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Author: Braun, Christine

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1.	Braun, Christine
1.	Crime and the Minimum Wage Review of Economic Dynamics 32 (April 2019): 122-152. Also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094202518302941 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Society for Economic Dynamics Keyword(s): Crime; Geocoded Data; Labor Market Outcomes; Minimum Wage; State-Level Data/Policy Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. How does the minimum wage affect crime rates? Empirical research suggests that increasing a worker's wage can deter him from committing crimes. On the other hand, if that worker becomes displaced as a result of the minimum wage, he may be more likely to commit a crime. In this paper, I describe a frictional world in which a worker's criminal actions are linked to his labor market outcomes. The model is calibrated to match labor market outcomes and crime decisions of workers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and shows that the relationship between the aggregate crime rate and the minimum wage is U-shaped. The results from the calibrated model, as well as empirical evidence from county level crime data and state level minimum wage changes from 1995 to 2014, suggest that the crime minimizing minimum to median wage ratio for 16 to 19 year olds is 0.91. However, the welfare maximizing minimum to median wage ratio is 0.87, not equal to the crime minimizing value. The median wage of 16 to 19 year olds in the United States in 2018 was $10, suggesting that any federal minimum wage increase up to $8.70 may be welfare improving.
	Bibliography Citation Braun, Christine. "Crime and the Minimum Wage." Review of Economic Dynamics 32 (April 2019): 122-152.

2.	Braun, Christine
2.	Essays on Frictional Labor Markets and Measurement Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2018 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Crime; Geocoded Data; Job Search; Labor Market Outcomes; Minimum Wage; State-Level Data/Policy; Unemployment Insurance Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The first essay asks the question: How do changes in the minimum wage affect criminal activity? I answer this question by describing a frictional world in which a worker's criminal actions are linked to his labor market outcomes. The model is calibrated to match labor market outcomes and crime decisions of workers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and shows that the relationship between the aggregate crime rate and the minimum wage is U-shaped. The results from the calibrated model as well as empirical evidence from county level crime data and state level minimum wage changes from 1995 to 2014 suggest that the crime minimizing minimum to median wage ratio for 16-19 year olds is 0.91. However, the welfare maximizing minimum to median wage ratio is 0.87, not equal to the crime minimizing value. The second essay, joint with Ben Griffy, Bryan Engelhardt and Peter Rupert, asks the question: Is the arrival rate of a job independent of the wage that it pays? We answer this question by testing how, and to what extent, unemployment insurance changes the hazard rate of leaving unemployment across the wage distribution using a Mixed Proportional Hazard Competing Risk Model and data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Controlling for worker characteristics we reject that job arrival rates are independent of the wages offered. We apply the results to several prominent job-search models and interpret how our findings are key to determining the efficacy of unemployment insurance.
	Bibliography Citation Braun, Christine. Essays on Frictional Labor Markets and Measurement. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2018.

3.	Braun, Christine Engelhardt, Bryan Griffy, Benjamin S. Rupert, Peter
3.	Testing the Independence of Job Arrival Rates and Wage Offers Labour Economics 63 (April 2020): 101804. Also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537120300105 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Job Search; Unemployment Insurance; Wage Dynamics Is the arrival rate of a job independent of the wage that it pays? We answer this question by testing whether unemployment insurance alters the job finding rate differentially across the wage distribution. To do this, we use a Mixed Proportional Hazard Competing Risk Model in which we classify quantiles of the wage distribution as competing risks faced by searching unemployed workers. Allowing for flexible unobserved heterogeneity across spells, we find that unemployment insurance increases the likelihood that a searcher matches to higher paying jobs relative to low or medium paying jobs, rejecting the notion that wage offers and job arrival rates are independent. We show that dependence between wages and job offer arrival rates explains 9% of the increase in the duration of unemployment associated with unemployment insurance.
	Bibliography Citation Braun, Christine, Bryan Engelhardt, Benjamin S. Griffy and Peter Rupert. "Testing the Independence of Job Arrival Rates and Wage Offers." Labour Economics 63 (April 2020): 101804.

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