Bio

I am an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. I work on topics in labor economics, crime, and behavioral economics.

Curriculum Vitae

Email: maxim.massenkoff@nps.edu

Working Papers

Wage Stagnation and the Decline of Standardized Pay Rates, 1974-1991

(with Nathan Wilmers)

Abstract (click to expand): Using new establishment-by-occupation microdata, we show that the use of discretionary wage-setting significantly expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. Increasingly, wages for blue-collar workers were not standardized by job title or seniority, but instead subject to managerial discretion. When establishments abandoned standardized pay rates, wages fell, particularly for the lowest-paid workers in a job and for those in establishments that previously paid above market rates. This shift away from standardized pay rates, in context of a broader decline in worker bargaining power, accelerated the decline in real wages experienced by blue collar workers in the 1980s.

Economic Outcomes of Strikers in an Era of Weak Unions

(with Nathan Wilmers)

Abstract (click to expand): From 1970 to 2000, US worker participation in labor strikes decreased by 90 percent. We show using understudied measures from labor market surveys that strikers also experienced worse outcomes after 1981. Event study evidence using the PSID suggests that strikers enjoyed 5-10 percent wage gains prior to the 1980s, but flat wage changes thereafter. Additional analysis of collective bargaining agreements and person-level data from the SIPP and CPS reinforce the finding that strikes since the 1980s have not been associated with increases in wages, hours, or benefits. These findings are consistent with decreased strike effectiveness, perhaps due to employers' higher propensity to hire strike replacements, or with more negative selection into "defensive" strikes that do not allow large pay increases.

Activity-adjusted crime rates show that public safety worsened in 2020

(with Aaron Chalfin)

Abstract (click to expand) : This paper argues that changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unusual divergence between crime rates and victimization risk in US cities. Most violent crimes declined during the pandemic. But analysis using foot traffic data shows that the risk of street crime victimization was elevated throughout 2020. People in public spaces were 15-30 percent more likely to be robbed or assaulted. This increase is unlikely to be explained by changes in crime reporting or selection into outdoor activities by potential victims. Traditional crime rates may present a misleading view of recent changes in public safety.

Racial inequality in the U.S. unemployment insurance system

(with Daphnè Skandalis and Ioana Marinescu)

Abstract (click to expand): The U.S. unemployment insurance (UI) system operates as a federal-state partnership, where states have considerable autonomy to decide on specific UI rules. This has allowed for systematically stricter rules in states with a larger Black population. We study how these differences in state rules create a gap in the unemployment insurance that Black and White unemployed workers receive. Using administrative data from random audits on UI claims in all states, we first document a large racial gap in the UI that unemployed workers receive after filing a new claim. Black claimants receive an 18% lower replacement rate (i.e., benefits relative to prior wage, including denials) than White claimants. In principle, the replacement rate of each claimant mechanically depends on the rules prevailing in her state and on her work history (e.g., the earnings before job loss and the reason for separation from prior employer). Since we observe claimants' UI-relevant work history and state, we are in a unique position to identify the role of each factor. After accounting for Black-White differences in work history, differences in rules across states create an 8% Black-White gap in replacement rate (i.e., slightly less than half of the overall gap). Using a standard welfare calculation, we show that states with the largest shares of Black workers would gain the most from having more generous UI rules. Altogether, our results highlight that disparate state rules in the UI institution create racial inequality without maximizing overall welfare.

Family Formation and Crime

(with Evan Rose)

Abstract (click to expand): We use administrative data from Washington State to perform a large-scale analysis of the impact of family formation on crime. Our estimates indicate that pregnancy triggers sharp declines in arrests rivaling any known intervention, supporting the view that childbirth is a "turning point" that reduces deviant behavior through social bonds. For mothers, criminal arrests drop precipitously in the first few months of pregnancy, stabilizing at half of pre-pregnancy levels three years after birth. Men show a sustained 20 percent decline in crime that begins at pregnancy, although arrests for domestic violence spike at birth. These effects are concentrated among first-time parents, suggesting that a permanent change in preferences---rather than transitory time and budget shocks---may be responsible. A separate design using parents of stillborn children to estimate counterfactual arrest rates reinforces the main findings. Marriage, in contrast, is not associated with any sudden changes and marks the completion of a gradual 50 percent decline in arrests for both men and women.

