a paper economy of faith without faith in paper a reflection on islamic institutional history this article contributes to the literature on islamic institutional history by examining how the discounting of documents in islamic legal practice constrained the organization of early modern muslim trade it is argued that the reliance on literacy on the one hand and an islamic legal framework on the other gave early modern muslim traders a comparative advantage in economic organization but the lack of faith in paper as documentary evidence in islamic law posed fundamental constraints to the development of muslim economies

a theory of the cross sectional fertility differential job heterogeneity approach this article presents a theory of the cross sectional fertility differential which produces the negative wage fertility relationship based on job heterogeneity although evidence suggests the importance of job heterogeneity in the labor market it has largely been ignored in theories of fertility choice i show that a theory incorporating job heterogeneity requires only standard conditions on preferences to generate the negative wage fertility relationship and the negative relationship derived from the model is robust to changes in economic environments e g public policy and technology furthermore the theory reconciles the negative cross sectional wage fertility relationship with various time series variations in aggregate fertility

earnings rents and competition in the airline labor market transformation of the airline labor market continues long after deregulation airline wages changed little immediately following deregulation implying either the absence of regulatory rents or maintenance of product market power and union strength analysis for 1973 1997 however indicates that prior to recent gains the relative earnings of air transport workers decreased markedly during the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s some of the earnings advantage of airline workers represents returns to occupational skills and worker specific quality labor rents are attributable largely to union bargaining power which in turn is constrained by the financial health of carriers

is there a causal effect of working part time on current and future wages in this paper i study the causal effects of part time work on current and future wages to estimate these effects i use a random effects model with a wage equation capturing the employment history and a dynamic multinomial probit component for the choice of employment status exclusion restrictions from the institutional context are exploited to support identification the results suggest that working part time with few hours has a large causal effect on current wages but more extensive part time work does not reduce current wages however both types of part time work lead to negative long term wage effects

on the determinants of employer demand for part time workers this paper uses a survey of private establishments to examine the determinants of the firm s relative demand for partand full time workers the elasticity of substitution of part time for full time workers is about 1 5 considerably lower than previous estimates with aggregate data the results indicate that the quasi fixed labor costs have a negative impact on the proportion of part timers in a firm s work force

discrimination in the payment of full time wage premiums this study investigates how many hours must be worked per week in order for workers in different race and gender groups to receive a high hours full time wage premium an analysis of 1989 current population survey data shows that across occupations both white and black men received a full time wage premium for working at least 33 hours per week whereas white women had to work at least 37 hours and black women at least 39 hours to receive the premium controlling for occupation changes the threshold for black women to 33 hours but does not change the results for the other groups the authors find that the observed differences account for at most two percentage points of the wage differentials across race and gender

organized labor and racial wage inequality in the united states why have african american private sector unionization rates surpassed those of white workers for decades and how has private sector union decline exacerbated black white wage inequality using data from the current population survey 1973 2007 the authors show that african americans join unions for protection against discriminatory treatment in nonunion sectors a model predicted wage series also shows that among women black white weekly wage gaps would be between 13 and 30 lower if union representation remained at high levels the effect of deunionization on racial wage inequality for men is less substantial but without deunionization weekly wages for black men would be an estimated 49 higher the results recast organized labor as an institution vital for its economic inclusion of african american men and women this study points to the need to move beyond class based analyses of union decline to an understanding of the gendered role unions once played in mitigating racial inequality

the effect of unions on the structure of wages a longitudinal analysis this paper studies the effects of unions on the structure of wages using an estimation technique that explicitly accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status and potential correlations between union status and unobserved productivity the econometric model is estimated separately for five skill groups using a large panel data set formed from the u s current population survey the results suggest that unions raise wages more for workers with lower levels of observed skills in addition the patterns of selection bias differ by skill group among workers with lower levels of observed skill unionized workers are positively selected whereas union workers are negatively selected from among those with higher levels of observed skill despite a large and sophisticated literature there is still substantial disagreement over the extent to which differences in the structure of wages between union and nonunion workers represent an effect of trade unions rather than a consequence of the nonrandom selection of unionized workers over the past decade several alternative approaches have been developed to control for unobserved heterogeneity between union and nonunion workers 2 one method that has been successfully applied in other areas of applied microeconometrics is the use of longitudinal data to measure the wage gains or losses of workers who change union status unfortunately longitudinal estimators are highly sensitive to measurement error even a small fraction of misclassified union status changes can lead to significant biases if the true rate of mobility between union and nonunion jobs is low this sensitivity led lewis 1986 to essentially dismiss the longitudinal evidence in his landmark survey of union wage effects in this paper i present some new evidence on the union wage effect based on a longitudinal estimator that explicitly accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status the estimator uses external information on union status misclassification rates along with the reduced form coefficients from a multi variate regression of wages on the observed sequence of union status indicators to isolate the causal effect of unions from any selection biases introduced by a correlation between union status and the permanent component of unobserved wage heterogeneity recognizing that unions may raise wages more or less for

