Luigi Pistaferri Insuring Labor Income Shocks: The Role of the Dynasty (with Fagereng ,Guiso, Ring) Abstract: We provide empirical evidence on the importance of a relatively understudied channel of insurance against labor income shocks: transfers from (cash-rich) parents to (cash-short) children when the latter experience negative wage shocks. Matching population data for Norway across two generations, we establish several results. First, parents make a transfer—i.e., run down liquid assets—when adult children experience negative labor income shocks. Consistent with dynastic insurance, we observe no transfers when income shocks are positive. Second, parents' responses depend on the nature of the shock. If losses are temporary, parents dissave; if they are persistent, parents save in order to make future transfers. Parental transfers offset 43% of temporary and 27% of persistent losses. Third, insurance is lower when children have other smoothing options, like spousal labor supply, and is greater for shocks to their own child versus a child’s spouse. Support also increases if the spouse’s parents can contribute, suggesting “competition for attention.” Lastly, insurance flows are one-way: children do not insure their parents against income losses.

Evan Riehl Disparate Impacts of Teacher Certification Exams Abstract: We use Texas administrative data to assess the long-standing claim that teacher certification exams discriminate against underrepresented minority (URM) candidates. In a regression discontinuity design, we find that failing a certification exam delays entry into teaching and costs the average candidate $10,000 in forgone earnings. These costs fall disproportionately on URM candidates both because they are more likely to fail and because their earnings losses from failing are 50 percent larger on average. To examine whether these disparities are justified by racial/ethnic differences in teaching quality, we develop a new measure of disparate impact and estimate it using a policy change that increased the difficulty of Texas' elementary certification exam. The harder exam reduced the URM share of new teachers but had no significant benefits for teaching quality or student achievement. Taken together, our findings show that certification exams have a disparate impact in the sense that they impose much larger economic costs on URM teaching candidates than on white candidates with similar potential teaching quality.

Meet with labor unions, law firms, and organizations dedicated to worker rights to learn about summer internship and full-time opportunities. NEW this year: Engage in informal chats with ILR alumni to explore careers in the labor movement, hear directly about the work, and build meaningful connections.