Publications

Forthcoming
Freeman RB, Liu X, Liu Z, Song R, Xiong R. "Minimum Wages and the Rise of Firms' Robot Adoption in China.". Forthcoming.Abstract
In this study, we analyze the impacts of minimum wages on firms’ robot adoption using novel panel data related to robots imported by firms in China from 2001 to 2012, a period when most of China’s robots are imported. We find that minimum wages raise firms’ robot adoption significantly. The effects of minimum wages on robot adoption are larger for firms in routine-intensive industries, for firms in labor-intensive industries, and for large firms. Employing robots significantly increases firms’ value added, labor employment, labor productivity, total factor productivity, and average wages. The firm-level production function estimations show that on average, one robot replaces about 15 workers in China.
Freeman RB. "Planning for the “Expected Unexpected”: Work and Retirement in the U.S. After the COVID-19 Pandemic Shock", in Lisa Berkman and Beth C. Truesdale (editors). In: Overtime: America’s Aging Workforce and the Future of "Working Longer". New York : Oxford University Press ; Forthcoming.Abstract

This chapter analyzes the implications of the unexpected 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic for work and retirement in the U.S. The pandemic induced the greatest loss of jobs in the shortest period of time in U.S. history. A slow economic recovery would surely have endangered work longer/retire later policies that seek to adjust the finances of Social Security retirement to an aging population. Boosted by the huge CARES (March 2020) and ARPA (April 2021) rescue packages, the early recovery from the COVID-19 recession was faster and stronger than the recovery from the 2007-2009 Great Recession. Even so, the pandemic greatly altered the job market, with workers suffering from long COVID having difficulty returning to work and more workers working from home. In its immediate effect and potential long-run impact, the pandemic recession/recovery is a wake-up call to the danger that shocks from the natural world pose to work and retirement. Realistic planning for the future of work and retirement should go beyond analyzing socioeconomic trends to analyzing expected unexpected changes from the natural world as well.