do unionized firms hire better workers i introduction many economists firmly believe that union firms offset higher union wages by hiring better workers the contrasting view that union employers react to higher union wages by hiring poorer quality workers is regarded as impossible 1 yet this contrasting view is highly plausible in the context of standard economic modeling and with what is known about labor markets there is evidence supporting this view the standard story for unionized firms hiring better workers goes like this a union raises wages and the firm foils the union by hiring better quality workers the problem with this myopic story is that it ignores what happens in the future it assumes that unions will sit idly by and let union firms whittle away any union wage differential by hiring better quality workers i would argue that it is more likely that unions would respond to better quality workers by raising wages even more employers anticipating this may respond by hiring lower quality workers this article is the first to consider how unionized firms choose worker quality when they anticipate the future consequences of quality on wages under reasonable conditions these consequences cause employers to hire lower quality workers while i do not contend this always occurs i do argue that there are reasonable grounds for rejecting the better quality proposition in addition there is evidence that unionization often does result in lower quality workers the results presented here suggest that economists should look again at how unions affect wages productivity equality and society this is not the first paper to suggest unions lead to lower quality workers it is however the first to suggest this result is due to employers making profit maximizing decisions when they anticipate the future consequences of their actions there are two other articles that also suggest unions can lead to lower quality workers first robinson 1989 assumes that unionized employers do want higher quality workers but do not hire them because nonunion firms pay them more as the nonunion firms are assumed to have better monitoring technology and a more flexible reward system second bronars and lott 1989 show that unions that seek the maximum dues will want poorer quality workers while these models focus on factors that may prove to be important the model presented here is theoretically more forceful first it is based upon standard economic modeling second using ochkam s razor it assumes the least added factors and finally its central assumption that people anticipate the future has a large body of economic evidence behind it by demonstrating that the better quality proposition is not supported by conventional economic analysis this article shows the better quality proposition should not be given a greater weight in the priors of economists having done this these other models then should and hopefully will be examined more closely ii the case for unions leading to better quality workers in discussing the wage gap between union and nonunion workers h gregg lewis 1986 46 concisely presents the case that union firms select better workers i have strong priors on the direction of the selectivity bias let a union through collective bargaining impose on an employer higher wages for his workers than he otherwise would pay them with worker quality not tightly specified in the collective bargaining agreement the higher wages will lengthen the queue of the applicants for the unionized jobs including some applicants of greater productiveness than otherwise would have applied the employer has an incentive to evade the increase in his labor costs by employing workers of greater quality the evasion will take time and will be impeded by the cost of screening workers imperfect substitution in production among worker quality and employment constraints in the collective bargaining agreements

cyclical and market determinants of involuntary part time employment we examine the determinants of involuntary part time employment focusing on variation associated with the business cycle and variation attributable to more persistent structural features of the labor market our theoretical framework distinguishes between workers decision to seek part time work and employer demand for part time work hours emphasizing demand and supply determinants of involuntary part time work such as workplace technology labor costs and workforce demographics we conduct regression analyses using state level panel and individual data for the years 2003 2014 the results show that the combination of cyclical variation and the influence of market level factors can explain virtually all of the variation in the aggregate incidence of involuntary part time employment since the great recession

what explains wage differences between union members and covered nonmembers an individual covered by a collective bargaining agreement but who is not a union member is estimated to earn about 13 lower wages than a union member sectors with relatively few covered nonmembers are associated with a large coverage differential while sectors with high proportions of covered nonmembers are associated with small differentials this suggests freeriders either weaken the bargaining position of the union or weak bargaining positions increase the incentive to freeride only a modest amount of this differential is accounted for by unmeasured ability the probationary period associated with newly hired union workers or union status misclassification

the rising skill premium and deunionization abstract during the past 50 years the us economy has seen a rapid decline in labor union membership and a substantial rise in wage inequality since labor unions compress wages between skilled and unskilled workers a rising skill premium encourages skilled workers to withdraw from the union if this withdrawal is accompanied by a fall in the productivity of unskilled workers firms become reluctant to hire the relatively expensive union workers reinforcing the decline in the unionization rate evaluating this hypothesis we find that the rise in the skill premium explains about 40 of the decline in the unionization rate

losers and pareto optimality in optimising commuting patterns when optimising the overall commuting pattern for a city or a region there are often winners and losers among commuters at the subdivision level losers are those who are burdened with longer commutes than before the optimisation knowing who or where losers are is of interest to both researchers and policy makers the information would help them efficiently locate losers and compensate them few however pay attention to such losers by revisiting excess commuting in the economic framework we show that optimising the commuting pattern is comparable to restoring pareto optimality in commuting using beijing as a case study we identify and geo visualise the losers when the city s bus commuting pattern is optimised we examine the severity of the loss among the losers the spatial pattern of the losers and their influencing factors we find that most losers are located around the epicenter the severity of the loss is independent of jobs housing ratio but is associated with the commute distance before the optimisation workers whose commute distance is less than the global average are more likely to become losers places where losers reside have significantly lower employment density in a few industries than where non losers reside a low jobs housing ratio in individual subareas does not necessarily increase the average trip length of commuters therein a low jobs housing ratio of one or several subareas however could influence the average trip length of all the commuters in the area locating diverse jobs and housing opportunities around or along transit corridors could compensate the losers and reduce the overall commuting cost

are part time women paid less a model with firm specific effects this paper uses data from a survey of child care establishments to compare part and full time wages within two narrow occupations one high skill and one low skill unlike previous studies it controls for firm specific effects we find that when firm specific effects are accounted for only the low skill workers in our sample receive lower wages for working part time on the other hand when compensation is defined to include prorated fringe benefits establishments appear to compensate both high and low skill part timers at a lower hourly rate

underpaid or overpaid wage analysis for nurses using job and worker attributes the nursing labor market presents an apparent puzzle hospitals report chronic shortages yet standard wage analysis shows that nursing wages have increased over time and greatly exceed those received by other college educated women this paper addresses this puzzle data from the current population survey cps are matched with detailed job content descriptors from the occupational information network o net nursing jobs require higher levels of skills and more difficult working conditions than do jobs for other college educated workers a standard cps only wage regression shows a registered nurse rn wage advantage of 22 log points compared to a pooled male female group of college educated workers control for o net job attributes reduces the rn gap to 08 while an arguably preferable nonparametric estimator produces a wage gap estimate close to zero we conclude that nurses receive compensation close to long run opportunity costs narrowing if not resolving the rn wage shortage puzzle

on the job search behavior the importance of commuting time using search theory we show that job search effort is increasing and under some conditions convex in commuting time we show that the effect of commuting time on job search effort levels may be small in case of uncertainty caused by future job and residential moving behavior thus we provide a microeconomic explanation for the finding that commuters behave as if they are footloose our empirical analysis supports the behavioral implications of the model for the netherlands surprisingly we do not find any evidence that the effect of commuting time on search behavior depends on the commuters socioeconomic characteristics

