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Measuring the Effects of Employment Protection Policies for the Disabled: Theory and Evidence from the Americans with Disabilities Act

Author

Listed:
  • Serena Rhee

    (Department of Economics, University of Hawaii)

  • Soojin Kim

    (Purdue University)

Abstract

We evaluate the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA) using a directed search model in which firms post health-contingent wage contracts. We theoretically show that the ADA benefits disabled workers at the expense of non-disabled workers if firms face a high penalty for preferentially hiring non-disabled, whereas the disabled are worse off if the expected cost from terminating a disabled employee is high. Our estimation results imply that disabled job-finding and job-separation rates decreased, suggesting that for firms, the cost of hiring discrimination is lower than disabled worker termination. Overall, the ADA caused a 2:2 percentage point decline in disabled employment rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Serena Rhee & Soojin Kim, 2016. "Measuring the Effects of Employment Protection Policies for the Disabled: Theory and Evidence from the Americans with Disabilities Act," Working Papers 201621, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hai:wpaper:201621
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    Cited by:

    1. Naoki Aizawa & Soojin Kim & Serena Rhee, 2020. "Labor Market Screening and the Design of Social Insurance: An Equilibrium Analysis of the Labor Market for the Disabled," NBER Working Papers 27478, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ding Liu & Daniel L. Millimet, 2021. "Bounding the joint distribution of disability and employment with misclassification," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1628-1647, July.
    3. Gustavo de Souza, 2020. "Employment and Welfare Effects of the Quota for Disabled Workers in Brazil," Working Paper Series WP 2023-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    4. Simonetti, Irene & Belloni, Michele & Farina, Elena & Zantomio, Francesca, 2022. "Labour market institutions and long term adjustments to health shocks: Evidence from Italian administrative records," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Americans with Disabilities Act; employment protection; search friction; wage posting; job-finding rate;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J78 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Public Policy (including comparable worth)
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law

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