IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6927.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Art of Labormetrics

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel S. Hamermesh

Abstract

Using a wide array of examples from the literature and from original estimates, this essay examines the pitfalls that make good empirical research in labor economics as much art as science. Appropriateness and cleanliness of data are considered, as are problems of extreme observations and interactions. The validity of attempts to produce exogeneity using instrumental variables and natural experiments' is examined, as are the treatment of selectivity and unobservable individual effects. Testing empirical results to ensure that they make sense is stressed along with the importance of clear, economical and useful presentation of those results.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel S. Hamermesh, 1999. "The Art of Labormetrics," NBER Working Papers 6927, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6927
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6927.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manski, Charles F, 1991. "Regression," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 34-50, March.
    2. James J. Heckman, 1976. "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 475-492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. David Card, 1990. "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 43(2), pages 245-257, January.
    4. Voos, Paula B & Mishel, Lawrence R, 1986. "The Union Impact on Profits in the Supermarket Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(3), pages 513-517, August.
    5. Genesove, David & Mayer, Christopher J, 1997. "Equity and Time to Sale in the Real Estate Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 255-269, June.
    6. David S. Evans & Linda S. Leighton, 1995. "Retrospective Bias in the Displaced Worker Surveys," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 30(2), pages 386-396.
    7. Nada Eissa & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 1996. "Labor Supply Response to the Earned Income Tax Credit," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(2), pages 605-637.
    8. Gronau, Reuben, 1974. "Wage Comparisons-A Selectivity Bias," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1119-1143, Nov.-Dec..
    9. Tomas Philipson, 1997. "Data Markets and the Production of Surveys," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(1), pages 47-72.
    10. Mark D. Agee & Thomas D. Crocker, 1996. "Parental Altruism and Child Lead Exposure: Inferences from the Demand for Chelation Therapy," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(3), pages 677-691.
    11. Baker, Michael, 1997. "Growth-Rate Heterogeneity and the Covariance Structure of Life-Cycle Earnings," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(2), pages 338-375, April.
    12. Susan Dynarski & Jonathan Gruber, 1997. "Can Families Smooth Variable Earnings?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 28(1), pages 229-303.
    13. Richard Dusansky & Clayton J. Vernon, 1998. "Rankings of U.S. Economics Departments," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 157-170, Winter.
    14. Shin, Kwanho, 1997. "Inter- and Intrasectoral Shocks: Effects on the Unemployment Rate," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(2), pages 376-401, April.
    15. Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1982. "Social Insurance and Consumption: An Empirical Inquiry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 101-113, March.
    16. Avner Ahituv & V. Joseph Hotz & Tomas Philipson, 1996. "The Responsiveness of the Demand for Condoms to the Local Prevalence of AIDS," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(4), pages 869-897.
    17. Biddle, Jeff E & Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1990. "Sleep and the Allocation of Time," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 922-943, October.
    18. Patricia M. Anderson, 1993. "Linear Adjustment Costs and Seasonal Labor Demand: Evidence from Retail Trade Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(4), pages 1015-1042.
    19. Meyer, Bruce D, 1995. "Natural and Quasi-experiments in Economics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(2), pages 151-161, April.
    20. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1992. "Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction, and Employment Reallocation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 819-863.
    21. Deirdre N. McCloskey & Stephen T. Ziliak, 1996. "The Standard Error of Regressions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 97-114, March.
    22. Parsons, Donald O, 1980. "The Decline in Male Labor Force Participation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 117-134, February.
    23. Reuben Gronau, 1973. "Wage Comparisons -A Selectivity Bias," NBER Working Papers 0013, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. William N. Evans & Edward Montgomery, 1994. "Education and Health: Where There's Smoke There's an Instrument," NBER Working Papers 4949, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Bound, John, 1989. "The Health and Earnings of Rejected Disability Insurance Applicants," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(3), pages 482-503, June.
    26. Juster, F Thomas & Stafford, Frank P, 1991. "The Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 471-522, June.
    27. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    28. Hammond,J. Daniel, 1996. "Theory and Measurement," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521552059, January.
    29. Leslie A. Whittington & James Alm, 1997. "'Til Death or Taxes Do Us Part: The Effect of Income Taxation on Divorce," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(2), pages 388-412.
    30. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1985. "Unemployment Through the Filter of Memory," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(3), pages 747-773.
    31. Kristin F. Butcher & Anne Case, 1994. "The Effect of Sibling Sex Composition on Women's Education and Earnings," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 531-563.
    32. Joshua D. Angrist & Alan B. Keueger, 1991. "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 979-1014.
    33. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Stephen J. Trejo, 2000. "The Demand for Hours of Labor: Direct Evidence from California," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(1), pages 38-47, February.
    34. Herbert Grubel & Dennis Maki, 1976. "The effects of unemployment benefits on U. S. Unemployment rates," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 112(2), pages 274-299, June.
    35. Caballero, Ricardo J & Engel, Eduardo M R A & Haltiwanger, John, 1997. "Aggregate Employment Dynamics: Building from Microeconomic Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 115-137, March.
    36. Jonathan M. Thomas, 1997. "Public Employment Agencies and Unemployment Spells: Reconciling the Experimental and Nonexperimental Evidence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 50(4), pages 667-683, July.
