the employers cost of workers compensation insurance magnitudes determinants and public policy new estimates of the average cost of workers compensation insurance for a homogeneous group of employers by state are presented these data are used to estimate cost equations for a variety of alternative specifications the main finding is that when cost equations are estimated by ordinary least squares there is a unit elasticity of costs with respect to benefits but instrumental variable estimates of the effect of benefits yield a greater than unit elasticity finally the presence of a state insurance fund is associated with higher average costs for employers all else equal copyright 1990 by mit press

labor unemployment risk and corporate financing decisions this paper examines the impact of labor unemployment risk on corporate financing decisions theory suggests that firms choose conservative financial policies partly as a means of mitigating worker exposure to unemployment risk using changes in state unemployment insurance benefit laws as a source of variation in the costs borne by workers during layoff spells we explore the connection between unemployment risk and the corporate financing decisions of public firms in the united states we find that increases in legally mandated unemployment benefits lead to increases in corporate leverage the impact of reduced unemployment risk on financial policy is especially strong for firms that have greater layoff separation rates labor intensity and financing constraints the estimated premium required to compensate workers for unemployment risk due to financial distress is about 57 basis points of firm value for a bbb rated firm these findings suggest that labor market frictions have a significant impact on corporate financing decisions

explaining metropolitan housing price differences abstract housing prices differ substantially among metropolitan areas the rent and house price indexes used here measure this variation among 54 metropolitan areas a model of metropolitan housing price determination is presented and used to identify the sources of intermetropolitan price variation reduced form equations explain close to 90 of the variation in rental prices and close to 60 of the variation in house prices

union wage hours and earnings differentials in the construction industry full information maximum likelihood is used to estimate union wage hours and earnings markups construction union wage markups are positive 58 2 at the sample means since union hours markups are negative 4 0 for most demographic groups union earnings markups 51 1 are smaller than the wage markups all exogenous variables are allowed to interact with the endogenous union dummy variable which allows us to test whether markups vary across demographic groups whether increased local unionization has a positive spillover effect in the nonunion sector and whether increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in the two sectors

house prices and female labor force participation abstract is there a causal connection between house prices and labor force participation of married women the simple correlation between house prices and married women s labor force participation across u s metro areas is positive plausible informal arguments have been advanced to support causation in either direction prices raising participation negative income effects of higher house prices lead more married women to work or participation raising prices richer two earner households bid up the price of scarce housing i construct an equilibrium model of location labor supply and real estate land prices within a metro area which predicts that 1 metro areas with exogenously less buildable land will have higher house prices and more labor force participation of married women while 2 metro areas with married women exogenously more prone to work will have higher house prices using geographic instruments for housing supply i find little evidence of a positive effect of house prices on married women s labor force participation but a somewhat greater possibility that house prices raise their earnings likewise an instrument for married women s labor supply reveals no consistent significant causal effect of two earner households on housing prices although the possibility of a positive effect cannot be ruled out

planning delay and the responsiveness of english housing supply there is growing international interest in the impact of regulatory controls on the supply of housing most research focuses on the supply impacts of prescribed limits on land use but housing supply may also be affected by the process of planning monitoring and approval but this is hard to measure in detail the uk has a particularly restrictive planning regime and a detailed and uncertain process of development control linked to it but does offer the opportunity of detailed site based investigation of planning delay this paper presents the findings of empirical research on the time taken to gain planning permission for selected recent major housing projects in southern england the scale of delay found was far greater than is indicated by average official data measuring the extent to which local authorities meet planning delay targets hedonic modelling indicated that there is considerable variation in the time it takes local authorities to process planning applications housing association developments are processed more quickly than those of large developers and small sites appear to be particularly time intensive these results suggest that delays in development control may be a significant contributory factor to the low responsiveness of uk housing supply to upturns in market activity

urban land supply natural and contrived restrictions abstract both large bodies of water and local governments restrict the supply of urban land in this paper we measure water s restriction on supply and test its effect on land price we then extend hamilton s and fischel s pioneering work on governmental restriction providing an improved test of the monopoly zoning hypothesis that such restriction further affects land price regression analysis of data from 45 urban areas suggests that the two restrictions combine to explain 40 of typical interurban price differentials

