Three essays in labor market analysis.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the influence of exogenous price changes on equilibrium behavior in three different settings. The first essay investigates the impact of oil price shocks on the employment and wages of production workers in the Oil and Gas Field Services industry. Labor is found to reallocate quickly across sectors in response to price shocks but substantial wage premia are necessary to induce such reallocation. The timing of these premia is at odds with the predictions of standard models---wage premia emerge quite slowly, peaking only as labor adjustment ends and then slowly dissipating. A dynamic market clearing model with sluggish movements in industry-wide labor demand is formulated and used to rationalize these findings. The parameters of the model are estimated via minimum distance and simulations are used in conjunction with auxiliary evidence to corroborate the implied dynamics of some important unobserved variables. The second essay examines the impact of the federal Empowerment Zone program---a series of spatially targeted tax incentives and block grants---on distressed urban neighborhoods. Utilizing a semi-parameterc difference-in-differences estimator we find that neighborhoods receiving EZ designation experienced moderate improvements in labor market conditions and sizeable increases in owner-occupied housing values and rents relative to rejected and future Empowerment Zones. These effects were accompanied by small changes in the demographic composition of the neighborhoods, suggesting that little of the observed improvements in EZ neighborhoods are the result of neighborhood churning. The third essay examines the impact of juvenile curfew laws on adolescent criminal behavior. The paper evaluates the effectiveness of curfew ordinances by comparing the arrest behavior of various age groups within a city before and after curfew enactment. The evidence suggests that curfews are effective at reducing both violent and property crimes committed by juveniles below the statutory curfew age. Curfews do not appear to be effective at influencing the criminal behavior of youth just above the curfew age, suggesting that the choice of statutory curfew age is important in crafting policy.