    37. George J. Borjas, 1980. "The Relationship between Wages and Weekly Hours of Work: The Role of Division Bias," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 15(3), pages 409-423.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Medina-Durango, Carlos Alberto & Posso Suárez, Christian Manuel & Tamayo, Jorge A. & Monsalve, Emma, 2012. "Dinámica de la demanda laboral en la industria manufacturera colombiana 1993-2009 : una estimación panel VAR," Chapters, in: Arango-Thomas, Luis Eduardo & Hamann-Salcedo, Franz Alonso (ed.), El mercado de trabajo en Colombia : hechos, tendencias e instituciones, chapter 7, pages 289-330, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    2. Goolsbee, Austan & Klenow, Peter J, 2002. "Evidence on Learning and Network Externalities in the Diffusion of Home Computers," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 317-343, October.
    3. Per Pettersson, 2000. "Do Parties Matter for Fiscal Policy Choices," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1373, Econometric Society.
    4. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2004. "Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 115-133, March.
    5. Thomas Kniesner & W. Viscusi & James Ziliak, 2014. "Willingness to accept equals willingness to pay for labor market estimates of the value of a statistical life," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 187-205, June.
    6. Ardiana N. Gashi & Geoff Pugh & Nick Adnett, 2010. "Technological change and employer‐provided training: evidence from UK workplaces," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 31(4), pages 426-448, July.
    7. Dorothe Bonjour & Lynn F. Cherkas & Jonathan E. Haskel & Denise D. Hawkes & Tim D. Spector, 2003. "Returns to Education: Evidence from U.K. Twins," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1799-1812, December.
    8. Stephen T. Ziliak & Deirdre N. McCloskey, 2004. "Size Matters: The Standard Error of Regressions in the American Economic Review," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 1(2), pages 331-358, August.
    9. Almeida, Rita, 2007. "The labor market effects of foreign owned firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 75-96, May.
    10. Benito, A. & Oswald, A., 2000. "Commuting in Great Britain in the 1990s," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 560, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Bill Collier, 2000. "The UK Wage Curve: New Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey," Studies in Economics 0010, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    12. Almeida, Rita K., 2003. "The Effects of Foreign Owned Firms on the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 785, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Dorothe Bonjour & Lynn F. Cherkas & Jonathan E. Haskel & Denise D. Hawkes & Tim D. Spector, 2003. "Returns to Education: Evidence from U.K. Twins," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1799-1812, December.
    14. Lundin, Martin & Skedinger, Per, 2006. "Decentralisation of active labour market policy: The case of Swedish local employment service committees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 775-798, May.
    15. Benito, Andrew, 2000. "Commuting in Great Britain in the 1990s," Economic Research Papers 269331, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2000. "The Craft of Labormetrics," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 53(3), pages 363-380, April.
    2. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    3. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Stephen G. Donald, 2004. "The Effect of College Curriculum on Earnings: Accounting for Non-Ignorable Non-Response Bias," NBER Working Papers 10809, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Donal O'Neill, 2000. "Evaluating Labour Market Interventions," Economics Department Working Paper Series n990300, Department of Economics, National University of Ireland - Maynooth.
    5. Tito Boeri & Jan van Ours, 2013. "The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10142.
    6. Giovanni Gallipoli & Gianluigi Pelloni, 2013. "Macroeconomic Effects of Job Reallocations: A Survey," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 5(2), pages 127-176, December.
    7. Kuroda, Sachiko, 2010. "Do Japanese Work Shorter Hours than before? Measuring trends in market work and leisure using 1976-2006 Japanese time-use survey," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 481-502, December.
    8. Jonathan Gruber, 1994. "The Consumption Smoothing Benefits of Unemployment Insurance," NBER Working Papers 4750, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Balestra, Simone & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2017. "Heterogeneous returns to education over the wage distribution: Who profits the most?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 89-105.
    10. Luci Ellis & Jeremy Lawson & Laura Roberts-Thomson, 2003. "Housing Leverage in Australia," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2003-09, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    11. Peter Hull & Michal Kolesár & Christopher Walters, 2022. "Labor by design: contributions of David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 603-645, July.
    12. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2007. "Time to Eat: Household Production under Increasing Income Inequality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 89(4), pages 852-863.
    13. Card, David, 2001. "Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 22-64, January.
    14. Gottschalk, Peter & Moffitt, Robert, 1999. "Changes in Job Instability and Insecurity Using Monthly Survey Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(4), pages 91-126, October.
    15. Valletta, Robert G, 1999. "Declining Job Security," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(4), pages 170-197, October.
    16. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:2985-3028 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Colm Harmon & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2000. "The Returns to Education: A Review of Evidence, Issues and Deficiencies in the Literature," CEE Discussion Papers 0005, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE.
    18. Kajitani, Shinya, 2021. "The return of sleep," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    19. David Ratner, 2013. "Unemployment Insurance Experience Rating and Labor Market Dynamics," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-86, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. van der Klaauw, Bas, 2014. "From micro data to causality: Forty years of empirical labor economics," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 88-97.
    21. Ken Yamada, 2010. "Intertemporal Substitution in the Time Allocation of Married Women," Working Papers 27-2010, Singapore Management University, School of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J00 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - General
    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6927. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.