Research

Innovation in the U.S. economy depends critically on the productivity of its knowledge workers. This study examines how unionization and the associated changes in wage-setting institutions affect labor market outcomes and productivity among academic scientists and engineers—a central segment of the knowledge economy. While existing research has explored the effects of unions in broader labor markets, much less is known about their impact in high-skill sectors characterized by substantial worker heterogeneity and uneven mobility across career stages, which may shape how labor market adjustments occur.

This study provides one of the first causal analyses of unionization in U.S. higher education, a setting central to the production of innovation and high-skill human capital. Leveraging restricted microdata from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), the staggered adoption of faculty unions across U.S. universities, and state-level variation in the implementation of Right-To-Work and public-sector collective bargaining laws, we plan to estimate the short- and long-run impacts of union recognition and contract ratification on wages, employment, sorting, and research productivity. We combine staggered difference-in-differences designs with state-level variation to isolate the causal effects of union exposure. The SDR enables us to track individual scientists’ earnings, employment trajectories, and research output across sectors, allowing us to examine both wage-setting and mobility responses.

Preliminary evidence using institution-level data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) suggests limited aggregate wage effects. However, there is substantial heterogeneity across faculty ranks and clearer adjustment along employment margins. In particular, both earnings and employment decline for associate and assistant professors relative to other ranks, while effects for senior faculty and non-tenure-track positions are smaller and less precisely estimated. These patterns suggest that unionization may operate less through uniform wage compression and more through differential adjustments across the tenure track, with implications for the composition of the academic workforce and long-run institutional productivity outcomes.

We examine whether legalizing local alcohol sales affects traffic safety, exploiting close local option elections in Texas as a quasi-random source of variation. Over 300 Texas cities voted to legalize alcohol sales between 2003 and 2019. Legalization generated large increases in off-premise alcohol licenses (liquor stores and grocery stores) with little change in on-premise establishments, and shifted alcohol sales from bars and restaurants toward retail outlets for home consumption. Despite these large changes in access, we find no meaningful increase in total crashes, DUI crashes, or fatal crashes, and no evidence of spillover effects on neighboring cities. This null result reflects which type of access was expanded: on-premise licenses are positively associated with crash rates while off-premise licenses are not, consistent with bars and restaurants (not retail stores) being the channel through which alcohol access raises traffic risk.

We will estimate the causal impact of legalized sports betting on the academic success of college students. Specifically, we employ a quasi-experimental research design to investigate how sports betting affects students’ academic performance and engagement, including course grades, classroom participation, and academic progress at Purdue University. Because betting activity and betting-related attention can respond sharply to the timing and salience of live sporting events, we leverage quasi-random variation in students’ exposure to such events that arises from the interaction of individual fandom and course-specific academic schedules. This design compares students with similar interests in sports who, due to differences in course schedules, are more or less exposed to games on the days of classes and exams, generating plausibly exogenous variation in engagement and wagering behavior. Our findings will inform university administrators and state lawmakers as they fine-tune policies surrounding this newly legalized practice, particularly with respect to its potential impacts on college students’ academic progress.