the cyclical behavior of the price cost markup countercyclical markups constitute the key transmission mechanism for monetary and other demand shocks in new keynesian models this paper tests the foundation of those models by studying the cyclical properties of the markup of price over marginal cost the first part of the paper studies markups in the aggregate economy and the manufacturing sector we use bils s 1987 insights for converting average cost to marginal cost but do so with richer data we find that all measures of markups are either procyclical or acyclical moreover we show that monetary shocks lead markups to fall with output the second part of the paper merges input output information on shipments to the government with detailed industry data to study the effect of demand changes on industry level markups industry level markups are found to be acyclical in response to demand changes

why do part time workers earn less the role of worker and job skills part time workers receive considerably lower hourly earnings than do full time workers using current population survey earnings files for september 1995 through december 2002 the author finds that measurable worker and job characteristics including occupational skill requirements account for much of the part time penalty longitudinal analysis of the data indicates that much of the remaining gap reflects worker heterogeneity evidenced by small wage gains and losses among workers switching between part time and full time jobs the lower skills of part time than full time workers result primarily from limited work experience and accumulation of human capital little evidence can be found of a large wage gap between part time and full time women a part time wage penalty is found for men but men account for less than one third of total part time employment

job queues and the union status of workers this paper develops a model of the determination of the union status of workers that allows for the possibility of queuing for union jobs the empirical results derived using a sample from the university of michigan panel study of income dynamics are supportive of the queuing hypothesis the no queue model can be rejected using a likelihood ratio test this suggests that a simple probit or logit model for union status is misspecified because it is not based on any consistent behavioral theory an important implication of the model is that because most new entrants to the labor market prefer union jobs but cannot get them and because accrual of nonunion seniority makes workers progressively less likely to desire union jobs the union status of workers is largely determined by their success in being selected from the queue early in their working life

the spatial effects of wage or property tax differentials and local government choice between tax instruments abstract this paper considers the spatial effects on wages employment and business capital as functions of location of a localized differential in source based wage tax rates or business property tax rates between for example a central city and the surrounding suburbs a simple model is used in which business production uses only labor and capital inputs consumers have fixed residential locations but may commute to work wage and property tax differentials have effects that are similar in some ways but different in other ways if given a choice a local government would choose to set its business property tax rate equal to zero and use only a wage tax

atypical work and pay author affiliation john t addison department of economics moore school of business university of south carolina 1705 college street columbia sc 29208 usa ecceaddi moore sc edu corresponding authorchristopher j surfield department of economics college of business and management saginaw valley state university 7400 bay road university center mi 48710 usa csurfiel svsu edu acknowledgment the authors are more than usually indebted to two referees for their particularly helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and to our co editor for her perseverance 1 introductioneven as the economy continues to recover the u s is increasingly becoming a nation of part timers and free lancers of temps and independent contractors this disposable labor force is the most important trend in business today and it is fundamentally changing the relationship between americans and their jobs for companies large and small the phenomenon provides a way to remain globally competitive while avoiding the vagaries of market cycles but for workers it can mean an end to security and sense of significance that come from being a loyal employee one by one the tangible bonds that once defined work in america are giving way castro 1993 p 43 the frequency of alternative work arrangements such as temporary employment on call work and independent contracting nonstandard forms of employment commonly referred to as atypical work has steadily increased in recent decades see for example segal and sullivan 1997 research on atypical work alternative work arrangements we shall use the two terms interchangeably has tended to focus on the nature and extent of these arrangements and their impact on a worker s employment history e g addison and surfield 2006 although compensation levels have been accorded less attention the thrust of much of the earnings literature is pessimistic compared with regular or open ended employment alternative work arrangements often appear to offer inferior remuneration the public perception remains that workers in these alternative work arrangements constitute a disposable workforce characterized by low paying and precarious or unstable jobs abstracting for the moment from the complications introduced by the diversity of alternative work arrangements there are a number of reasons why their incumbents might earn less than regular workers for example wage differentials between atypical workers and those in open ended employment can arise from supply side differences among heterogeneous workers and employer preferences on the supply side a subset of workers may favor nonstandard work forms over regular employment and be prepared to accept lower pay one example would be adults who are heavily involved in household production and another is older workers who have moved out of career jobs but supply side differences alone are insufficient to sustain a permanent ceteris paribus differential in favor of regular workers in addition atypical workers and regular workers must not be fully fungible and employers must not be indifferent between them negative wage gaps for atypical work are not the only possibility admitted by the competitive model atypical workers may earn higher wages than their counterparts in regular employment if the aggregate demand for these nonstandard arrangements is greater than the number of individuals seeking such employment thus to adapt hirsch s 2005 p 527 argument in respect of part timers if firms use atypical work as low cost means of adjusting to variable and uncertain demand the relatively large supply of atypical workers required may run up against mobility or substitution constraints across labor markets delineated by geography occupation and industry and give rise to positive equilibrium wage gaps for atypical workers negative wage gaps may of course also be more apparent than real

the logic of financial westernization in the middle east abstract in the 19th century financial reforms in the middle east included the legalization of interest the establishment of secular courts and banking regulations all based on western models exploring why foreign institutions were transplanted this article shows that islamic law blocked evolutionary paths that might have generated financial modernization through indigenous means sources of rigidity included 1 the islamic law of commercial partnerships which limited enterprise continuity 2 the islamic inheritance system which restrained capital accumulation 3 the waqf system which inhibited resource pooling and 4 islam s traditional aversion to the concept of legal personhood which hampered private organizations

