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This dissertation explores labor as an essential component of supply chain operations. Collectively, these three essays contribute to the domains of labor economics, supply chain management, and public policy, demonstrating that employment structures, labor market responses, and inter-industry dynamics are sensitive to regulatory environments and institutional constraints. Methodologically, this dissertation leverages robust causal identification strategies, including synthetic controls, natural experiments, and difference-in-differences, to establish strong causal inference. Theoretically, it extends economic property rights frameworks and supply chain spillover models to account for legal frictions and institutional change. For scholars, it offers integrative frameworks to study firm boundary decisions and policy-induced labor effects. For policymakers, the results highlight the heterogeneous and sometimes unintended consequences of regulatory interventions. For supply chain practitioners, the research provides insight into labor availability, governance structures, and compliance challenges that influence strategic sourcing and workforce management.
The first essay (see Chapter 2) examines the consequences of California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), a landmark law addressing employee misclassification. Using a synthetic control method to identify causal impacts on employment dynamics in the trucking industry, I find a sharp decline in independent contractors (IC) and the shift toward vertically integrated employment models. This transformation is framed through Barzel and Allen’s (2023) lens of property rights theory, whereby I explore how legal property rights cascade to impact economic property rights. The findings reveal that AB5 triggered significant firm-level adjustments, particularly among larger carriers and intermodal drayage operators. The study contributes to organizational theory by offering a unique temporal setting for institutionalization and firm boundary decisions and advancing a unified theoretical framework for organizational structures.
The second essay (see Chapter 3) examines the local labor market effects of large multinational plants, termed “Million Dollar Plants” (MDPs), on employment in ancillary sectors, specifically transportation and warehousing. Leveraging a difference-in-differences design, the study compares “winning” counties that secure MDPs with “runner-up” counties, controlling for unobservable factors. This work highlights a surprising cannibalizing effect on local labor, underscoring the complex interplay between labor market dynamics and supply chain operations. Contrary to expectations, average spillover effects on local logistics employment are muted or negative but were found to be moderated by plant size. Higher-paying opportunities in transportation or manufacturing industries likely draw labor away from warehousing for larger MDPs. This study contributes by identifying boundary conditions to contextualize the direction of labor spillovers for transportation and warehousing industries through an additional perspective of county-level employment. These findings challenge conventional assumptions about regional economic development and underscore the nuanced dynamics of labor redistribution across industries.
The third essay examines the labor market consequences of the early termination of enhanced federal unemployment insurance (UI) benefits during the COVID-19 recovery. Using border discontinuities between states that ended benefits early and those that did not, I conduct a county-level analysis. The results are heterogeneous across temporal and regional dimensions, concentrated in goods-producing sectors with energy fracking activity. While the policy had limited immediate impact, it highlights the broader context of mechanisms in play during economic recovery. This essay contributes to conflicting empirical findings in pandemic recovery and debates on optimal unemployment policy and macro-labor responsiveness.