2024
Zhou S, Chai S, Freeman RB. Gender Homophily: In-Group Citation Preferences and the Gender Disadvantage. Research Policy. 2024;53 (1). Publisher's VersionAbstract
Based on an extensive sample of articles in the life sciences, we find that gender homophily in forward citations is substantial: compared to men-led articles (i.e., those with men as either the first or last author), women-led articles receive fewer forward citations from subsequent men-led articles and more forward citations from subsequent women-led articles. This occurs across life science fields with varying gender ratios. Forward citations flow differentially to papers led by women versus men for a variety of reasons, including the detailed field and scientific concepts covered in the articles, the journals in which they are published, article length, authors’ research experience, and the size of the author team. After accounting for this extensive set of factors, we find some forward citations appear to be driven by gender citation homophily – that is, gender alignment between citing and cited authors. This pattern greatly disadvantages women in fields where they are  underrepresented, leading to a gender citation gap, compared to more gender-balanced fields, where the gap is shrinking. We also find that articles written by more recent cohorts of scientists are subject to less gender citation homophily than earlier cohorts. Investigation into potential pathways by which gender citation homophily operates suggests it stems from
gendered specialization in research niches and, to a lesser extent, from gender homophily in professional connections among scientists, as opposed to from direct discrimination against unknown authors based on gender inferred from their names. Since gender homophily in citations impedes gender-indifferent knowledge flow in most fields, its adverse impact on science likely includes not only slowing women’s careers but also creating a less efficient diffusion of knowledge and recombination of work from earlier papers into newer work. 
gender_homophily_ms-post-scholar_sifan-sai-richard_2023.09.28.pdf
2023
Freeman RB, Yang B, Zhang B. “Data Deepening and Nonbalanced Economic Growth,”75 (March 2023): . Journal of Macroeconomics. 2023;75 (March). Publisher's VersionAbstract
As a newly emerging factor, data can promote economic growth by driving technological progress, and nonbalanced growth between digital industries and nondigital industries has been notable in recent years. This paper provides a novel growth model with two sectors that differ in the degree of data deepening and the factor structure of the production function. In the model, data in one sector is the by-product of economic activities not only in its sector, but also in the other sector. More importantly, data utilization within and across sectors can spur new ideas and promote technological innovation. The model indicates that increases in the stock of data in the two sectors have opposite effects on the allocation of skilled labor between the two sectors. The skill premium (the wage of skilled labor relative to the wage of unskilled labor) decreases with an increase in the fraction of skilled labor employed in the data-extensive sector. With credible parameter values, model calibration shows that faster growth of output occurs in the more data-intensive sector and the high skill premium persists in the long run.
Xie Q, Freeman RB. Creating and Connecting US and China Science: Chinese Diaspora and Returnee Researchers. 2023. Publisher's VersionAbstract
The close connection between US and China in scientific research and education in the 2000s produced a large group of China-born researchers who work in the US (“diaspora”) and a larger group of China-born researchers who gained US-research experience and returned to do their research in China (“returnee”). Analyzing 2018 Scopus data on research papers, we estimate that diaspora researchers contributed to 27% of US addressed papers, and that returnee researchers contributed to 38% of China addressed papers. Both the number of papers with diaspora authors and the number of papers with returnee authors far exceeded the usual measure of US-China collaborative work, papers with both US and China addresses. In terms of quality or impact, papers with diaspora or returnee authors averaged more citations and had higher proportions of publication in high CiteScore journals than other US-addressed or China-addressed papers. Finally, papers with diaspora and/or returnee authors were at the center of the US-China coauthor network and major conduits of research findings between the countries in the network of scientific citations. The benefits of the US-China research connection notwithstanding, the link between the countries’ research began to fray from 2018 through the early 2020s, with potential deleterious effects on each country’s future research output and on global science writ large to which US and China are the two biggest contributors.
dash_2024.01.20_wp31306_createconnect_chinadiasporareturnee.pdf
Blackburn B, Chan T, Cherot E, Freeman RB, Hu X, Matt E, Rhodes CA. Beyond Burnout: from Measuring to Forecasting. 2023. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Burnout of physicians and other medical personnel is a major problem in the economics of healthcare systems, potentially costing billions of dollars. Knowledge of the determinants and costs of burnout at the organization level is sparse, making it difficult to assess the net benefits of interventions to reduce burnout at the level where arguably the greatest change can be affected. In this paper, we use data from a midsize healthcare organization with about 500 clinicians in 2021-22 to advance analysis of clinical burnout in two ways. First, we estimate the costs of clinician burnout beyond the widely studied losses due to turnover. Including hard-to-measure and potentially long-term costs that arise from reduced patient satisfaction and lower productivity of burnt-out clinicians at work, our analysis suggests a much higher cost of burnout per clinician than previous estimates that exclude these costs. Second, we use standard medical billing and administrative operating data to forecast turnover and productivity of clinicians to serve as an early warning system. Accurate estimates of both the cost of burnout now and of likely future costs should help decision-makers be proactive in their approach to solving the burnout crisis currently affecting the healthcare industry. While our empirical analysis relates to a particular healthcare organization, the framework for quantifying the costs of burnout can be used by other organizations to assess the cost-effectiveness of ameliorative policies.
dash_31jan23_beyond_burnout_blackburn-etal.pdf
2022
Liu M, Bu Y, Chen C, Xu J, Li D, Leng Y, Freeman RB, Meyer ET, Yoon W, Sung M, et al. Pandemics are Catalysts of Scientific Novelty: Evidence from COVID-19. Meijun Liu, Yi Bu, Chongyan Chen, Jian Xu, Daifeng Li, Yan Leng, Richard B. Freeman, Eric T. Meyer, Wonjin Yoon, Mujeen Sung, Minbyul Jeong, Jinhyuk Lee, Jaewoo Kang, Chao Min10 | Min. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 2022;73 (8) :1065-78. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Scientific novelty drives the efforts to invent new vaccines and solutions during the pandemic. First-time collaboration and international collaboration are two pivotal channels to expand teams' search activities for a broader scope of resources required to address the global challenge, which might facilitate the generation of novel ideas. Our analysis of 98,981 coronavirus papers suggests that scientific novelty measured by the BioBERT model that is pretrained on 29 million PubMed articles, and first-time collaboration increased after the outbreak of COVID-19, and international collaboration witnessed a sudden decrease. During COVID-19, papers with more first-time collaboration were found to be more novel and international collaboration did not hamper novelty as it had done in the normal periods. The findings suggest the necessity of reaching out for distant resources and the importance of maintaining a collaborative scientific community beyond nationalism during a pandemic.
Freeman RB, Pan X, Yang X, Ye M. "Equal Sharing Motivates Lower-Ability Workers in Team Production," . VoxEU-CEPR. 2022;(November 5). Publisher's VersionAbstract

Most firms organise production around teams comprised of workers with varying abilities, and compensate workers according to their own or their team’s output. But little is known about how team members with different abilities respond to compensation thresholds, and analyses of teams in business settings typically focus on top performers. This column compares lower-ability participants in an experiment conducted among university students in China. Participants assigned to equal-sharing compensation schemes were more productive than those assigned to winner-takes-all, suggesting that organisations should consider how lower-ability workers respond to shared rewards.