wage gaps large and small author affiliation barry t hirsch barry t hirsch is the w j usery chair of the american workplace department of economics andrew young school of policy studies georgia state university atlanta ga 30302 3992 and research fellow iza bonn germany bhirsch gsu eduthis presidential address was presented at the annual meeting of the southern economic association new orleans la on november 20 2007 acknowledgment i thank the many economists with whom i have interacted or coauthored over the years in particular john addison chris bollinger bill breit bill johnson dave macpherson and ed schumacher barry t hirsch w j usery chair of the american workplace department of economics andrew young school of policy studies georgia state university 2007 president of the southern economic association figure omitted see article image 1 introductionin the wealth of nations adam smith posited theory and institutional explanations for why wages differ modern labor economics has retained a focus on wage differentials although much of the literature is unabashedly empirical it is informed by theory neoclassical economics including human capital theory remains the principal approach although labor economists recognize the role played by human nature workplace incentives institutions and public policy in wage determination in this address i highlight several topics i have studied all involving wage gaps 1 these include census imputation methods union premiums product market regulation wages in male and female jobs the wage effects of military service and interarea wages and cost of living the purpose is not to trumpet my work although it may appear as such but to draw broader conclusions about labor economists understanding of wage determination 2 equalizing differentials and the law of one wagethe theory of equalizing differentials states that in competitive labor markets workers with similar skills working in similarly attractive jobs and locations should receive similar compensation long run wage differentials are explained by differences in skill and job disamenities with a single price wage conditional on worker and job attributes 2 the law of one wage equal compensation for equivalent workers and jobs follows naturally from competitive theory empirical studies attempt to test the law of one price in product markets industrial organization economists focus on a narrow set of homogeneous goods in markets with low cost information and similar transportation costs i e purchases of electronics and books at internet sites international economists test for purchasing power parity for homogeneous goods i e big mac prices across countries for a recent paper see parsley and wei 2007 even in these markets there is considerable deviation from the law of one price one does not see an equivalent literature in labor economics yes there is a vast literature on wage gaps but authors rarely characterize such work as a test of a law of one wage because there is little expectation that there should be wage equality even conditional on controls why not first as emphasized in personnel economics pay schemes that maximize profits often involve wages deviating from spot marginal products thus creating competitive wage differences across similar workers in similar jobs lazear and oyer 2007 second unions or other institutions can affect wages third there are rigidities in labor markets owing to imperfect mobility say from information and search costs firm specific training personal job attachment or tied household decisions regarding jobs location and housing manning 2003 mortensen 2003 fourth are problems of measurement leading to apparent variation in wages even when there is none and fifth even if data are error free we cannot hope to measure all the multitude of worker and job attributes that influence wages

the joint determination of union status and union wage effects some tests of alternative models the problems of estimation and interpretation of union wage differentials are examined the properties of cross section and longitudinal estimators are compared estimates are presented and those in the literature summarized conflicting results are obtained longitudinal estimators typically produce results smaller than those of ols while cross section methods instrumental variables or inverse mills ratio raise the estimate the paper offers a reconciliation of these results it supports a more optimistic conclusion than that reached in reviews by freeman and lewis who argued that little has been learned from attempts to deal with the endogeneity issue comparisons between estimators are used to throw light on the process governing union status and to suggest interpretations of union differentials consistent with the current evidence

the effects of progressive taxation on labor supply when hours and wages are jointly determined this paper extends a standard intertemporal labor supply model to account for progressive taxation as well as the joint determination of hourly wages and hours worked we show that these two factors can have implications for both estimating labor supply elasticities as well as for using these elasticities in tax analysis failure to account for wage hours ties and progressive taxation may cause the hours response to marginal tax rate changes to be understated by 5 to 30 percent for men

match bias from earnings imputation in the current population survey the case of imperfect matching this article examines match bias arising from earnings imputation wage equation parameters are estimated from mixed samples of workers reporting and not reporting earnings the latter assigned earnings of donors regressions including attributes not used as imputation match criteria e g union are severely biased match bias also arises with attributes used as match criteria but matched imperfectly imperfect matching on schooling age flattens earnings profiles within education age groups and creates jumps across groups assuming conditional missing at random a general analytic expression correcting match bias is derived and compared to alternatives reweighting a respondent only sample proves an attractive approach

new estimates of union wage effects in the u s abstract we present new estimates for union wage effects using a unique dataset with information on job skill requirements we find the union wage premium to be smaller at higher skill levels consistent with the view that unions work to decrease skill differentials

unionism and wages a longitudinal analysis the impact of unionism on relative wage rates is a topic of long standing interest in labor economics over the years researchers have used a variety of approaches to estimate the wage advantage associated with union membership initially researchers compared the average wages of union and nonunion workers in specific sectors such as an industry this approach has the obvious limitation of not accounting very well for the various quality or productivity differences that exist among workers differences that command compensating wage payments more recent studies have used cross section wage regressions to control for these other determinants of wages and thereby improve estimates of the union wage effect using large microeconomic data files containing detailed information on characteristics of individual workers numerous studies have estimated wage regressions that include controls for worker characteristics education experience etc and a dichotomous variable indicating union membership status as explanatory variables 2 the coefficient of the union membership variable in these regressions is taken as an estimate of the average impact that unionism has on wage rates controlling for measured differences in characteristics among workers unfortunately the wage regression approach does not completely resolve the problem of standardizing the union nonunion wage comparison for differences in worker quality even with detailed microdata on the characteristics of individual workers it is simply not possible to specify a set of variables that completely captures all worker specific differences in productive ability some aspects of human capital are too subtle to be operationally specified and included in a wage regression although they are recognized and paid for by employers to the extent that these unmeasured worker specific differences are correlated with union membership the wage regression will incorrectly attribute a relative wage impact to unionism 3 an alternative measurement approach that has several advantages over the wage regression is to compare the wage received by the same worker as a union and nonunion member in the past data limitations have prevented researchers from making such a comparison since only a small portion of workers change union status in a given period an unusually large longitudinal file is needed to yield a sufficient number of observed changes for a meaningful analysis 4 recently however large longitudinal data files on individuals participating in the current population survey have become available this paper uses these data to estimate the impact a change in union status has on the worker s wage the

