Nathan Lazarus

I am a graduate student in economics at the Massachusetts Institutute of Technology. Previously, I worked for Simon Jäger as a research assistant at the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA) and as a research assistant for Mordecai Kurz and Kenneth Judd at Stanford University.

Here’s a link to my CV.

Publications

How Substitutable Are Workers? Evidence from Worker Deaths

Abstract (click to expand)

We estimate how exogenous worker exits affect firms’ demand for incumbent workers and new hires. Drawing on administrative data from Germany, we analyze 34,000 unexpected worker deaths, which, on average, raise the remaining workers’ wages and retention probabilities. The average effect masks substantial heterogeneity. Coworkers in the same occupation as the deceased see positive wage effects; coworkers in other occupations experience wage decreases when a high-skilled or specialized worker dies. Our findings imply substantial replacement costs, which are larger in thin markets and when skills are specialized.

Simon Jäger, Jörg Heining, Nathan Lazarus

September 2024 Conditionally Accepted, American Economic Review

Work in Progress

The Impacts of Predictive Scheduling Laws

Abstract (click to expand)

We study the consequences of predictive scheduling laws for wages, emmployment, hours, and the variability of hours worked. A number of states and municipalities have recently passed these laws, which require employers to give their employees advance notice before of their schedules. We are interested in both the first stage, whether these laws succeed in making worker schedules more predictable, as well as the downstream consequences for wages, total employment and hours. We use data from US cell phone pings to quantify the volatility of schedules, and complement and validate this using time clock data from a payroll services provider. We document novel descriptives about the volatility of worker schedules and find small positive impacts of these laws on volatility.

Nathan Lazarus, Whitney Zhang

The Increasing Scientific Content of Innovations in the 19th Century

Matthew Lee Chen, Nathan Lazarus

Intervening to Reduce Lead Pollution from Lead-Acid Battery Charging and Recycling

Mikey Jarrell, Nathan Lazarus

Price Distortions from Factor Apportionment

Nathan Lazarus, Ian Sapollnik

Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Response to a Comment

Abstract (click to expand)

We reply to the comments of Roodman (2022) regarding the data and econometric specifications of Duflo (2001). We replicate Roodman’s results and agree with his comments about the errors in the coding of variables. We run additional specifications that seek to correct for the age-differentiated wage dilation issue he describes in the original 1995 data, finding mixed results. We further add data from the 2011-12 SUSENAS survey and find that the treatment effects on long-run wages become substantially larger, in line with the results of Hsiao (2021). We also discuss additional weak instrument corrections.

Esther Duflo, Mikey Jarell, Nathan Lazarus

GitHub