Kunst D, Freeman RB, Oostendorp R. Occupational Skill Premia around the World: New Data, Patterns and Drivers. Labour Economics. 2022;79 :1-40. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Firms hire workers to undertake tasks and activities associated with particular occupations, which makes occupa-
tions a fundamental unit in economic analyses of the labor market. Using a unique dataset on pay in identically
defined occupations in developing and advanced countries, we find that in most countries occupational skill pre-
mia narrowed substantially from the 1950s to the 1980s, then widened through the 2000s, creating a U-shaped
pattern of change. The narrowing was due in part to the huge worldwide increase in the supply of educated
workers. The subsequent widening was due in part to the weakening of trade unions and a shift in demand to
more skilled workers associated with rising trade. The data indicate that supply, demand, and institutional forces
are all drivers of occupational skill premia, ruling out simple single factor explanations of change. The paper
concludes with a call for improving the collection of occupational wage data to understand future changes in the
world of work.
dash_1mar2021_final-ms-all_updated_occup_skill_premia_world_kunst-freeman-oostendorp.pdf
Freeman RB, Pan X, Yang X, Ye M. Team Incentives and Lower Ability Workers: An Experimental Study on Real-Effort Tasks Richard B. Freeman, Xiaofei Pan, Xiaolan Yang, and Maoliang Ye NBER Working Paper No. 30427. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Team incentives are important in many compensation systems that pay workers according to the output of their team as well as to their own output, with team bonuses often depending on whether the team meets or exceeds specified thresholds. Yet little is known about how team members with different abilities respond to compensation rules and thresholds. We contrast the performance of lower ability participants and higher ability participants in an experiment with three distribution schemes – equal sharing, piece rate sharing, and tournament style winner-takes-all – in settings with and without a team threshold. Workers randomly assigned to equal sharing had higher productivity than those assigned to winner-takes-all and had similar productivity to workers in piece-rate scheme. Output under equal sharing was boosted by the higher productivity of less able workers, possibly motivated by a desire to avoid guilt feelings about letting down their partners, per models of guilt aversion. Given a choice of distribution schemes, participants selected piece rate over equal sharing and favored both of these over winner-takes-all; in addition, a team threshold induced more concern about cooperation and thus greater preference for equal sharing. The findings suggest that organizations with teams of workers with varying abilities are likely to do better if the organization can consider lower ability workers’ responsiveness to sharing in rewards, e.g., to have an equal sharing component in its compensation system when they are strongly guilt averse.
dash_31oct22_wp30427_team_incentives_lower_ability_workers_experimental_study_on_real_effort_task.pdf
Freeman RB. “Planning for the “Expected Unexpected”: Work and Retirement in the US After the COVID-19 Pandemic Shock,” NBER WP # 29653 (January 2022). 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract

This chapter analyzes the implications of the unexpected 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic for work and retirement in the U.S.  The pandemic induced the greatest loss of jobs in the shortest period of time in U.S. history.  A slow economic recovery would surely have endangered work longer/retire later policies that seek to adjust the finances of Social Security retirement to an aging population.  Boosted by the huge CARES (March 2020) and ARPA (April 2021) rescue packages, the early recovery from the COVID-19 recession was faster and stronger than the recovery from the 2007-2009 Great Recession.  Even so, the pandemic greatly altered the job market, with workers suffering from long COVID having difficulty returning to work and more workers working from home.  In its immediate effect and potential long-run impact, the pandemic recession/recovery is a wake-up call to the danger that shocks from the natural world pose to work and retirement.  Realistic planning for the future of work and retirement should go beyond analyzing socioeconomic trends to analyzing expected unexpected changes from the natural world as well.

