Research
Research
Publications and Accepted Papers
"Why Don’t Eligible Workers Receive Unemployment Insurance?'' (with Eliza Forsythe), accepted Applied Economics Letters
Abstract: The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system is plagued by under-receipt. We investigate the reasons likely-eligible individuals do not receive benefits. We find this is largely driven by erroneous beliefs about ineligibility, which are correlated with proxies for worker sophistication and information access. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we find misinformation about eligibility increased dramatically surrounding the expiration of the extra weekly UI payments in August 2020, suggesting uncertainty about UI program extensions contributes to misinformation and suppresses program take-up.
Working Papers
"Gender Segregation and Hiring in Japanese Labor Markets over the Business Cycle" (Job Market Paper, Revise and Resubmit)
Abstract: Japanese employment norms strongly protect "regular'' jobs, which are predominantly held by men, while women are concentrated in "non-regular'' positions such as temporary or part-time work with fewer protections. This paper examines how male and female hiring rates respregular employment, whereas the gender difference in the cyclicality of hiring stems from hiring into non-regular employment. To explore this further, I identify three mechanisms behind the gender difference in the cyclicality of non-regular hiring. First, the share of non-regular hires is more counter-cyclical for men, suggesting that men crowd women out of non-regular hires when labor markets are slack. Second, decomposing non-regular employment shows that part-time, temporary, and daily jobs account for nearly 74% of the gender difference. Third, heterogeneity by marital status and family structure shows that married women drive most of the gender difference, primarily due to firm-side selection. Robustness checks, including a Bartik-style instrumental variable (IV) for labor market tightness, controls for migration selection, alternative hiring measures and reweighting procedures, reclassification of regular jobs, and correction for labor force selection and composition adjustments, consistently confirm the main results. Overall, Japanese labor markets are more fluid for women than men, leaving women with greater job security uncertainty when labor markets are slack. These results suggest that labor market policies should aim to stabilize hiring outcomes for women over the business cycle by addressing structural segmentation and firm-side selections.
"The Long-Term Wage Effects of Unemployment Rate at Graduation in Japan" (Draft available on SSRN)
Abstract: This paper investigates the long-term effects of labor market entry conditions on earnings in Japan, with a focus on gender disparities and the role of initial employment type at graduation. In the Japanese labor market, men are more likely to enter regular employment, characterized by permanent contracts and strong job security, while women are disproportionately represented in non-regular jobs, such as part-time, temporary, or fixed-term positions, which offer lower wages and fewer benefits. Exploiting temporal and regional variation in the unemployment rate at graduation, I estimate earnings trajectories over the first 20 years of labor market experience. First, I find that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate at graduation is associated with a 6.2% decline in contemporaneous earnings for men during the first decade, with the effect fading in the second decade. For women, the estimated effect is smaller (–0.8%) and statistically insignificant. Second, I find that higher unemployment at graduation significantly reduces the likelihood of securing regular employment by 5.1% for men and 3.5% for women, driven by non-managerial roles. Third, I find that starting one’s career in non-regular employment amplifies wage penalties, with earnings losses of 14.8% for men and 10.5% for women over the first decade, with the wage effects diminishing for men over the second decade. Overall, the findings suggest that the costs of entering the labor market during economic downturns are disproportionately borne by workers with less than 10 years of labor market experience, particularly those who begin in non-regular employment.
Research In Progress
“Policy Stability in the United States: Impacts on Firm Activity and Labor Markets”
"Renewable Energy Economic Analysis" (with Linda Larsen, Peter J. Fugiel, and Zichang Liu)
"A Composite Approach to Quantifying Clean Energy Jobs in Illinois'' (with Peter J. Fugiel and Abhinav Banthiya)
Reports and Other Writing
Forsythe, Eliza and Hesong Yang. “Understanding Unemployment Insurance Recipiency during the Covid-19 Pandemic” (2021) [Report prepared for the Department of Labor]
Report prepared for the Department of Labor Chief Evaluation Office Summer Data Challenge on Equity and Underserved Communities. http://publish.illinois.edu/elizaforsythe/files/2022/04/ForsytheYang_DOL.pdf