tied wage hours offers and the endogeneity of wages in the standard model of labor supply each worker is a price taker where the relevant price is an hourly wage rate which is fixed in the short run and which does not depend upon the number of hours supplied with this basic assumption the wage can be regarded as exogenous for the purpose of estimating a labor supply function this paper proposes and implements a pair of tests for the exogeneity of wages in a longitudinal labor supply model and for the particular failure of exogeneity associated with jobs that offer wage hour packages the first test is very simple it amounts to a test of whether hours granger cause wages at the individual level the second test involves a simultaneous estimation of labor supply and wage offer equations both tests indicate that the offered wage is related to hours worked though the offer locus is for this sample very flat the principal conclusion is that labor supply equations cannot properly be estimated in isolation from the process generating wages even when long time series are available on a sample of individuals this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

working part time by choice or by constraint the selection of workers into part time jobs and the wages they earn are analysed using the 1989 labour market activity survey we focus on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary part time workers since involuntary part time workers earn substantially lower wages than other workers we find that the selection of individuals into involuntary part time work is more closely tied to job characteristics than personal or human capital characteristics the lower wage earned by involuntary part time workers is largely due to differences in returns and selection effects rather than differences in endowments

economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers 1984 2001 economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large representative data on establishments with union status information estimates are also confounded by selection bias because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages using multiple establishment level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the united states during 1984 1999 this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival employment output productivity and wages essentially outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election e g by one vote are compared with those where the unions barely lost the analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine estimates for wages are close to zero the evidence suggests that at least in recent decades the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains

immiserizing growth in a closed economy we develop a model with three key features a factor market distortion monopoly power in the product market and indivisibilities in consumption in this setting multiple equilibria arise one with high and the other with low equilibrium wages incomes and output it is also shown that even in a closed economy growth may be immiserizing and finally that redistribution could be a rich man s game

the interindustry structure of unionism earnings and earnings dispersion this study examines the relationship between unionism and earnings dispersion within u s manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries the author hypothesizes not only that unionism narrows earnings dispersion as others have shown but also that the dispersion in earnings reflecting the degree of worker homogeneity influences the level of unionism estimation of a three equation model using 1970 three digit industry data provides evidence regarding the simultaneous determination of unionism earnings and earnings dispersion within u s industries the estimated equalizing effects of unionism on within industry earnings distributions are found to be significant both in the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors the size of these estimates increasing after accounting for simultaneity in addition the dispersion in earnings does appear to affect the level of unionism although the evidence on this point is ambiguous

revisiting union wage and job loss effects using the displaced worker surveys estimates of union wage effects have been challenged by concerns regarding unobserved worker heterogeneity and endogenous job changes many economists believe that union wage premiums lead to busin

married women in part time employment this research deals with three aspects of the part time employment pattern of working wives 1 the wives characteristics 2 the level and structure of their earnings in part time jobs and 3 the duration of their employment when part time jobs are available to them this study improves upon previous research by using multivariate analysis to determine if the variation in the incidence of part time work consistently found in other studies persists when earnings potential fertility family income and other factors that may vary by age or race are held constant it differs further by including a data source that contains direct measures of market wages and experience for a large sample of married working women the authors find that husband s income family size and the wife s health race and previous work experience are among the variables that influence the probability that the wife works part time they also find that the level of wages and returns to some investments in human capital are rela

effects of urban growth controls on intercity commuting this paper presents an empirical study of the effects of urban growth controls on the intercity commuting of workers growth controls land use regulations that attempt to restrict population growth and urban sprawl have increased housing prices and diverted population growth to uncontrolled cities it has been suggested that resulting changes in local labour supply might stimulate intercity commuting from uncontrolled to controlled cities to test this hypothesis a gravity model of commuting flows between places in california is estimated using alternative econometric methods ols heckman selection and count data the possibility of spatial dependence in commuting flows is also taken into consideration results suggest larger commuting flows to destination places that restrict residential growth

part time work and the hiring of older workers this research uses german establishment data to examine the relationship between back loading compensation the hiring of older workers and their part time status we confirm that establishments that defer compensation are less likely to hire older workers we demonstrate for the first time that establishments that defer compensation are more likely to limit older workers to part time jobs when they do hire them thus deferred compensation plays a larger role in reducing the chances of older workers being hired into full time jobs than would be inferred from past estimates simply examining their odds of being hired at all

estimation and testing of the union wage effect using panel data we present estimates of the union wage effect controlling for unmeasured individual effects and subject the conventional fixed effects model to specification tests for psid men the union wage effect is 5 8 after controlling for person effects as opposed to 20 in cross section omnibus tests based on an unrestricted reduced form and instrumental variables tests based on differencing are consistent with conventional models tests based on comparing those who enter and leave union coverage provide evidence against the usual model we find evidence for interactions between union status and other variables even after controlling for person effects

part time work wages and productivity evidence from belgian matched panel data the authors use matched employer employee panel data on belgian private sector firms to estimate the relationship between wage productivity differentials and the firm s labor composition in terms of part time work and gender findings suggest that the groups of women and part timers generate employer rents but also that the origin of these rents differs relatively lower wages for women relatively higher productivity for part timers interactions between gender and part time work suggest that the positive productivity effect is driven by male part timers working more than 25 hours whereas the share of female part timers is associated with wage penalties the authors conclude that men and women differ with respect to motives for reducing working hours and the types of part time jobs available to them women often have to accommodate domestic constraints by downgrading to more flexible jobs whereas male part time work is frequently related to training and collectively negotiated reductions in hours that

the effect of part time work on wages evidence from the social security rules this article identifies the part time wage effect using hours variation caused by the social security rules we show that work hours and wages drop sharply at ages 62 and 65 we argue that the hours decline causes the wage decline resulting in a 25 wage penalty for men who cut their work week from 40 to 20 hours however we find little evidence for such an effect among women we also show that models that fail to account for the joint determination of hours and wages will understate the labor supply response to a tax change by about 26

excess commuting in the tokyo metropolitan area measurement and policy simulations in this paper tokyos commuting patterns are examined to determine the extent to which the volume of commuting is an inevitable result of the functioning of such a vast interconnected economic system and the extent to which it is the result of inefficient matching of workers and jobs some comparisons are made to the situation in los angeles several simulations are used to examine the effect of decentralisation of employment on commuting behaviour and it is found that commuting time could be significantly reduced by decentralising jobs or centralising workers excerpt