dash_31jan22_planning_for_expected_unexpected_workretirement_after_covid_wp-version.pdf
Barth E, Davis JC, Freeman RB, McElheran K. Twisting the Demand Curve: Digitalization and the Older Workforce. 2022. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Software represents a major and fast-growing share of firms’ capital investment, impacting demand for labor and what workers do on their jobs. Using U.S. Census Bureau panel data that link firms and workers, this paper estimates the effect of firm software capital on the earnings of workers by age group. We extend the AKM framework to include job-spell fixed effects that account for potential correlation between the worker–firm match and employee age, as well as including time-varying firm effects that allow for a correlation between wage-enhancing productivity shocks and software investments. Within job-spell, capitalized software investment raises worker earnings. However, it does so at a rate that declines after the age of 50, to about zero beyond 65. Our data further show that software capital increases the earnings of high-wage workers relative to low-wage workers and earnings in high-wage firms relative to low-wage firms, thereby widening earnings inequality within and across firms.

dash_twisting_demand_curve_barth-davis-freeman-mcelheran_12nov20.pdf
2021
Nunes A, Huh L, Kagan N, Freeman RB. “Estimating the Energy Impact of Electric, Autonomous Taxis: Evidence from a Select Market,” Environmental Research Letters (in press 2021). Open Access article. Environmental Research Letters. 2021. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Electric, autonomous vehicles promise to address technical consumption inefficiencies associated with gasoline use and reduce emissions. Potential realization of this prospect has prompted considerable interest and investment in the technology. Using publicly available data from a select market, we examine the magnitude of the envisioned benefits and the determinants of the financial payoff of investing in a tripartite innovation in motor vehicle transportation: vehicle electrification, vehicle automation, and vehicle sharing. In contrast to previous work, we document that 1) the technology’s envisioned cost effectiveness may be impeded by previously unconsidered parameters, 2) the inability to achieve cost parity with the status quo does not necessarily preclude net increases in energy consumption and emissions, 3) these increases are driven primarily by induced demand and mode switches away from pooled personal vehicles, and 4) the aforementioned externalities may be mitigated by leveraging a specific set of technological, behavioral and logistical pathways. We quantify –  for the first time – the thresholds required for each of these pathways to be effective and demonstrate that pathway stringency is largely influenced by heterogeneity in trip timing behavior. We conclude that enacting these pathways is crucial to fostering environmental stewardship absent impediments in economic mobility.  
Booth A, Freeman RB, Meng X, Zhang J. "Trade Unions and the Welfare of Rural-Urban Migrant Workers in China," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, (April 21) 2021. Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 2021. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Using a panel survey, the authors investigate how the welfare of rural-urban migrant workers in China is affected by trade union presence at the workplace. Controlling for individual fixed effects, they find the following. Relative to workers from workplaces without union presence or with inactive unions, both union-covered non-members and union members in workplaces with active unions earn higher monthly income, are more likely to have a written contract, be covered by social insurances, receive fringe benefits, express work-related grievances through official channels, feel more satisfied with their lives, and are less likely to have mental health problems.

Dosi G, Freeman RB, Pereira MC, Roventini A, Virgilllito ME. Impact of Deunionization on Growth and Dispersion of Productivity and Pay. Industrial and Corporate Change. 2021;30 (2 (April) :377–408. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This article presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that seeks to explain the concordance of sluggish growth of productivity and of real wages found in macroeconomic statistics, and the increased dispersion of firm productivity and worker earnings found in micro level statistics in advanced economies at the turn of the 21st century. It shows that a single market process unleashed by the decline of unionization can account for both the macro- and micro-economic phenomena, and that deunionization can be modeled as an endogenous outcome of competition between high wage firms seeking to raise productive capacity and low productivity firms seeking to cut wages. The model highlights the antipodal competitive dynamics between a “winner-takes-all economy” in which corporate strategies focused on cost reductions lead to divergence in productivity and wages and a “social market economy” in which competition rewards the accumulation of firm-level capabilities and worker skills with a more egalitarian wage structure.
Xie Q, Freeman RB. "The Contribution of Chinese Diaspora Researchers to China's Catching Up in Global Science and High-Tech Industries,” (revised Feb 2021). 2021. Publisher's VersionAbstract

This study examines the contribution of Chinese diaspora researchers – those born in China but working outside the country – to China's catching up in global science to become a world leader in research publications and citations. Using a novel name-based way to identify Chinese diaspora authors of scientific papers, we show that these researchers produce a large proportion of global scientific papers of high quality, gaining about twice as many citations as other papers of the same vintage. Our analysis also shows that diaspora researchers are a critical node in the co-authorship and citation networks that connect scientific discovery in China with the rest of the world. In co-authorship, diaspora researchers are over-represented on international collaborations with China-addressed authors. In citations, a paper with a diaspora author is more likely to cite China-addressed papers than a non-China addressed paper without a diaspora author; and, commensurately, China-addressed papers are more likely to cite a non-China addressed paper with a diaspora author than a non-China paper without a diaspora author. Through those pathways, diaspora research contributed to China’s 2000-2015 catch-up in science and to global science writ large, consistent with ethnic network models of knowledge transfer, and contrary to brain drain fears that the emigration of researchers harms the source country.

