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Research Abstract: The rapid expansion of the H2A temporary agricultural visa program has coincided with declining domestic farm employment and persistent specialization in U.S. agricultural production. This paper examines how the structure of labor access rather than the level of labor use is related to patterns of agricultural concentration across U.S. states. Using newly constructed labor and commodity concentration measures and state level panel data from 2015 to 2024, the analysis documents systematic co-movement between employer concentration in the H2A program and concentration in agricultural production. The results show that this relationship is highly asymmetric: extreme commodity dominance is associated with concentration of H2A employment at the single largest employer, but broader measures of labor and commodity concentration display no systematic relationship. At the same time, labor concentration declines as the scale of H2A employment increases, suggesting that dominance weakens as participation expands. Together, these findings indicate that labor and production concentration are linked primarily in thin, highly specialized markets, refining how labor market structure in agriculture should be understood.

Research Abstract The phrase “Economists agree that tariffs cause inflation” has echoed across headlines, but this claim warrants closer scrutiny. Guided by the Russian proverb trust, but verify, this research examines the relationship between tariffs and inflation in the United States through a two-part empirical analysis. First, it applies Granger causality and time series methods to more than a century of macroeconomic data, from 1913 to 2024, to test whether changes in tariff rates predict movements in CPI inflation. Second, it uses a Difference in Differences framework on the 2018 US–China tariffs to assess how tariff passthrough varies by product-level demand elasticity and firm pricing power. This study finds overall tariffs have a deflationary effect on the American economy. This study also names a behavioral pneumonia and introduces it as the concept of FUDflation: a price distortion driven not by actual tariff costs, but by the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt surrounding them. Firms in concentrated markets appear to raise prices on inelastic goods in anticipation of tariffs, while elastic goods show no comparable response. These findings suggest a disconnect between firm level cost shocks and consumer level price outcomes, driven more by expectations than expenses. By challenging standard trade models such as Heckscher–Ohlin and Ricardian theory, this research offers a behaviorally grounded framework for understanding tariff induced price dynamics, with direct implications for how the Federal Reserve interprets and responds to trade policy shocks.