Todd Sørensen's Webpage

The bast way to contact me is through my personal. email: toddsorensen1@mac.com.
This is a total rework of my webpage, going heavy on DIY recently and writting this in old school html like when I was an undergrad in Computer Science 101 in 1998....

My CV

Students on Market

I am a letter writter for three students on the job market this year:
Masanori Kuroki (job market paper recently accepted at ILRR)
Kate Choi (job market paper recently accepted at JHE)
Briggs Depew (job market paper under review at JOLE)

My Research

I am a labor economist whose primary research areas are currently labor market frictions and immigration. As in two areas, not both at the same time. Except one paper.


Publications

"Hassle Costs, Price-Matching Guarantees and Price Competition: An Experiment." With Subhasish Dugar. Review of Industrial Organization, June 2006.

"Mexican Immigrants, the Labor Market Assimilation and the Current Population Survey: The Sensitivity of Results across Seeming Equivalent Surveys." With Fernando Lozano. International Migration, Forthcoming.

"A Laboratory Study of Auctions with a Buy Price". With Yvonne Durham, Matthew Roelofs and Steven Standifird. Economic Inquiry, Forthcoming.



Papers Under Review

"The Elasticity of Labor Supply to the Firm over the Business Cycle". With Briggs Depew, IZA Discussion Paper #5928.

A body of recent empirical work has found strong evidence that the labor elasticity of supply to the firm is finite, implying that firms may have wage setting power. However, these studies capture only snapshots of the parameter. We study this parameter over a period that provides substantial variation in the business cycle. Using a rich employee level dataset from the inter-war period, we are able to estimate the elasticity of supply to the firm during several recessions and expansions. Our analysis suggests that the elasticity is indeed lower during recessions, consistent with the comparative statics from the Burdett-Mortensen search model. This differential wage setting power over the business cycle provides an alternative explanation of the pro-cyclicality of wages.

"On Input Market Frictions and Estimation of Factors Demand". With Arnaud Dupuy. IZA Discussion Paper #5881.

In this paper we explore the impact of imperfectly competitive input markets on production function estimation. First order profit maximizing conditions are altered when frictions in input markets cause the elasticity of input supply to the firm to be finite. A consequence of this is that the standard econometric model used for production function estimation will be misspecified. We prove that, in all non trivial cases, finite elasticities of supply to the firm will lead to inconsistent estimates of production function parameters. Monte Carlo simulations show that the resulting bias can be economically significant.

"Do You Receive a Lighter Prison Sentence Because You are a Woman or a White? An Economic Analysis of Federal Criminal Sentencing Guidelines". With Ronald Oaxaca and Supriya Sarnikar. Previous Version: IZA Discussion Paper #2870.



Papers Under Preparation for Submission

"The Labor Market Value to Legal Status". With Fernando Lozano. IZA Discussion Paper #5492.



Non-Technical Publications


All California Labor

Link to archive on All California Labor


Screencasts

Below are some informative Screencasts I have recorded. I don't have my streaming server set up, so each file will take a while to download (they run from 10MB to 500MB)

Basic Unix
Basic LaTeX
Installing Commands from the Command Line in Stata
MLE in Stata
Maps in Stata
Intro to IPUMS analysis in web browser
Gautam Gowrisankaran on Structural Estimation
Also here is a .pdf guide to remote computing