of the largest industrial companies in the world came to seek a bailout from the U.S. government, the analysis used to evaluate their request, and the steps taken by the government to rescue them. The paper also summarizes the performance of the U.S. auto industry since the bailout and draws some general lessons from the episode.
Most existing work on the price elasticity of demand for health insurance focuses
on employees' decisions to enroll in employer-provided plans. Yet any attempt to
achieve universal coverage must focus on the uninsured, the vast majority of whom
are not offered employer-sponsored insurance. In the summer of 2008, we conducted
a survey experiment to assess the willingness to pay for a health plan among a large
sample of uninsured Americans. The experiment yields price elasticities substantially
greater than those found in most previous studies. We use these results to estimate
coverage expansion under the Affordable Care Act, with and without an individual
mandate. We estimate that 39 million uninsured individuals would gain coverage and
find limited evidence of adverse selection.
This paper examines the impact of selected labor market changes on the decline in the unemployment rate in the 1990s. The first section provides an overview of aggregate unemployment trends, inflation, and price and wage Phillips curves. The second section examines the effect of demographic changes on the unemployment rate. The third section examines the impact of the 150 percent increase in the number of men in jail or prison since 1985 on the unemployment rate. The fourth section examines the impact of evolving labor market intermediaries (namely worker profiling by the Unemployment Insurance system and the growth of the temporary help industry) on the unemployment rate. The fifth section explores whether worker bargaining power has become weaker, allowing for low unemployment and only modest wage pressure, because of worker job anxiety, the decline in union membership, or increased competitive pressures. The final section examines the impact of the tightest labor market in a generation on poverty. Our main findings are that changes in the age structure of the labor force, the growth of the male prison population, and, more speculatively, the rise of the temporary help sector, are the main labor market forces behind the low unemployment rate in the late 1990s.