It is a common observation that many individuals vote despite the fact that, in
elections with even a moderate number of voters, the probability their vote will be
pivotal is quite small. The theoretical solution of positing that individuals receive
utility from the act of voting itself \explains" why individuals vote, but it leaves
open the question of whether or not there is a signi cant margin of individuals
who consider the e ect of their vote on the outcome in deciding whether or not
to vote.
I develop a rational choice model of voting in union representation elections
(government supervised secret ballot elections, generally held at the workplace,
on the question of whether the workers would like to be represented by a union).
These elections provide a particularly good laboratory to study voter behavior
because many of the elections have su ciently few eligible voters that individuals
can have a substantial probability of being pivotal. I implement this model
empirically using data on over 75,000 of these elections held from 1972-2009.
The results suggest that most individuals (over 80 percent) vote in these elec-
tions independent of consideration of the likelihood that they will be pivotal.
Among the remainder, it appears that 1) the likelihood of voting falls with elec-
tion size, 2) the likelihood of voting increases with the expected closeness of the
election outcome, and 3) the marginal e ect of closeness on the likelihood of
voting increases in magnitude with election size. While the rst two ndings are
consistent with the standard rational choice model, the third is not. The results
suggest that, while these individuals consider rst-order variation in the proba-
bility that they will be pivotal, they do not carry out a complete calculation of
the probability of being pivotal.

We develop a model of the plaintiff’s decision to file a law suit that has
implications for how differences between the federal government and private litigants and
litigation translate into differences in trial rates and plaintiff win rates at trial. Our case
selection model generates a set of predictions for relative trial rates and plaintiff win rates
depending on the type of case and whether the government is defendant or plaintiff. In
order to test the model, we use data on about 350,000 cases filed in federal district court
between 1979 and 1997 in the areas of personal injury and job discrimination where the
federal government and private parties work under roughly similar legal rules. We find
broad support for the predictions of the model.

I examine changes in the incidence and consequences of job loss by reported
cause between 1981 and 1993 using data from Displaced Workers Surveys (DWS), con-
ducted as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS) in even years since 1984. The
overall rate of job loss is up somewhat in the 1990’s. The increase in job loss is larger
for older and more educated workers, but younger and less-educated workers continue to
have the highest rates of job loss. The rate of job loss due to plant closings has been fairly
constant over time while the rate of job loss due to ” slack work” moves counter-cyclically.
The most substantial changes are increases in the last several years in rates of job loss
due to ”position or shift abolished” and for other (unspecified) reasons. These changes in
composition are larger among more educated workers. Next I examine the consequences of
displacement for several post-displacement labor market outcomes, including the probabil-
ity of employment, full-time/part-time status, earnings, job stability, and self-employment
status. The consequences of job loss, which have always been substantial, do not appear
to have changed systematically over time. More educated workers suffer less economic loss
relative to income due to displacement than do the less educated. The more educated
have higher post-displacement employment rates, are more likely to be employed full-time,
have more stable employment histories, and suffer smaller proportional earnings losses on
average. Self-employment appears to be an important response to displacement, and older
workers and the more educated are more likely to turn to self-employment. Workers dis-
placed due to slack work are substantially less likely to be reemployed, and, among those
reemployed, are more likely to be working part-time relative to workers displaced for other
reasons.

In a seminal paper, Camerer, Babcock, Loewenstein, and Thaler (1997) find that the wage elasticity of daily hours of work New York City (NYC) taxi drivers is negative and conclude that their labor supply behavior is consistent with target earning (having reference dependent preferences). I replicate and extend the CBLT analysis using data from all trips taken in all taxi cabs in NYC for the five years from 2009-2013. Using the model of expectations-based reference points of Koszegi and Rabin (2006), I distinguish between anticipated and unanticipated daily wage variation and present evidence that only a small fraction of wage variation (about 1/8) is unanticipated so that reference dependence (which is relevant only in response to unanticipated variation) can,at best,play a limited role in determining labor supply. The overall pattern in my data is clear: drivers tend to respond positively to unanticipated as well as anticipated increases in earnings opportunities. Additionally, using a discrete choice stopping model, the probability of a shift ending is strongly positively related to hours worked but at best weakly related to income earned. These results are consistent with the neoclassical optimizing model of labor supply and suggest that consideration of gain-loss utility and reference dependence is not an important factor in these labor supply decisions.I explore heterogeneity across drivers in their labor supply elasticities and consider whether new drivers differ from more experienced drivers in their be-havior. I find substantial heterogeneity across drivers in their elasticities, but the estimated elasticities are generally positive and only rarely substantially nega-tive. I also find that new drivers with smaller elasticities are more likely to exit the industry while drivers who remain learn quickly to be better optimizers (have positive labor supply elasticities that grow with experience).

In negotiations where disputes are resolved via adjudication (as in the courts or
arbitration), beliefs about a potential adjudicated outcome are central in determining the
bargaining environment. The present research investigates how negotiators (trial attorneys and
students) involved in a hypothetical product liability case use information about adjudicated
outcomes regarding the amount of damages in previous similar cases in forming beliefs about
their own case. In particular, we examine how the parameters of the distribution of previous
outcomes (variance and range) contribute to the differences between the expected outcome and
the parties’ reservation values. We find that the range of earlier outcomes has no significant
effect on subjects’ reservation values but that the variance does have a systematic effect,
particularly on plaintiffs’ behavior.
A pair of separate findings may have important implications for the negotiation process.
First, whether or not subjects exhibited risk averse behavior depended on the role to which they
were assigned in a way that is consistent with the risk attitudes and framing notion implied by
Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory (1979). Second, only subjects assigned to roles for
which they had extensive experience exhibited over-optimism about the likely outcome.

The Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009 is associated with a dramatic weakening of the labor market from which, by some measures, it has not completely recovered. I use data from the Displaced Workers Survey(DWS) from 1984-2014 to investigate the incidence and consequences of job loss from 1981-2013. In particular, the 2010, 2012, and 2014 DWSs provide a window through which to examine the experience of job losers in the Great Recession and its aftermath and to compare their experience to that of earlier job losers. These data show a record high rate of job loss in the Great Recession, with almost one in six workers reporting having lost a job in the 2007-2009 period, that has not yet returned to pre-recession levels. The employment consequences of job loss are also very serious during this period with very low rates of reemployment and diff culty finding full-time employment. The reduction in weekly earnings for those job losers during the 2007-2013 period who were able to find new employment are not unusually large by historical standards. [JEL Classication: J63]

We study the reaction of stock prices to announcements of reductions in force
(RIFs) using a sample of nearly 3878 such announcements in 1176 large firms during the
1970-97 period collected from the Wall Street Journal Index. We note that, although
there has been a dramatic secular increase in news stories related to job loss, the total
number of actual announcements for the firms in our sample follows the business cycle
quite closely. We then examine changes over time in standard summary statistics (means,
medians, fraction negative) of the distribution of stock market reactions as well as changes
over time in kernel density estimates of this distribution. We find clear evidence that the
distribution of stock market reactions has shifted to the right (became less negative) over
time. One possible explanation for this change is that, over the last three decades, RIFs
designed to improve efficiency have become more common relative to RIFs designed to
cope with reductions in product demand. We find that, although this explanation shows
some promise, most of the decline in the negative average stock price reaction remains
unexplained.