Showing results 1 - 7 of 7
January 21, 2021, Opinion: "Pay cuts and salary freezes have become an unfortunate hallmark of the Covid-19 recession. Over seven million employees have seen their wages drop since March, and a great many others have had their pay frozen. But a handful of companies have bucked this trend and increased pay despite the economic crisis. In November, yogurt maker Chobani announced that it was raising its workers’ lowest hourly wage from $13 to $15;…
| Zoe B. Cullen | Edward Glaeser | Christopher Stanton | Adi Sunderam
July 7, 2020, Paper, "The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) aimed to quickly deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of loans to small businesses, with the loans administered via private banks. In this paper, we use firm-level data to document the demand and supply of PPP funds. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that PPP loans led to a 14 to 30 percentage point increase in a business’s expected survival, and a positive but…
| Zoe B. Cullen | Edward Glaeser | Christopher Stanton
2020, Paper, "The threat of COVID-19 has increased the health risks of going to an office or factory, leading more workers to do their jobs remotely. In this paper, we provide results from firm surveys on both small and large businesses on the prevalence and productivity of remote work, and expectations about the persistence of remote work once the COVID-19 crisis ends. We present four main findings. First, while overall levels of remote work…
Shutdown Shock May Endure for Federal Workers. Michael Luca, January 17, 2019, Opinion, "The ongoing government shutdown has led to a temporary loss of pay for about 800,000 federal employees. When pressed on the subject, President Donald Trump remarked that people will “make adjustments.” The chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.."…
How Amazon’s Higher Wages Could Increase Productivity. Michael Luca, October 10, 2018, Paper, "Amazon recently made headlines by announcing that it would voluntarily increase its minimum hourly wage to $15. With a federal minimum wage of only $7.25, this pledge might seem like a curious decision — especially for a company as laser-focused on cost containment as Amazon. But thinking only about the costs involved in raising wages misses a key…
Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit. Michael Luca, April 11, 2017, Paper, "We study the impact of the minimum wage on firm exit in the restaurant industry, exploiting recent changes in the minimum wage at the city level. The evidence suggests that higher minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants. However, lower quality restaurants, which are already closer to the margin of exit, are…
Why We Don’t Value Flextime Enough. Michael Luca, March 3, 2017, Opinion, "Earlier this month, the city council in Copenhagen voted unanimously to give all municipal workers greater control over their schedules. The city’s 10,000 employees will work the same number of hours as before but with greater freedom to decide when that..." Link