Matthew Johnson

Journal article Journal of Labor Economics · January 1, 2026 The long-term decline in US workers’ attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. We find that the swift rise of imports from China arising from a change in trade policy accounts for nearly all of this post-2000 acceleration: union certificati ... Full text Cite

The Labor Market Effects of Legal Restrictions on Worker Mobility

Journal article Journal of Political Economy · September 1, 2025 We analyze how the legal enforceability of noncompete agreements (NCAs) affects labor markets. Using newly constructed panel data, we find that higher NCA enforceability diminishes workers’ earnings and job mobility, with larger effects among workers most ... Full text Cite

LEGAL PROTECTION AGAINST RETALIATORY FIRING IMPROVES WORKPLACE SAFETY

Journal article Review of Economics and Statistics · September 6, 2024 —Workplace safety policies are designed to ensure that employers internalize the costs of injuries, but employers can undermine these policies with threats of dismissal. We show that states’ adoption of the public policy exception to at-will employment—an ... Full text Cite

Do safety management system standards indicate safer operations? Evidence from the OHSAS 18001 occupational health and safety standard

Journal article Safety Science · March 1, 2024 Problem definition: Given the enormous disruptions and costs of occupational injuries, companies and buyers are increasingly looking to voluntary occupational health and safety standards to improve worker safety. Yet because these standards only require im ... Full text Cite

Improving Regulatory Effectiveness through Better Targeting: Evidence from OSHA

Journal article American Economic Journal Applied Economics · January 1, 2023 We study how a regulator can best target inspections. Our case study is a US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program that randomly allocated some inspections. On average, each inspection led to 2.4 (9 percent) fewer serious injuries ov ... Full text Cite

Demand conditions and worker safety: Evidence from price shocks in mining

Journal article Journal of Labor Economics · January 1, 2022 We investigate how demand conditions affect employers’ provision of safety—something about which theory is ambivalent. Positive demand shocks relax financial constraints that limit safety investment but simultaneously raise the opportunity cost of increasi ... Full text Cite

Regulation by shaming: Deterrence effects of publicizing violations of workplace safety and health laws

Journal article American Economic Review · June 1, 2020 Publicizing firms' socially undesirable actions may enhance firms' incentives to avoid such actions. In 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began issuing press releases about facilities that violated safety and health regulations ... Full text Cite

Why are Low-Wage Workers Signing Noncompete Agreements?

Journal article Journal of Human Resources · January 1, 2020 Policymakers are concerned by evidence that noncompete agreements (NCAs) are widely used in low-wage jobs. We show that firms that would otherwise not use NCAs are induced to use one in the presence of frictions to adjusting wages downward. Using a new sur ... Full text Cite

Randomized government safety inspections reduce worker injuries with no detectable job loss

Journal article Science · May 18, 2012 Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and emplo ... Full text Cite