Lisa Kahn | University of Rochester Do Workforce Development Programs Bridge the Skills Gap? Abstract: Most U.S. states have workforce development programs that offer firms grants to train their own workers. We create unique data linkages between participating firms, employment, and vacancies to explore the determinants and consequences of such programs. Training grants are more prevalent in markets where firms face greater employee poaching risk, suggesting these programs help overcome a market failure in updating worker skills. After training, firms experience prolonged employment growth and downskilling in their job posts, relative to a matched control group. Training appears to help firms move toward optimal scale and expand opportunities for less skilled workers.

David Titus Immigration Policies and Human Capital: The Impact on Undocumented College Attendance Abstract: I estimate the impact of Universal E-Verify laws on the college attendance of undocumented Hispanics in the United States. I do so by implementing a series of event studies that account for staggered adoption across time, and I use a random forest algorithm as my primary approach for predicting undocumented status. My results indicate that Universal E-Verify laws lower the college attendance of undocumented Hispanics ages 18-24 by about 3.7 percentage points. This is a large effect, as I find that only 15.7 percent of undocumented Hispanics ages 18-24 in treated states were enrolled in college following the passage of the laws. This effect is robust to using logical imputation on non-citizen Hispanics to proxy undocumented immigrants, using a logit model instead of random forest, testing for migration spillover effects to bordering states, and considering potentially confounding impacts of other state-level policies. I explore potential mechanisms by developing a model explaining avenues through which Universal E-Verify can affect college education, and I test this model’s implications. I find suggestive evidence that the effect is driven by a negative labor market shock on undocumented adults ages 25-54, which likely leads to worse schooling for their children and renders college less attainable. These findings reveal that employment restrictions on working-age undocumented adults harm the human capital accumulation of undocumented children.