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

wasteful commuting again in wasteful commuting hamilton 1982 i presented estimates that suggested that almost 90 percent of urban commuting could be eliminated by reassigning workers to different houses or jobs it does not matter which furthermore i argued that this minimum feasible commute is the volume of commuting that would emerge from the optimization process underlying the standard monocentric models even allowing for decentralized employment white 1988 has challenged some of my assumptions as well as my results with respect to assumptions she argues that suburban employment is not diffuse as i assume but is concentrated in subcenters if these subcenters are a significant portion of suburban employment then my estimates of required commuting are biased downward because the commuting pattern that i assumed to be optimal is not feasible white then estimates required and wasteful commuting based on journey to work data from the 1980 census on the basis of these data she concludes that only about 10 percent of commuting could be eliminated by swapping homes and jobs

a comparison of the cyclical behavior of union and nonunion wages in the united states this paper presents an extensive analysis of the behavior of union and nonunion wages over the business cycle using quasi panels developed from the current population survey in an attempt to resolve or reconcile competing claims about the cyclical behavior of union and nonunion wages union wages were roughly as procyclical as nonunion wages were prior to the early 1980s substantial reductions in union wage procyclicality since then are associated with reductions in the procyclical exercise of bargaining power

monopsony power and relative wages in the labor market for nurses this paper examines the thesis that monopsony power is an important determinant of wages in nursing labor markets using data from the 1985 93 current population surveys measures of relative nurse non nurse wage rates for 252 labor markets are constructed contrary to predictions from the monopsony model no positive relationship exists between relative nursing wages and hospital density or market size nor is support found for the presence of monopsony power based on evidence on union wage premiums slopes of experience profiles or the mix of rn to total hospital employment

unions wages and skills studies uniformly conclude that union wage effects are largest for workers with low measured skills longitudinal analysis using 1989 90 1994 95 cps matched panels produces union premium estimates equivalent across skill groups following appropriate sample restrictions and control for worker specific skills nlsy evidence on aptitude scores confirms that union workers with high measured skills have relatively low unmeasured skills differential selection by skill class and skill homogeneity in union workplaces result from employer and employee sorting in response to wage standardization union organizing where skills are homogeneous and unionized employers reluctance to hire the most as well as least able workers

the union wage effect and ability bias evidence from ireland we use longitudinal data from an irish household survey to measure the union wage premium a subsample in which the worker s payslip was seen by the interviewer is unlikely to have measurement error for the union variable the results support the finding that measurement error leads to a large downward bias in fixed effects estimates of the union effect but indicate that ability bias has a small effect on the average union wage premium

testing the standard urban model of residential choice an implicit markets approach abstract important implications of the standard economic model of urban residential choice have failed dramatically to survive empirical tests in recent studies these results however do not distinguish between failure of the model s behavioral foundations a trade off of access to jobs and housing costs and failure of auxiliary assumptions needed to derive testable hypotheses from the model from an implicit markets model of the housing market we derive a test that better isolates the predictive power of access and housing cost as determinants of residential decisions and find substantial improvement in the model s empirical performance compared with other recent work

analysis of part time pay in canada this paper analyses the difference between part time and full time wages in canada using the 1981 survey of work history since part time and full time workers are distinguished by hours worked and since hours worked and wages are interdependent selectivity bias occurs if ordinary least squares regression is used a modification of heckman s procedure to account for the fact that part time hours are doubly truncated is used to correct this problem the results indicate that adjusting for differences in characteristics the wage differential between part time and full time workers is 10 per cent or one third the unadjusted differential results vary somewhat by sex and marital status analyse de la remuneration du travail d temps partiel au canada ce memoire analyse les differences entre les salaires pour le travail a temps plein et a temps partiel au canada a partir des resultats de l enquete sur l activite en 1981 puisque les travailleurs a temps plein et a temps partiel sont definis par le nombre d heures de travail et puisque le nombre d heures de travail et les niveaux de salaire sont interdependants il y a biais de selectivite quand on utilise la methode des moindres carres ordinaires dans l analyse de regression l auteur utilise une modification de la technique de heckman pour tenir compte du fait que le nombre d heures de travail a temps partiel est doublement tronque pour corriger le probleme les resultats montrent que apres avoir tenu compte des differences dans les caracteristiques des personnes on observe un differentiel de niveau de salaire de 10 pourcent entre les travailleurs a temps plein et a temps partiel soit le tiers du differentiel brut avant les ajustements pour tenir compte de caracteristiques differentes ces resultats varient quelque peu selon le sexe et selon la situation familiale the trend towards part time employment has generally escaped the attention and scrutiny of economists part time employment in canada grew at an annual rate of 4 1 per cent between january 1972 and january 1984 compared 1 one exception is nakamura and nakamura 1983 who examine related labour supply issues for married females canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xix no 4 november novembre 1986 printed in canada imprim6 au canada 0008 4085 86 798 807 1 50 0 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 159 on sat 22 oct 2016 04 29 38 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms analysis of part time pay in canada 799 with a growth rate of only 2 4 per cent for full time employment as a result 15 4 per cent of jobs were part time as of january 1984 compared with 13 per cent in january 1972 2 the growth of part time employment raises a number of issues in particular labour canada 1983 argues that the hourly wage differential between full time and part time workers reached 26 3 per cent in 1981 it is not clear however that this gross wage differential between full time and part time workers is a useful figure a number of accepted measurable characteristics that determine wage differentials among workers may confound this comparison unless full time and part time workers have identical characteristics it would therefore be useful from a policy standpoint to eliminate these effects to identify part time effects and the gravity of the part time pay problem per se this paper analyses the differences between part time and full time wages to try to distinguish part time effects whatever the source from other established bases for differentials in the first section a standard model for wage comparison among workers is considered the source of selectivity bias is identified and a consistent estimation technique is described the second section uses this technique to analyse the differences in part time and full time wages using microdata from the 1981 survey of work history used by labour canada 1983 the third section summarizes the results and provides suggestions for further research a model for wage comparison with selectivity bias consider a standard model used extensively for union and non union wage comparisons lee 1978 duncan and leigh 1980 robinson and tomes 1984 simpson 1985 let wf be a vector of observations on the natural logarithm of hourly wages paid to full time workers and let x be a matrix of observations on measurable worker characteristics commonly used in such models namely educational attainment age sex union status public vs private sector status and region let wp and x be the corresponding observations for part time workers let h be the maximum hours of work permitted for classification as a part time worker then we specify wf xff3f if if h h 1

