Abstract

Labor market policy analysts traditionally focus on supply-side issues like human capital accumulation and labor-leisure choice. A growing number of recent studies from many different countries, however, suggest that firms play a critical role in the fortunes of individual workers. In this lecture I will review the findings from this new literature and discuss an agenda for research on the impact of firms on many different aspects of modern economic life.

About Professor David Card

David Card is the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests include wage inequality, immigration, wages, education, anti-poverty programs, and health insurance. He co-authored the 1995 book Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, and coedited The Handbook of Labor Economics (1999 and 2011 editions), Seeking a Premier Economy: The Economic Effects of British Economic Reforms (2004); and Small Differences that Matter: Labor Markets and Income Maintenance in Canada and the United States (1992). He has also published over 90 journal articles and book chapters.

Card was co-editor of Econometrica from 1991 to 1995 and co-editor of the American Economic Review from 2002 to 2005. He taught at Princeton University from 1983 to 1996, and has held visiting appointments at Columbia University and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In 1992 he was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society, and in 1998 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1995 he received the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Prize, which is awarded every other year to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field. He was a corecipient of the IZA Labor Economics Award in 2006, and was awarded the Frisch Medal by the Econometric Society in 2007.