Joshua Angrist: Difference between revisions

Similar to his research on the economics of education, Angrist's research on labour economics also often seeks to exploit quasi-natural experiments to identify causal relationships. In a publication derived from his dissertation, Angrist e.g. exploits the [[Draft lottery (1969)|military draft lottery]] during the [[Vietnam War]] to estimate that fighting in [[Vietnam]] reduced veterans' lifetime earnings by about 15% relative to those of nonveterans.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2006669 Angrist, J.D. (1990). Lifetime earnings and the Vietnam era draft lottery: evidence from social security administrative records. ''American Economic Review'', 80(3), pp. 313-336.]</ref> Taking into account [[veterans' benefits]] that subsidized education and training (e.g. through the [[G.I. Bill]]), he finds that these benefits raised schooling in the U.S. by ca. 1.4 years and veterans' earnings by 6%.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2524309 Angrist, J.D. (1993). The effect of veterans benefits on education and earnings. ''ILR Review'', 46(4), pp. 637-652.]</ref> In further work exploiting the idiosyncracies of U.S. military recruitment, Angrist studies the labour market impact of voluntary military service in the 1980s, estimating that voluntary soldiers serving in the 1980s earned considerably more than comparable civilians while serving and experienced comparatively higher employment rates thereafter, even though it raised their long-run civilian earnings at best modestly and - for whites - reduced them.<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/2998558 Angrist, J. (1998). Estimating the labor market impact of voluntary military service using social security data on military applicants. ''Econometrica'', 66(2), pp. 249-288.]</ref> Together with Krueger, Angrist also investigated with Krueger whether U.S. [[World War II veterans]] earned more than nonveterans, finding instead that they earned at most as much as comparable nonveterans.<ref>[https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/298344 Angrist, J., Krueger, A.B. (1994). Why do World War II veterans earn more than nonveterans? ''Journal of Labor Economics'', 12(1), pp. 74-97.]</ref> Angrist and Krueger later on summarized their work on causality in labour economics in a chapter of the ''Handbook of Labor Economics'', with special emphasis on [[control variable|controls]] for [[confounding variable]]s, [[fixed effects model]]s and [[difference-in-differences]], [[instrumental variables estimation]] and [[regression discontinuity design]]s.<ref>[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1573446399030047 Angrist, J.D., Krueger, A.B. (1999). Empirical strategies in labor economics. In: Ashenfelter, O.C., Card, D. (eds.) ''Handbook of Labor Economics'', vol. 3A. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 1277-1366.]</ref> In another study related to the U.S. military, Angrist and John H. Johnson IV use the [[Gulf War]] to estimate the effects of work-related separations on military families, showing large differences between the impact of male and female soldiers' deployment on divorce rates and spousal labour supply.<ref>[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001979390005400103 Angrist, J.D., Johnson J.H. IV (2000). Effects of work-related absences on families: Evidence from the Gulf War. ''ILR Review'', 54(1), pp. 41-58.]</ref> In work with [[William Evans (economist)|William Evans]], Angrist exploited families' preference for having siblings of mixed sex to estimate children's impact on parental labour supply, observing that family size had no impact on husbands' labour supply and that the impact on women was being overestimated through [[ordinary least squares|OLS]].<ref>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/116844 Angrist, J.D., Evans, W.N. (1996). Children and their parents' labor supply: Evidence from exogenous variation in family size. ''American Economic Review'', 88(3), pp. 450-477.]</ref> In further work with Evans, he also explored the impact of the 1970 state abortion reforms on schooling and labour market outcomes, arguing that they reduced Afro-American teen fertility and thereby raised black women's rates of high school completion, college attendance and employment.<ref>[https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S0147-9121(99)18020-8/full/html Angrist, J.D., Evans, W.N. (2000). Schooling and labor market consequences of the 1970 state abortion reforms. ''Research in Labor Economics'', pp. 75-113.]</ref> In another study with Acemoglu, Angrist has also analysed the consequences of the [[Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990]] (ADA), finding a sharp drop in employment of persons with disabilities (PwDs) shortly after its inception, thus suggesting that ADA has likely hurt PwDs' labour market outcomes.<ref>[https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/322836?mobileUi=0 Acemoglu, D., Angrist, J.D. (2001). Consequences of employment protection? The case of the Americans with Disabilities Act. ''Journal of Political Economy'', 109(5), pp. 915-957.]</ref> Angrist has also studied the U.S. marriage market, finding - by exploiting endogamy in marriages - that high male-female sex ratios increased the likelihood of female marriage and decreased their [[labour force participation]].<ref>[https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/117/3/997/1933067?redirectedFrom=fulltext Angrist, J. (2002). How do sex ratios affect marriage and labor markets? Evidence from America's second generation. ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'', 117(3), pp. 997-1038.]</ref> Together with [[Adriana Kugler]], Angrist finds that labour market institutions that reduce labour market flexibility exacerbate native job losses from immigration, especially regarding restricted product markets.<ref>[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0297.00136 Angrist, J.D., Kugler, A.D. (2003). Protective or counter-productive? Labour market institutions and the effect of immigration on EU natives. ''Economic Journal'', 113(488), pp. F302-F331.]</ref> Angrist and Kugler also investigated the relationship between [[coca]] prices and civil conflict in [[Colombia]], observing that financial opportunities offered by coca cultivation fueled the conflict, with cultivated rural areas witnessing pronounced increases in violence.<ref>[https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest.90.2.191 Angrist, J.D., Kugler, A.D. (2008). Rural windfall or a new resource curse? Coca, income, and civil conflict in Colombia. ''Review of Economics and Statistics'', 90(2), pp. 191-215.]</ref>