strike coordination and dismissal in uniform wage settings abstract we study a gift exchange game with 12 employees and one employer when the employer can offer individually differentiated wages in a setting without collective action we observe high levels of wages effort choices and total earnings when the employer is restricted to offering a uniform wage trust and reciprocity drop dramatically due to widespread shirking the stepwise introduction of two collective action mechanisms strike and coordination increases the employees share of the total earnings but does not mitigate the free riding problem adding employment risk to the collective action setup drives up wages reduces free riding and leads to higher total earnings however this increase in productivity is not sufficient to achieve the high levels of wages efforts and earnings that we observe with individually differentiated wages

the effect of labor unions on investment in training a dynamic model control over the amount of training required of new entrants is a potentially important tool available to many craft unions this is often exercised through licensing based on schooling and apprenticeship requirements and on passing special examinations the standards are to a large extent determined and monitored by the incumbent practitioners thus physicians are required to train in various forms of schooling internship and residence for up to eight years architects need five years of schooling and three years of apprenticeship accountants require four years of college and one year of apprenticeship less widely known are the schooling and apprenticeship requirements of barbers plumbers and mine foremen which require up to five or six years of investment finally most craft unions require apprenticeship periods of two to four years see kolberg 1976

effects of labor legislation and industry characteristics on union coverage in canada the authors investigate the determinants of union coverage using 1986 cross section data on canadian workers larger firm size larger establishment size and higher injury rates increase the probability of union coverage industry concentration import penetration and the substitutability of labor do not affect coverage through their impact on the union nonunion wage differential but concentration increases the probability of coverage through a mechanism unrelated to the wage differential mandatory checkoff provisions increase the probability of coverage but the estimated effect is barely significant restrictions on replacement workers and interprovincial differences in automatic certification provisions have statistically insignificant effects finally the results are sensitive to treating some industry characteristics as endogenous that is jointly determined with union coverage and union and nonunion wages a treatment not used in other studies

labor unemployment insurance and earnings management abstract we provide new evidence that firms appear to manage long run earnings upward in order to manage rank and file employees perceptions of employment security in particular we exploit exogenous state level changes in unemployment insurance benefits and test for partial unwinding of prior upward earnings management when benefits increase consistent with the hypothesis we find a significant reduction in abnormal accruals increased recognition of special items and write downs and greater likelihood of net income reducing restatements following an increase in state level unemployment benefits a number of cross sectional results are also consistent with the hypothesis

government financial policy and capital economists have long been concerned about the best way to finance government deficits finding the proper fiscal policy and monetary policy mix is a crucial decision when government debt grows too fast interest rates rise and capital is crowded out if the money growth rate is excessive inflation occurs the study of this issue at the theoretical level requires a model which incorporates the following features 1 modeling money and bonds as endogenous financial assets whose rates of return are determined in general equilibrium 2 examination of the utility maximization decisions of individuals so that welfare analysis of alternative policies may be made 3 modeling the government s optimization problem and its budget constraint and 4 modeling capital investment showing how the returns to financial assets affect investment decisions in such a model the government s financing decisions affect the rates of return on money and bonds which affect the welfare of individuals standard models in the economic literature do not satisfy all these features the purpose of this paper is to derive such a model macroeconomic models often assume that it is optimal to maximize consumption or output of the economy this paper shows clearly that such an assumption is false in a dynamic context output can be maximized by government policy which drives the interest rate to a low level but the interest rate affects intertemporal consumption possibilities and a low interest rate may reduce welfare the goal of this paper is thus to examine the optimal growth rates of money and government debt considering their implications for welfare changes in the rates of return on money and debt affect welfare in three ways 1 they affect the capital stock and thus output 2 they affect consumption directly because people take out consumption loans and 3 they affect the quantity of resources devoted to transactions costs we develop a model of the financial asset holding decision money and bonds are the two financial assets bonds are an explicit contract between two agents in the economy a contract which is costly to write money is issued by the government by fiat and represents a costless implicit contract with a zero nominal rate of return

