Current Research

How Much Can I Make? Insights on Belief Updating in the Labor Market (with Kenneth Chan)

How do people update their beliefs when encountering new information about labor market opportunities? We analyze data from a recent government survey (the Survey of Consumer Expectations) and find strong evidence of non-Bayesian learning at the aggregate level.

Recommended citation: Brown, Sebastian and Kenneth Chan. "How Much Can I Make? Insights on Belief Updating in the Labor Market." Working Paper, 2025. http://sebastiannbrown.github.io/files/JobSearchLearning.pdf

Combating Inequality with Transparency? Evidence from Colorado (with Thomas Fullagar)

Does greater transparency in job postings help to reduce wage differentials? We use a synthetic control approach to study the effect of a recent state-level law in Colorado requiring requiring employers to list expected salary information in job listings and do not find that it had its intended effect of reducing the gender pay gap.

Recommended citation: Brown, Sebastian and Thomas Fullagar. "Combating Inequality with Transparency? Evidence from Colorado." Working Paper, 2025. http://sebastiannbrown.github.io/files/PayTransparencyGenderGap.pdf

Labor Market Regulation and Independent Contractors: The Welfare of Drivers in the Taxi Industry

Project studying the labor market impact of recent legislation targeting independent contractors in the taxi and limousine services industry. Work in progress.

Baseball and life expectancy: evidence from linked historical data (with Joseph Price and Jacob Van Leeuwen)

We construct a new dataset that links information on professional baseball players with genealogical information about their family members. We find that MLB players live longer than their siblings, an effect that is made larger when comparing with minor league players to account for a possible income effect. The dataset that we’ve constructed provides a unique way to incorporate information from census and vital records to expand the types of measures that we have about professional athletes.

Recommended citation: Price, Joseph, Sebastian Brown, and Jacob Van Leeuwen. "Chapter 8: Baseball and life expectancy: evidence from linked historical data." In Historical Perspectives on Sports Economics: Lessons from the Field. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788977845. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788977845.00015