are involuntary part time workers indeed involuntary theoretically those classified by the bureau of labor statistics as involuntary part time workers are individuals who would like to work full time but have been unable to obtain full time employment to empirically test the accuracy of that definition the author employs simple probit models of employment preferences and employment opportunities estimated with data from the march 1990 current population survey the results confirm that those classified as involuntary part time workers were indeed employed part time involuntarily furthermore those classified as involuntary part time workers in 1990 were at least 50 more likely to be in the full time labor force in 1991 than were those who were classified as voluntary part time workers in 1990

union wage practices and wage dispersion within establishments this study analyzes establishment level data primarily to examine the effect of unionism on the wage structure within establishments the major finding is that within establishment dispersion of wages is significantly narrower in unionized than in nonunionized establishments a pattern the author attributes in large part to unions wage practices such as single rate or automatic progression modes of wage payment as opposed to merit reviews and individual wage determination the data also show that dispersion in average wages is narrower among organized plants but by more modest amounts than the within establishment differential overall the evidence suggests a major role for explicit union wage policies in explaining the dispersion of wages within firms and in the economy as a whole

the definition of part time employment a switching regression model with unknown sample selection rejecting the standard less than thirty five hours per week categorization of part time workers this paper offers an empirically justified definition of the part time employed the definition is based on the distinction through wage payments that employers make between a high hours full time and a low hours part time group of workers a switching regression model of wage equations with deterministic but unknown sample selection is estimated resulting in a significant split between high hours and low hours workers that is higher than the standard definition wage differentials are calculated and decomposed and estimates from the structural choice model are presented copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

coordinating employment transport and housing in cities an institutional perspective this paper outlines a reconceptualisation of the relationship between employment housing and transport in cities that draws upon insights drawn from structuration theory and institutional sociology it identifies the need for a new focus one that lies between the structural and the individual the institution as well as the need for the integration of time space into analyses institutions are embedded social action the unique formations of institutional matrices households labour markets housing markets and transport systems are identified as sites for further research and policy development the paper calls for future research to identify who gains and who loses within the current and future configurations of institutions in cities changes in individual behaviour and the policies to enable or to constrain such behaviour should be evaluated in this light

why do women have longer durations of unemployment than men in post restructuring urban china this paper provides the first systematic analysis of the reasons why women endure longer unemployment durations than men in post restructuring urban china this analysis is based upon data obtained from a national representative household survey rejecting the view that women are less earnest than men in their desire for re employment this analysis shows that women s job search efforts are handicapped by a lack of access to social networks unequal entitlement to social re employment services higher earnings losses from job separations for women and unfair treatment of women with respect to mandatory retirement

search theory spatial labor markets and commuting search theory is used to model spatial interactions between residential and employment locations a model for an urbanized region in which employment is concentrated in a number of different centers is developed it is shown that in this model wasteful or excess commuting occurs as a consequence of maximizing behavior of both employers and workers the model is compatible with a spatial equilibrium if informational problems disappear the labor market subdivides into a number of conventional monocentric cities an example concerning an urban area with two employment centers is discussed in detail the model appears to be robust to relaxations of the assumed absence of residential and job mobility

sluggish institutions in a dynamic world can unions and industrial competition coexist during the 1930s and 1940s collective bargaining emerged as the workplace governance norm in much of the u s industrial sector following its peak in the 1950s union density in the u s private sector fell steadily to only 7 4 percent in 2006 governance shifted from a formalized union norm to one of constrained managerial discretion in competitive and dynamic economic environments a union tax on company earnings and slow response to economic shocks combine to produce poor performance by union companies two industries automotives and airlines are used to illustrate these points if worker based institutions are to flourish they must add value and permit companies to perform at levels similar to those obtained under evolving nonunion governance norms

longitudinal analyses of the effects of trade unions but union members are different from nonmembers in unobserved ways biasing your estimates y ou should make a selectivity bias correction simultaneously determine union status and economic outcomes develop an unobservables model use longitudinal data archetypical comment on virtually any study of the economic effects of umomsm or suitably modified on any other empirical subject

does membership payoff for covered workers a distributional analysis of the free rider problem this paper examines the union membership wage premium among private sector employees covered by collective bargaining agreements using current population survey data for 2000 2003 the author not only estimates the conditional mean wage premium the metric on which most previous research has focused but also employs recently developed instrumental quantile regression techniques to estimate the wage effect of membership across the wage distribution members enjoyed on average a wage premium of 9 over comparable covered nonmembers further analyses find no evidence that this mean premium is explained either by unobserved differences or by measurement error the author also finds that a narrow focus on the mean impact partially masks heterogeneity in the impact across the distribution notably membership wage effects were considerably more pronounced for low wage earners than for high wage earners

