Labor Economics · Construction · Trucking · Occupational Safety · Occasional History
New Job at Air Force Academy
I am excited to share that this fall I will be starting a new job at the US Air Force Academy in the Office of Labor and Economic Analysis (OLEA) in Colorado Springs! OLEA produces research that informs Department of the Air Force personnel policy and decision making. I’m grateful to my mentors and colleagues at the University of Utah for their support along the way.
New Publication in Industrial Relations: Driver Pay and Trucking Safety
My paper with Walter Ryley and Michael Belzer, Intrastate Truck Driver Pay and Safety: A Longitudinal Analysis, is now out in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society. The core finding is that drivers who are paid more tend to have fewer crashes. What we add is the first large-scale longitudinal analysis of pay and safety in intrastate trucking, building on the cross-sectional analysis in Ju & Belzer 2024 and Ryley & Belzer 2024. Using a two-way fixed effects model, we show that the pay and safety relationship previously demonstrated using cross-sectional comparisons also holds true within the same carrier over time. ...
RMCOEH Interview
A couple of years ago, I was asked to do an interview about my work and experience at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (RMCOEH). It has since haunted me, as clips from this interview still play on a couple of monitors around the center. Still, it brought some things into focus I hadn’t put together. As my psychology colleagues say, research is me-search, but it’s sometimes difficult to see that until someone else points it out. Turns out, I was doomed to become obsessed with construction and trucking from the start. ...