New Releases by Alan B. Krueger

This paper uses a new administrative micro-data set to examine the effect of a legislated increase in the minimum and maximum workers'' compensation benefit on the duration of workplace injuries in Minnesota. As a result of legislation, workers in some earnings groups received higher benefits if they were injured after the effective date of the benefit increase, while workers in other earnings groups received the same benefit regardless of when they were injured. The analysis compares the change in mean log injury duration for workers who were affected by the benefit increase to that of workers who were not affected by the benefit increase. The findings indicate that the duration of injuries increased by 8 percent more for the group of workers that experienced a 5 percent increase in benefits than for the group of workers that had no change in their benefit. Additional findings suggest that employees of self-insured firms who are injured on the job tend to return to work faster than employees of imperfectly experience rated firms who incur similar injuries.

Veterans of World War II are widely believed to earn more than nonveterans of the same age. Theoretical justifications for the World War II veteran premium include the subsidization of education and training, and preference for veterans in hiring. In this paper, we propose and test an alternative view: that the observed World War II veteran premium reflects the fact that men with higher earnings potential were more likely to have been selected into the Armed Forces. An empirical strategy is developed that allows estimation of the effects of veteran status while controlling for correlation with unobserved earnings potential. The estimation is based on the fact that from 1942 to 1947 priority for conscription was determined in chronological order of birth. Information on individuals'' dates of birth may therefore be used to construct instruments for veteran status. Empirical results from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 Censuses, along with two other micro data sets, support a conclusion that World War II veterans earn no more than comparable nonveterans, and may well earn less. These results suggest that 015 estimates of the World War II veteran premium are severely biased by nonrandom selection into military service, and that the civilian labor market experiences of veterans of World War II were not very different from the experiences of Vietnam-era veterans.

This paper uses Current Population Survey data on a large sample of workers to estimate the determinants of participation in state workers'' compensation programs in the United States. The principal finding is Chat higher workers'' compensation benefits are associated with greater participation in the workers'' compensation program, after accounting for worker characteristics, state fixed effects, and other aspects of the workers'' compensation law. Moreover, this result holds for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing workers. Workers'' compensation benefits, however, have an insignificant effect on program participation for the sample of women. Overall, a 10% increase in benefits is associated with a 6.7% increase in program participation. In addition, the results show that the waiting period that is required before benefit payments begin has a substantial negative effect on participation in the workers'' compensation program. Finally, the parameters of the cross-sectional model are used to simulate the aggregate workers'' compensation incidence rate from 1969 to 1987. The growth in workers'' compensation claims in the 1970s appears to correspond reasonably well co the growth in real benefits that occurred during this time period.

Abstract: different industries. The major finding is that there is substantial.

This paper examines the properties and prevalence of measurement error in longitudinal earnings data. The analysis compares Current Population Survey data to administrative Social Security payroll tax records for a sample of heads of households over two years. In contrast. to the typically assumed properties of measurement error, the results indicate that errors are serially correlated over two years and negatively correlated with true earnings (i.e., mean reverting). Moreover, reported earnings are more reliable for females than males. Overall, the ratio of the variance of the signal to the total variance is .82 for men and .92 for women. These ratios fall to .65 and .81 when the data are specified in first-differences. The estimates suggest that longitudinal earnings data may be more reliable than previously believed.