Job search and unemployment insurance: New evidence from claimant audits

Abstract (click to expand): Do higher unemployment insurance benefits reduce job search among the unemployed? I examine this question using data from verified audits of US claimants giving their weekly benefit amount, reservation wage, targeted occupation, and number of job contacts made. In a regression kink design, I find that weekly monetary benefits increase unemployment duration but have no impact on search behaviors. As evidence against misreporting, I show that reservation wages predict reemployment wages and decrease with unemployment duration and the local unemployment rate. These results suggest that explicitly measured search behaviors may not explain the duration response to benefits.

Work in Progress

The Determinants of Disparities in Reservation Wages

(with Daphnè Skandalis)

A New Racial Disparity in Traffic Fatalities

(with Aaron Chalfin)

Firm Segregation and the Black-White Wage Gap

(with Nathan Wilmers)

Nudges to Promote Truthful Earnings Reporting

(with Andrew Johnston)

Publications (pre-PhD)

Kill or die: Moral judgment alters linguistic coding of causality

(with Julian De Freitas, Peter DeScioli, Jason Nemirow, and Steven Pinker)

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2017

Abstract (click to expand): What is the relationship between the language people use to describe an event and their moral judgments? We test the hypothesis that moral judgment and causative verbs rely on the same underlying mental model of people’s actions. Experiment 1a finds that participants choose different verbs to describe the major variants of a moral dilemma, the trolley problem, mirroring differences in their wrongness judgments: they described direct harm with a single causative verb (Adam killed the man), and indirect harm with an intransitive verb in a periphrastic construction (Adam caused the man to die). Experiments 1b and 2 separate physical causality from moral valuation by varying whether the victim is a person or animal and whether the harmful action rescues people or inanimate objects. The results show that people’s moral judgments lead them to portray a causal event as either more or less direct and intended, which in turn shapes their verb choices. Experiment 3 finds the same basic asymmetry in verb usage in a production task in which participants freely described what happened

Equity or equality? Moral judgments follow the money

(with Peter DeScioli, Alex Shaw, Michael Bang Petersen, and Robert Kurzban)

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 2014

Abstract (click to expand): Previous research emphasizes people’s dispositions as a source of differences in moral views. We investigate another source of moral disagreement, self-interest. In three experiments, participants played a simple economic game in which one player divides money with a partner according to the principle of equality (same payoffs) or the principle of equity (payoffs proportional to effort expended). We find, first, that people’s moral judgment of an allocation rule depends on their role in the game. People not only prefer the rule that most benefits them but also judge it to be more fair and moral. Second, we find that participants’ views about equality and equity change in a matter of minutes as they learn where their interests lie. Finally, we find limits to self-interest: when the justification for equity is removed, participants no longer show strategic advocacy of the unequal division. We discuss implications for understanding oral debate and disagreement.

How universal is the Big Five? Testing the five-factor model of personality variation among forager–farmers in the Bolivian Amazon

(with Michael Gurven, Christopher von Rueden, Hillard Kaplan, and Marino Lero Vie)

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013

Abstract (click to expand): The five-factor model (FFM) of personality variation has been replicated across a range of human societies, suggesting the FFM is a human universal. However, most studies of the FFM have been restricted to literate, urban populations, which are uncharacteristic of the majority of human evolutionary history. We present the first test of the FFM in a largely illiterate, indigenous society. Tsimane forager– horticulturalist men and women of Bolivia (n
632) completed a translation of the 44-item Big Five Inventory (Benet-Martínez & John, 1998), a widely used metric of the FFM. We failed to find robust support for the FFM, based on tests of (a) internal consistency of items expected to segregate into the Big Five factors, (b) response stability of the Big Five, (c) external validity of the Big Five with respect to observed behavior, (d) factor structure according to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and (e) similarity with a U.S. target structure based on Procrustes rotation analysis. Replication of the FFM was not improved in a separate sample of Tsimane adults (n
430), who evaluated their spouses on the Big Five Inventory. Removal of reverse-scored items that may have elicited response biases produced factors suggestive of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, but fit to the FFM remained poor. Response styles may covary with exposure to education, but we found no better fit to the FFM among Tsimane who speak Spanish or have attended school. We argue that Tsimane personality variation displays 2 principal factors that may reflect socioecological characteristics common to small-scale societies. We offer evolutionary perspectives on why the structure of personality variation may not be invariant across human societies.

Teaching

Mistakey paper

Avi Feller and I wrote a problematic evaluation for his Program Evaluation course at the Goldman School. There are ten deliberate conceptual mistakes. (solutions)

Button

Liz Fosslien and I made a confusion button, which allows students to anonymously signal when they're confused in lecture. The lecturer page shows how many people press the button every 30 seconds. If you're curious to try this out in your class, email me and I'll be happy to set it up for you.

Website: Design by Xinyue Lin via Gautam Rao.