Cynthia Bansak

Immigration Reform and the Earnings of Latino Workers: Do Employer Sanctions Cause Discrimination?

This paper investigates whether employer sanctions for hiring undocumented workers introduced by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) adversely affected the hourly earnings of Latino workers in the southwestern U.S. We exploit the staggering of the sanctions and employee verification requirements across sectors to estimate this effect. In particular, IRCAs employer-sanctions provisions were not extended to agricultural employers until two years after their imposition on non-agricultural employers. Hence, Latino agricultural workers provide a control group against which to compare changes in the wages of Latinos in non-agricultural employment. We find substantial pre-post IRCA declines in the hourly earnings of Latino non-agricultural workers relative to Latinos in agriculture. This pattern, however, is considerably stronger for Latino men than Latina women. We do not observe similar inter-sectoral shifts in relative wages among non-Latino white workers. In fact, the relative wage changes for non-Latino white workers are of the opposite sign. Finally, the pre-post IRCA relative decline in Latino non-agricultural wages reverses the pre-IRCA trend, where we observe the relative earnings of Latino non-agricultural workers increasing

The Impact of Amnesty on Labor Market Outcomes: A Panel Study Using the Legalized Population Survey

This paper tests whether amnesty, a provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), affected the labor market outcomes of the legalized population. Using the Legalized Population Survey (LPS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1987-1992, a quasi-experimental framework is developed to assess the differential impact of amnesty on the legalized population relative to a comparison group. After the implementation of the amnesty program, employment fell and unemployment rose for newly legalized men relative to the comparison group of already legal U.S. residents. For women, employment also fell and transitions out of the workforce increased among the newly legalized population. Increasing returns to skill, as captured by English proficiency, only played an important role in explaining the employment of newly legalized women. Finally, newly legalized men and women enjoyed higher wage growth rates than their working native counterparts, perhaps owing to their comparatively growing returns to U.S. educational attainment over this period.

Technology, Capital Spending, and Capacity Utilization

This paper examines the relationships between technology, capital spending, and capacity utilization. Recent technological changes have increased the flexibility of relationships between inputs and outputs in manufacturing, which may have eroded the predictive value of the utilization rate. This paper considers how technology might be expected to affect utilization. We show that recent changes could either lower average utilization by making it cheaper to hold excess capacity, or raise utilization by making further changes in capacity less costly and time-consuming. We then examine the effects of technology on utilization, using data on 111 manufacturing industries from 1974 to 2000. The results suggest that, for the average industry, the technological change of that period had a modest but appreciable effect, shaving between 0.2 percentage point and 2.3 percentage points off the utilization rate.

Employment Verification Mandates and the Labor Market Outcomes of Likely Unauthorized and Native Workers

As recent efforts to reform immigration policy at the federal level have failed, states have started to take immigration matters into their own hands and researchers have been paying closer attention to state dynamics surrounding immigration policy. Yet, to this date, there is not a clear understanding of the consequences of enforcing E-verify on likely unauthorized immigrants and on native-born workers across the United States. This study aims to fill in that gap by analyzing the impact that the enactment of various types of E-verify mandates may have on the employment and wages of these two populations. We find that the enactment of both universal and public-sector only mandates reduce employment of likely unauthorized workers. Meanwhile, employment verification does not affect naturalized Hispanic workers but increases the employment likelihood of native workers. Impacts on wages are positive for likely unauthorized women suggesting a large labor supply reduction. For native-born workers, hourly wages also increase and provide some evidence of substitutability of unauthorized immigrants and non-Hispanic natives.

Cars, Employment, and Single Mothers: The Effect of Welfare Asset Restrictions

This article measures the effect of asset rules for welfare eligibility on car ownership among single mothers without a college education, and investigates whether these changes lead to changes in employment. We combine micro-level data with data on state welfare asset rules and find that the probability of owning a car is greater in states with higher overall asset limits, states that value vehicles on an equity basis, and states with exemptions for multiple vehicles.

The effects of gender composition of senior management on the economic fallout

In this article, we test the proposition that the presence of women in management impacts decision-making outcomes. In particular, we hypothesize that the greater the proportion of women on the senior management team, the lower the degree of risks taken at the firm level. Using data from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) and the US Treasury in this study, we create firm-level gender ratios and control for firm size to assess the impact on two separate risk outcome measures. We find some evidence that financial institutions with more women in the senior management team avoided having to accept Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, but that the proportion of women executives has no impact on stock return volatility.

The Role of Contingent Work in the War Against Poverty

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the success of work-based welfare reform in reducing welfare caseloads. While welfare reform was effective in lowering immediate welfare dependency, researchers have questioned its long-run success in alleviating poverty partially due to the precariousness surrounding the jobs held by welfare leavers. This paper addresses this concern by examining (1) the likelihood of taking a contingent job given ones welfare dependency and past poverty status; (2) the probability of being on welfare for different types of contingent workers relative to their non-contingent counterparts; and (3) the likelihood of living in poverty in the near future as a function of past employment in alternative types of contingent jobs.

Parental eligibility for public health insurance: a study of the State Children's Health Insurance Program and child coverage rates

This article investigates whether offering parental coverage for public health insurance increases coverage rates among children. Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), we examine the effect of parental benefits on participation rates of children in the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Our findings indicate a significant difference in take-up rates for children in states offering parental coverage compared to neighbouring states that did not in the period surrounding the introduction of the SCHIP program (1997–2002). Specifically, states offering parental coverage have greater program participation (on the order of 10% points) among children even after controlling for observable demographic characteristics and the households position in the income distribution. Thus, extending coverage to the parents of SCHIP-eligible children appears to be an effective strategy to reduce uninsurance rates among children.

Are Remittances Good for Your Health? Remittances and Nepal’s National Healthcare Policy

We examine the relationship between remittances and healthcare usage in Nepal. Nepal provides an important case study due to the recent introduction of a nationalized healthcare policy with heterogeneity across its districts. We find that remittance income leads to increased expenditures on higher-priced medical care and a higher likelihood of visiting a doctor. The medical spending results are stronger in districts targeted for social healthcare programs. While government initiatives to increase health care appear to be directing those with health needs to receive medical care, public funding or accessibility may be insufficient to adequately treat all needs.

Distributional Costs of Housing-price Bubbles: Who pays the Price when Bubbles Deflate?

Abstract In considering whether asset-price bubbles should be offset through policy, an important issue is who pays the price when the bubble bursts. A bust that reduces the wealth of well-off households only may have small welfare costs, but costs may be sizable if broad swaths of households are affected. This paper uses micro data on millions of households from the US American Community Survey to examine how the bursting of the 1998–2006 housing bubble affected households’ employment, homeownership, home values, and housing costs. To separate dynamics of the housing bust from those of the aggregate downturn, we differentiate between metropolitan areas that did and did not experience bubbles. We find that, for most measures, deteriorations in well-being were more severe in bubble metros than elsewhere, and for several measures, differential effects on less-educated households were also more severe. This underscores the importance of leaning against broad-based housing bubbles via appropriate policies, as burdens of adjustment fall differentially on people not well prepared to bear them.