Course work is done! And other updates.

With a Micro II final on Monday and my paper presentation in Labor II on Tuesday, my course work is officially done! I have a labor comprehensive exam in the beginning of June, but the field exams aren't nearly as strenuous as the core theory exams.

So that leaves the dissertation to finish up. I hope to propose at the end of the summer. It has evolved somewhat over the last year. It is still three essays on connections to the labor market. The first essay on Georgia's job creation tax credit is going to be expanded to include some microdata work too. I've also discovered that Georgia phases in an investment tax credit using the same rules as the job creation credit, so I can't really separate them. That means the whole paper will have to be reframed as an evaluation of the impact of state tax credits on employment. The second essay is going to pull back from the details of the options model. The easy way to put it is that I'm doing an occupational choice model for STEM workers, but it's a little more involved than that. I'm am specifically looking at sorting behavior across occupations that are unrelated to college degree field, and how that sorting affects our estimates of the return to a STEM degree. This essay falls under my bigger Sloan Foundation grant umbrella. The final essay is going to be an evaluation of South Carolina's incentives for apprenticeship training using standard non-experimental methods (likely difference in differences, matching, and I'd like to try my hand at a synthetic control method. We'll see what fits best).

Lots of things to do besides the dissertation, though. I'm continuing to work on the Sloan project and drafting my second report for the National Academy of Engineering on the engineering technologist workforce. I am also revising and resubmitting an article on home production and time use at the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. These three and studying for the comprehensive exam are going to fill my month of May.

In the fall I have a panel on generalized maximum entropy methods accepted for the Southern Economic Association conference in Atlanta. I it is similar to but some differences from the EEA panel I chaired this spring. I also have a paper on a panel submitted to APPAM's conference in Albuquerque in November (the first cut at my second dissertation essay). I haven't heard back on that one yet.

Two big things are in the pipeline - a forthcoming article in the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy on women and apprenticeships, and a resubmission to the Review of Industrial Organization on title insurance. I just received copy edits from the publisher for a book chapter on unemployment too. I also have a short report on student visas transitioning to the workforce that looks like it's going to come out through the Urban Institute, although it needs a little work right now, and another short report on the minimum wage that is currently with editors at the Economic Policy Institute.

I imagine blogging will still be sparse, but I hope to have one more post in the very near future. It will also be about labor markets, specifically the one that I am supplying my labor to.

Caroline studying for the Micro II final with me