Thibaut Lamadon Why Do Larger Firms Have Lower Labor Shares? We use population panel data on firms and workers in Norway to estimate how a firm's output, use of input factors, and payment to labor change in response to exogenous changes in revenues due to shifts in its product demand or productivity. These estimates allow us to draw causal inferences about how firms change the way they produce as they grow and why larger firms have lower labor shares. We develop and estimate a model to quantify the relative importance of three sources for variation in labor shares across firms: i) the shape of the labor supply curve facing the firm, ii) differences in the returns to scale between labor and other inputs, and iii) heterogeneity across firms in the output elasticities of input factors. We employ instrument variable strategies to isolate plausibly exogenous sources of variation in the revenues of firms. We compare these instrumental variable estimates to OLS estimates and document the biases that arise when using cross-sectional data to draw conclusions about how firms grow and why larger firms have lower labor shares.

Nuria Rodriguez-Planas The effect of school peers on intimate partner violence: Evidence from peers’ genetic predisposition to alcohol consumption Using quasi-random variation in peer composition across grades within schools and genetic measures from the Add Health study, we analyze how high school peers’ genetic predisposition to alcohol consumption impacts women’s risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization in early adulthood. We find that a one standard deviation increase in peers’ average genetic predisposition to alcohol consumption raises females’ probability of being victimized by their partner by 4.5 percentage points, about three-fifths of the size (in absolute value) of the effect induced by a one standard deviation increase in parental socio-economic status. This effect operates primarily through social network formation. While exposure to peers with a high genetic predisposition to alcohol use does not influence the victims’ own drinking or risk-taking behaviors, it increases their likelihood of forming friendships with other females who binge drink. Notably, the influence of high school peer exposure on victimization diminishes by later adulthood. These findings illuminate how peer environments in adolescence can shape vulnerability to IPV through social network formation, though the effects appear time-limited.

Join us as the 2023 Kheel Center Travel Grant winners present their research findings. The Richard Strassberg Travel Grant supports scholars conducting archival research at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives in Catherwood Library. Catherwood, located in the ILR School, is part of Cornell University Library. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from the recipients and explore their work! Program information will be sent upon registration. Speakers: Hillary Dann, producer/researcher for historical documentaries: "The Investigation of NYC Public School Teachers in the 1940s and 50s." and Hella Winston, sociologist and investigative reporterBryant Etheridge: A Program of Social Reform: The National War Labor Board, Wartime Wage Policy, and the Origins of the Great Compression, 1942-1945Daniel Goldstein: "Luigi Antonini and the Italian anti-Fascist exiles: a symbiotic relationship?"Hunter Moskowitz, Phd Candidate at Northeastern University: “Practical Men: “White Patriarchal Skill in the Global Textile Industry.”