Geoffrey Schnorr

Bio

I’m a PhD Candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis. I also work as a Research Data Specialist at the State of California’s Employment Development Department. Starting in October I will be a Postdoctoral Fellow with the California Policy Lab at UCLA.

My primary research interests are related to the design of social insurance and safety net programs. I am also interested in the economics of health behaviors. My recent work on the US Unemployment Insurance program has been funded by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and the Bilinski Educational Foundation.

Curriculum Vitae (Updated August 2021)

Fields: Public, Labor, Health

Email: gcschnorr@ucdavis.edu

Twitter: @GeoffSchnorr

Publications

Unemployment Insurance as a Worker Indiscipline Device? Evidence From Scanner Data

(with Lester Lusher and Rebecca Taylor)

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Forthcoming

Abstract (click to expand): We provide causal evidence of an ex-ante moral hazard effect of Unemployment Insurance (UI) by matching plausibly exogenous changes in UI benefit duration across state-weeks during the Great Recession to high-frequency productivity measures from individual supermarket cashiers. Estimating models with day and cashier-register fixed effects, we identify a modest but statistically significant negative relationship between UI benefits and worker productivity. This effect is strongest for more experienced and less productive cashiers, for whom UI expansions are especially relevant. Additional analyses from the American Time Use Survey reveal a similar increase in shirking during periods with increased UI benefit durations.

Working Papers

Claim Timing and Unemployment Insurance Benefit Generosity

Draft coming soon

Abstract (click to expand): Unemployment Insurance replaces a percentage of prior earnings while a claimant is out of work. To implement the program, policymakers must define a base period from which prior earnings are measured. I analyze two implications of this previously unexamined policy choice. First, for claimants with volatile enough earnings, a commonly used base period structure creates ''benefit risk''---a job loss at the wrong time implies lower benefit amounts. Second, since base periods are determined by the claim filing date, claimants can partially avoid the negative effects of this risk by strategically timing their claims. Using several new sources of administrative data from California’s Unemployment Insurance program, I make three contributions. First, I use a simple dynamic model of job search and Unemployment Insurance to show that the private welfare costs of benefit risk are large. The average claimant would trade 5% of their expected Unemployment Insurance benefits to eliminate exposure to benefit risk and this number rises substantially among young and especially low-income claimants. Second, I demonstrate that claim-timing responses can act as an effective solution to this problem. Some claimants strategically delay their claims after a job loss in order to receive higher benefits. Third, I provide suggestive evidence that information frictions are a key barrier to this mitigating behavior.

Am I my Brother's Barkeeper? Sibling Spillovers in Alcohol Consumption at the Minimum Legal Drinking Age

(with Eunju Lee)

Under review

Abstract (click to expand): We use data on sibling pairs near the minimum legal drinking age to provide causal estimates of peer effects in alcohol consumption. Following prior work on other outcomes, we exploit the discontinuous increase in alcohol consumption of the older sibling at the legal drinking age in a regression discontinuity design. Our preferred point estimates imply that the number of binge drinking days reported by the younger sibling decreases by 27% of the mean at the cutoff. While our estimates are somewhat imprecise, we are consistently able to rule out positive estimates from the existing literature. Our research design provides estimates which are interpretable as the causal effect of the peer's alcohol consumption. This is in contrast to most prior work which instead identifies the causal effect of exposure to the peer. We explain how this distinction matters for policy.

Work in Progress

Unemployment Insurance and Labor Supply During the Coronavirus Crisis

(with Alex Bell and Till von Wachter)

The Effect of Pandemic Added Benefits on Unemployment Insurance Take-up

(with Alex Bell and Till von Wachter)

Selected Pre-PhD Publications

Association of hospital costs with complications following total gastrectomy for gastric adenocarcinoma
(with Luke V. Selby and Renee Gennarelli)
JAMA Surgery, 2017

Overspending driven by oversized single dose vials of cancer drugs
(with Peter Bach, Rena Conti, Raymond Muller, and Leonard Saltz)
British Medical Journal, 2016

Comparing open radical cystectomy and robot-assisted laparoscopic radical cystectomy: a randomized clinical trial
(with Bernard Bochner, et. al.)
European Urology, 2015

Policy Work

California Unemployment Insurance Claims During the COVID-19 Pandemic
(with Alex Bell, Thomas J. Hedin, and Till von Wachter)
California Policy Lab Policy Brief, 2020 (updated frequently)
I am part of a team of researchers at the California Policy Lab working with the State of California’s Employment Development Department to analyze nearly real-time administrative Unemployment Insurance claims data during the Coronavirus crisis. Our findings have been released in a series of Policy Briefs, which you can find at the link above. This work has received media coverage from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, among others.

Employment and Earnings Among LA County Residents Experiencing Homelessness
(with Nefara Riesch and Till von Wachter)
California Policy Lab Policy Brief, February 2020

Website: Thanks to Gautam Rao and Xinyue Lin for making their code publicly available.