is bigger still better the decline of the wage premium at large firms author affiliation william e even evenwe muohio edudavid a macpherson david macpherson trinity edu acknowledgment we thank daniel becker christopher bollinger and barry hirsch for helpful comments 1 introductionlarge firms pay higher wages than small firms this fact was first documented nearly 100 years ago and has been confirmed by myriad studies since then considerable effort has been directed toward testing different theoretical explanations for the size premium these include the fact that larger firms employ a more skilled work force and provide them with more and better capital pay efficiency wages to deal with greater monitoring costs pay compensating differences for less pleasant working conditions or greater risk that results from the type of human capital that is acquired or share rents with workers because of union threats or monopoly profits while there has been extensive research attempting to determine the importance of these different explanations of the size premium a recent trend has gone unnoticed namely the firm size premium has fallen substantially over the past 20 years for example we show that workers in firms with over 500 workers earned 55 more than workers in firms with fewer than 25 workers in the early 1990s our most recent data indicate that the size premium dropped by 15 percentage points over the past 20 years we also show that the size premium fell much more rapidly among less educated workers for example among workers with less than a high school degree the size premium fell by 30 percentage points this study documents the trends in the size premium and explores some possible explanations for the trends section 2 provides an overview of the theoretical explanations and empirical evidence on the size premium in section 3 we discuss our data and review the evidence on trends in the size premium empirical analysis of the trends is provided in section 4 our main conclusions are as follows first the size premium dropped over the past 20 years for two primary reasons i the type of worker employed by large and small firms has become more similar over time and ii large and small firms have become more similar in terms of the ways in which they reward workers holding observed characteristics constant in addition while the size premium has diminished over time it remains quantitatively significant particularly among highly educated workers 2 backgroundoi and idson 1999 provide a wide ranging summary of the extant research on the size premium their review points out that the size premium was first documented nearly 100 years ago among female workers at textile firms their summary of empirical studies shows that the largest firms e g firms with 500 or more employees pay wages that are 30 50 higher than those of the smallest firms e g firms with fewer than 25 employees numerous theories for the size premium have been proposed and no single theory is capable of providing an empirical explanation for the entire size premium the more prominent theories for the size premium are based upon size related differences in monitoring costs capital technology working conditions monopoly power or union effects the monitoring costs explanation for the size premium first proposed by oi 1983 argues that greater monitoring costs at large firms cause them to hire more able workers to conserve on monitoring costs because larger firms hire more able workers wages increase with firm size in addition because of greater monitoring costs large firms may be more likely to pay efficiency wages or deferred pay to reduce monitoring problems and utilize higher capital labor ratios to conserve on the number of workers empirical evidence indicates that the greater use of advanced technology by large firms explains part of the size premium dunne and schmitz 1995 reilly 1995 tan and batra 1997 troske 1999 yu et al

do workers accept lower wages in exchange for health benefits compensating wage theory predicts that workers receiving more generous fringe benefits are paid a lower wage than comparable workers who prefer fewer fringe benefits this study tests this prediction for employer provided health insurance by modeling the wages of married women employed full time in the labor market husband s union status husband s firm size and husband s health coverage through his job are used as instruments for his wife s own employer health insurance benefits the estimates suggest wives with own employer health insurance accept a wage about 20 lower than what they would have received working in a job without benefits

match bias in wage gap estimates due to earnings imputation about 30 of workers in the current population survey have earnings imputed wage gap estimates are biased toward zero when the attribute being studied e g union status is not a criterion used to match donors to nonrespondents an expression for match bias is derived in which attenuation equals the sum of match error rates attenuation can be approximated by the proportion with imputed earnings union wage gap estimates with match bias removed are presented for 1973 2001 estimates for recent years are biased downward 5 percentage points bias in gap estimates accompanying other non match criteria public sector industry etc is examined

response error and the union wage differential broad variation in estimates of the union wage gap has perplexed labor economists one specification error that is consistent with the observed variation is measurement error in reported union status this article applies results of bollinger 1996 to estimate a range for the union wage gap both a cross sectional model and a fixed effects model are estimated in order for the true coefficient in the fixed effects model to be bounded below the true coefficient in the cross sectional estimates measurement error would have to be less than 0 8 the difference between the fixed effects estimates and the cross sectional estimates is primarily due to measurement error rather than to unobserved heterogeneity an examination of differences in returns to union membership by industry occupation and educational level shows that these differences are largely robust to measurement error many of these differences would be found even if error rates were as high as 10 or more an array of empirical estimates for the union wage differential has resulted from the variety of approaches to estimation lewis 1986 reviews the vast literature that attempts to estimate the union wage effect two extremes are represented by mincer 1983 who estimates the wage differential to be 0 01 while farber 1990 reports an estimate of 0 26 clearly specification error is the root cause of these differences the literature has focused upon unobserved heterogeneity in worker status as the main specification error frequently estimation approaches based on within estimators applied to fixed effects models using panel data are used to account for the possibility of unobserved heterogeneity as would be predicted by unobserved heterogeneity lewis 1986 p 94 reports that the panel wage gap estimates surveyed in the chapter on the average are roughly half as large as the corresponding cross section estimates this is often taken as evidence for bias in the cross section estimates due to the presence of fixed effects however these results are also consistent with measurement error in the report of the union status indeed chapter 5 in lewis 1986 focuses upon this possibility the difference might be the result of union status measurement error p 94 this article applies results of bollinger 1996 to compare the effect of measurement error on cross sectional estimates and panel estimates of the union wage differential bollinger 1996 establishes bounds for the slope coefficients of a linear regression when a binary regressor is thought to have measurement error the results here do not identify a point estimate of the union wage differential they relax many of the assumptions that are required to obtain the point estimates these bounds serve the purpose of sensitivity analysis as called for by leamer 1985