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Earnings losses of Connecticut workers affected by mass layoff are calculated using administrative data. Estimated reductions are initially more than 30 percent and six years later, as much as 15 percent. The Connecticut estimates are smaller than comparable ones from Pennsylvania administrative data but similar to those from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and Department of Workforce Services (DWS). Earnings reductions in Connecticut and Pennsylvania are concentrated among Unemployment Insurance recipients. An unusually high proportion of Unemployment Insurance beneficiaries in Pennsylvania explains the larger estimated losses relative to other studies. Fixed-effects, random growth, and matching estimators produced similar earnings loss estimates suggesting each is relatively unbiased in this context.

In Lifecycle Events and Their Consequences: Job Loss, Family Change, and Declines in Health, editors Kenneth A. Couch, Mary C. Daly, and Julie Zissimopoulos bring together leading scholars to study the impact of unexpected life course events on economic welfare. The contributions in this volume explore how job loss, the onset of health limitations, and changes in household structure can have a pronounced influence on individual and household well-being across the life course. Although these events are typically studied in isolation, they frequently co-occur or are otherwise interrelated. This book provides a systematic empirical overview of these sometimes uncertain events and their impact. By placing them in a unified analytical framework and approaching each of them from a similar perspective, Lifecycle Events and Their Consequences illustrates the importance of a coherent approach to thinking about the inter-relationships among these shifts. Finally, this volume aims to set the future research agenda in this important area.

A microeconomics principles course employing random assignment across three sections with different teaching models is used to explore learning outcomes as measured by a cumulative final exam for students who participate in traditional face-to-face classroom instruction, blended face-to-face and online instruction with reduced instructor contact time, and a purely online instructional format. Evidence indicates learning outcomes were reduced for students in the purely online section relative to those in the face-to-face format by 5 to 10 points on a cumulative final exam. No statistically significant differences in outcomes are observed for students in the blended relative to the face-to-face section.

The ability of nonexperimental estimators to match impact estimates derived from random assignment is examined using data from the evaluation of two interdistnct magnet schools. As in previous within-study comparisons, nonexperimental estimates differ from estimates based on random assignment when nonexperimental estimators are implemented without pretreatment measures of academic performance. With comparison groups consisting of students drawn from the same districts or districts with similar student body characteristics as the districts where treatment group students reside, using pretreatment test scores reduces the bias in nonexperimental methods between 64 and 96 percent. Adding pretreatment test scores does not achieve as much bias reduction when the comparison group consists of students drawn from districts with different student body characteristics than the treatment group students' districts. The results suggest that using pretreatment outcome measures and comparison groups that are geographically aligned with the treatment group greatly improves the performance of nonexperimental estimators.

Studies have tested the claim that blacks are the last hired during periods of economic growth and the first fired in recessions by examining the movement of relative unemployment rates over the business cycle. Any conclusion drawn from this type of analysis must be viewed as tentative because cyclical movements in the underlying transitions into and out of unemployment are not examined. Using Current Population Survey data matched across adjacent months from 1989–2004, this article provides the first detailed examination of labor market transitions for prime-age black and white men to test the last hired, first fired hypothesis. Considerable evidence is presented that blacks are the first fired as the business cycle weakens. However, no evidence is found that blacks are the last hired. Instead, blacks appear to be initially hired from the ranks of the unemployed early in the business cycle and later are drawn from nonparticipation. The narrowing of the racial unemployment gap near the peak of the business cycle is driven by a reduction in the rate of job loss for blacks rather than increases in hiring.

Introduces articles from a special issue of this journal that focuses on fertility effects of access to condoms and environmental tax.

Introduces articles from a special issue focusing on property tax relief and vision screening in elementary schools.