Stephen G. Bronars is a Senior Economist in the Washington DC office of Welch Consulting. Dr. Bronars provides consulting services and serves as an expert witness for a wide range of labor and employment issues. His experience includes the analysis of allegations of discrimination against women and minorities in employment and housing, state and federal wage and hour disputes, economic damages, and the valuation of stock options and restricted stock units. He supervises research projects involving statistical analyses of large databases. Dr. Bronars has testified in matters involving selections in hiring, wrongful terminations, age discrimination, racial discrimination, and economic damages in both class action and single plaintiff cases.

Dr. Bronars received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. Before joining Welch Consulting, he was the Leroy Denman Jr. Regents Professor and Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Texas at Austin. He has held faculty positions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Texas A&M University, Yale University and the Wharton School, and is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Dr. Bronars’ published research covers a variety of topics in labor economics, microeconomics, and applied econometrics, including discrimination, collective bargaining, and immigration. His research is published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Econometrics, the Review of Economics and Statistics and as chapters in edited volumes.

SELECTED CASEWORK

Expert Witness, Employment Discrimination: Federal class action lawsuit alleging age discrimination related to a plant closing at a national printing services company. Analyzed human resource and job center data to show that differences in separation rates were caused by a lower application rate for transfers to other facilities among ADEA protected employees. Submitted report of findings and testified at trial.

Expert Witness, Wage & Hours: Illinois State class action suit alleging that employees of a large retail chain were subject to a common policy of underpayment for hours worked due to time shaving by store managers. Analyzed payroll, time punch, and cash register records to assess whether there was evidence of off-the-clock work. Showed that time punch data was unreliable for determining whether work was performed off-the-clock. Showed that inconsistencies between sales and time punch records were unrelated to manager incentives and varied widely among stores. Submitted report of findings.

Expert Witness, Wage & Hours: California class action suit alleging that employees of a home health service provider were subject to a common policy of not being paid for all overtime hours worked during service calls. Analyzed payroll records to assess how often, and in what amounts, overtime payments were made. Analyzed survey data collected by the plaintiff’s expert to show that the incidence and amount of alleged underpayment for overtime varied widely among putative class members. Submitted report of findings.

Expert Witness, Employment Discrimination: OFCCP allegations of gender discrimination in hiring at a manufacturing facility in the frozen food industry. Used econometric model of hiring pools based on job application data to calculate shortfall in the hiring of women. Provided substantive critique of the analysis of the OFCCP statistical expert. Submitted report of findings and testified at deposition.

Expert Witness, Valuation of Stock Options and Restricted Stock Units: Lawsuit between former executives and a high tech Silicon Valley firm concerning the value of severance packages resulting from resignations after a restructuring of the company. Analyzed corporate documents, contracts and historical stock returns to assess the value of options and RSUs and provide a critical assessment of the valuations provided by plaintiffs. Submitted report of findings.

Expert Witness, Economic Damages: Lawsuit involving wrongful death allegations against a small private university by a student athlete. Calculated the economic loss to parents and provided a substantive critique of the plaintiff’s expert report. Submitted report of findings and testified at trial.

Expert Witness, Racial Discrimination: Lawsuit involving allegations of discrimination in public school funding by state government. Analyzed publicly available data to calculate economic damages resulting from low test scores and low high school completion rates by minority students. Submitted report of findings and testified at deposition.

Expert Witness, Economic Damages: Served as expert in several lawsuits involving serious injuries, death, or wrongful termination, for both plaintiffs and defense. Calculated economic losses and damages. Submitted reports of findings and testified at depositions.

Consultant, Employment Discrimination: Prepared internal studies and audits for a large national retailer to assess possible adverse impact in promotions, job evaluations, and disciplinary actions. Examined possible shortfalls in management promotion pools by age, race and gender for comparably qualified internal candidates. Calculated differences in subjective and objective performance measures for managers by age, race and gender. Examined differences in disciplinary actions among both hourly and salaried employees by race and gender.

Consultant, Employment Discrimination: Nationwide class action lawsuit involving allegations of discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities and women employed at a large national retailer. Analyzed company human resource and payroll data to assess protected group differentials in hiring, assignment, pay, and promotions. Investigated patterns in racial and gender differences to assess common class issues. Performed analyses in support of expert reports and expert testimony.

Consultant, Employment Discrimination: Nationwide class action lawsuit involving allegations of discrimination against female managers at a large national retailer. Analyzed company human resource and payroll data to assess gender differentials in starting pay and pay changes for those promoted into and hired into management positions. Investigated patterns in gender differences results to assess common class issues. Performed analyses in support of expert reports and expert testimony.

Consultant, Employment Discrimination: Lawsuits involving allegations of racial and gender discrimination against a large financial services firm. Analyzed company human resource, payroll, and account data to examine allegations of discrimination in allocating accounts among financial advisors. Performed analyses in support of expert reports and expert testimony.

Consultant, Illegal Immigration Lawsuits: Provided statistical and economic analyses in support of expert reports and testimony in several cases where plaintiffs alleged that employers depressed wages by knowingly hiring and harboring illegal immigrant workers. Used statistical methods to analyze the plaintiffs’ allegations. Provided analysis and criticism, using economic theory and statistical methods, of the allegations that facilities that relied more heavily on immigrant labor paid lower wages than their competitors.