Three Empirical Essays In Labor Economics

The first essay is titled "Ending Benefits for the Long-Term Unemployed; The Unreliability of Evidence from the North Carolina Experiment." This paper utilizes a natural experiment that took place on July 1, 2013, when North Carolina became the first state to deny federal aid that provided unemployment insurance for all individuals that had been out of work between 19 and 73 weeks. Six months later, the federal government followed suit by allowing the expiration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation, eliminating long term unemployment benefits for the rest of the nation. In this analysis, I develop a gross flows data set with the Current Population Survey microdata. Using the natural experiment setup through timing differences of policy changes, regression analysis finds a significant decrease in the number of unemployed, but fails to find evidence of labor force movements into employment or out of the labor force in response to the elimination of long-term unemployment benefits in North Carolina. The second essay is titled, "Post-Congressional Lobbying by the 111th and 112th Congresses." This paper analyzes the characteristics of Congresspersons that join lobbying firms following their time in office. A newly constructed data set from the 111th and 112th U.S. Congresses and probit regression analysis, provide evidence, that the revolving door from the halls of Congress into lobbying firms exhibits preference for individuals with backgrounds in law, increased tenure, and service on powerful Congressional committees, while there appears to be no preference for specific ideologies, gender, party affiliation, or other types of pre-Congressional experience. Additionally, there has been a decrease in the desirability of conservative lawmakers that coincides with the conclusion of the K Street Project to put former Republican lawmakers in lobbying positions. The third essay is titled, "Labor Market Impacts of Marcellus Shale Gas Development: 2006 to 2011". This paper uses a newly constructed dataset to analyze income, employment, and poverty impacts from the rapid increase in natural gas production in the Marcellus gas play located under New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. In counties where production of natural gas has increased from 2006 to 2011, there have been increases in levels of employment and median income and a decrease in poverty. Using county-level production data, as well as an original instrument, the employment multiplier from production is an estimated five times smaller than that projected when development in the area began.