Taylor Watson

Wage theft is a pervasive issue for American workers, yet research on the subject is stymied by underreporting: workers fear retaliatory firing if they report. This paper investigates if reporting decisions are affected by work-contingent government transfers, as they should make remaining employed more attractive, increasing the cost of being fired. Using variation in state Earned Income Tax Credits over time, I find that increases in transfers are associated with lower reporting counts, analyzing at the ZIP code level. To confirm that this decrease truly reflects changes in reporting rather than a decrease in wage theft itself, I estimate the relationship between transfers and several intensive-margin outcomes of wage theft. Finding no evidence that transfers decrease wage theft intensity, I conclude that transfers reduce reporting propensities.

When a government intervenes in a workplace to enforce regulations, there are generally two outcomes: a primary outcome (firm ends the misbehavior) and secondary outcomes (the firm adapts its production to the new status quo). While the former is well documented, the latter is less understood, particularly at the micro level. This paper estimates these secondary effects using Census micro data on plants investigated by the US Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA). Each year, OSHA conducts nearly 40,000 surprise inspections, enforcing safe conditions and ensuring compliance as the plant implements the required safeguards. In the plant responses to these enforcement actions, I find important heterogeneity of effect depending on the severity of the enforcement: while minor enforcement actions cause increases in employment and probability of plant survival, major enforcements have the opposite effect. I explain this heterogeneity using a model of plant decisions on safety. Plants are heterogeneous in their productivity, leading to heterogeneous safety allocations. When OSHA inspections enforce full compliance, this acts as a negative shock to labor productivity. Facing competitive output and labor markets, high productivity firms are able to adapt and thrive, while low productivity firms struggle and close.

The exacerbating fertility crisis has renewed interest in the drivers of fertility choice. I estimate the importance of an under-researched factor, social capital, using a distinct historical experiment: the spread of the Grange Movement in the late 19th Century. This group was dedicated to fostering strong communities through education and social inclusion. I digitize archives of chapter formation and dissolution, and link them to the full-count Censuses to produce a novel panel dataset of individuals and their hometown Grange status. I then exploit the quasi-random nature of chapter formation, wherein organizers travelled between towns in plausibly-exogenous routes, to construct an instrument for Grange presence. I first show that Granges had a positive causal impact on social capital, using the formation of high schools as a proxy. I then estimate the effects of Grange exposure on fertility, finding strong positive effects. Policymakers interested in raising fertility rates should consider policies which will increase social capital as an effective mechanism.