 

dash_24feb21_ms_contrib_of_china_diaspora_res_to_glob_sci_catchup_xie-rbf.pdf
Freeman RB. "Ownership Cures for Inequality", Chapter 21 in Olivier Blanchard and Dani Rodrik (editors). In: Combating Inequality: Rethinking Policies to Reduce Inequality in Advanced Economies. Cambridge : MIT Press ; 2021. Publisher's VersionAbstract

What, if anything, can the United States do to reverse the upward trend in inequality and the danger that it will lead to populist despotism or a corrupt oligarchy with laws made for the few, not for the many?

I propose two sets of policies. The first requires reforms in labor laws and regulations to better enable workers to organize and bargain collectively with employers. The second requires tax and procurement policies to encourage firms to develop employment ownership programs so that workers own some of the capital that employs them and additional policies that increase worker investments in capital more broadly. By operating on ownership of both labor and capital, the policies can modernize American economic institutions to fit the coming world of artificial intelligence (AI) robotics and avoid Madison’s Scylla and Charybdis choice between anarchy and corruption.

ownership_cures_for_inequality_freeman_ms-for-dash_24mar2020.docx
2020
Zhang D, Zhuge L, Freeman RB. “Firm Dynamics of Hi-Tech Start-ups: Does Innovation Matter?” Dongyang Zhang, Liqun Zhuge, Richard B. Freeman. China Economic Review 59 (Feb 2020): 1-17. China Economics Review. 2020;59 (February) :1-17. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Innovation plays a vital role in corporate issues since it brings potentially appreciable profits and shores up their statuses in certain fields, although it may also harness firms, especially smaller ones, with high survival risks. This concern brings forth our research topic: will participating in innovation activities diminish small firms' risk of exit from the market? Our paper concentrates on hi-tech start-ups and complements existing firm dynamic studies by adopting a comprehensive annual survey dataset from a considerable science park located in Beijing. Using an efficient discrete-time proportional hazards model, and thanks to extensive data available, we can take a deeper investigation into this topic. Our research complies with most of the previous studies that show that the benefit from innovativeness outweighs the cost and we solidify our conclusions by considering a few distinctive features existing in China's economy.
1_ms-dash_firm_dynamics_of_hi-tech_starts-ups_cer_01.pdf
Zhang D, Zhuge L, Freeman RB. Firm Dynamics of Hi-Tech Start-Ups: Does Innovation Matter? . China Economic Review. 2020;59. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Innovation plays a vital role in corporate issues since it brings potentially appreciable profits and shores up their statuses in certain fields, although it may also harness firms, especially smaller ones, with high survival risks. This concern brings forth our research topic: will participating in innovation activities diminish small firms' risk of exit from the market? Our paper concentrates on hi-tech start-ups and complements existing firm dynamic studies by adopting a comprehensive annual survey dataset from a considerable science park located in Beijing. Using an efficient discrete-time proportional hazards model, and thanks to extensive data available, we can take a deeper investigation into this topic. Our research complies with most of the previous studies that show that the benefit from innovativeness outweighs the cost and we solidify our conclusions by considering a few distinctive features existing in China's economy.
1_ms-dash_firm_dynamics_of_hi-tech_starts-ups_cer.pdf
Dosi G, Freeman RB, Pereira MC, Roventini A, maria Virgillito E. The impact of deunionization on the growth and dispersion of productivity and pay", NBER WP 26634 (January). 2020. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that seeks to explain the concordance of sluggish growth of productivity and of real wages found in macro-economic statistics, and the increased dispersion of firm productivity and worker earnings found in micro level statistics in advanced economies at the turn of the 21st century. It shows that a single market process unleashed by the decline of unionization can account for both the macro and micro economic phenomena, and that deunionization can be modeled as an endogenous outcome of competition between high wage firms seeking to raise productive capacity and low productivity firms seeking to cut wages. The model highlights the antipodal competitive dynamics between a “winner-takes-all economy” in which corporate strategies focused on cost reductions lead to divergence in productivity and wages and a “social market economy” in which competition rewards the accumulation of firm-level capabilities and worker skills with a more egalitarian wage structure.

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