firm size efficiency and employment revisited a review article whether small business can help countries compete as many american commentators believe or whether increasing firm size is required for success in global markets as much european policy assumes is still a question under intense debate while the terms of the debate have been persuasively challenged by howard 1990 who argues that the real issue isn t size it s industrial organization p 88 the popular american view of small business has been most comprehensively challenged by brown hamilton and medoff 1990 however we find that both their analysis and evidence are flawed in a number of important respects to be developed next and then we shall go back to the broader issues raised by howard 1990 best 1990 loveman and sengenberger 1991 and earlier by fitzroy 1989 and 1990 brown hamilton and medoff henceforth bhm start by disputing the growing importance of small firm employment found by many writers they find stable or declining small business employment shares in the u s however sengenberger loveman and piore 1990 find growing small business shares in many countries in recent years including a rise of 7 5 in manufacturing employment by u s firms with less than 100 employees from 1980 86 compared to a decline of 10 8 in firms with over 500 workers howard p 90 bhm devote much space to the evidence that large employers seem to pay substantially higher wages and fringe benefits even after controlling for the higher levels of education training and

estimating the probability of trade union membership a study of men and women in britain the paper examines the determinants of the individual decision to unionize for british employees and uses micro data from the 1975 national training survey the unionization probability is estimated separately for manual and non manual men and full time and part time women an interesting finding is that personal characteristics of both men and women generally do not affect the unionization probability this result run counter to the common perception that family responsibilities explain low female trade union density

strategic public policy around population thresholds abstract political economists have long maintained that politicians respond to both re election and financial incentives this article contributes to the latter literature by analysing whether when and how local office holders respond to the economic incentives embedded in exogenously imposed population thresholds leading to an increased number and remuneration of local politicians building on insights from the urban economics and public finance literatures we argue that local politicians may strategically adjust fiscal and housing policies to stimulate in migration when approaching a population threshold where their remuneration increases using data from all 589 belgian municipalities over the period 1977 2016 our results confirm that approaching important population thresholds causes lower local tax rates and the granting of additional building permits particularly for apartments these policy changes occur early in the election cycle and at least for housing policy are restricted to incumbent mayors themselves expecting to benefit from crossing the population threshold

land values and housing rents in urban japan abstract this paper describes and systematically explains observed variation in land values and housing rents in urban japan it fits a structural model s reduced form equations to intertemporal data over 35 years intercity data across 27 major cities and intracity data in the three largest metropolitan areas explanatory variables are population income their growth rates the interest rate the inflation rate urban land supply and distance from the city center

regional disadvantage employee non compete agreements and brain drain abstract a growing body of research has documented the local impact of employee non compete agreements but their effect on interstate migration patterns remains unexplored exploiting an inadvertent policy reversal in michigan as a natural experiment we show that non compete agreements are responsible for a brain drain of knowledge workers out of states that enforce such contracts to states where they are not enforceable importantly this effect is felt most strongly on the margin of workers who are more collaborative and whose work is more impactful

unions wages and productivity some evidence from uk engineering firms estimates of union wage and productivity effects are derived using primary micro level panel data for a sample of firms in the uk engineering industry union wage differentials of the order of 10 are suggested from the results whereas union productivity impacts appear to be non linear with respect to union density

government employment and the provision of fringe benefits this study uses individual level data from the united states to examine the influence of government employment on the provision of five major fringe benefits four of the five benefits are more likely to be provided to government workers than to their private sector counterparts unlike wage comparisons which typically find substantial overpayment only for federal workers the findings suggest that past wage differentials underestimate the true compensation advantage enjoyed by government workers

the union impact on profits evidence from industry price cost margin data this paper uses industry price cost margin data to estimate the extent to which unions reduce profits estimates allowing for the endogeneity of union status are contrasted with estimates that assume union status is exogenous and not determined in part by either profitability or industry structure endogeneity is found to be an important consideration in estimating the union impact on profits two stage estimates are considerably larger than ols estimates the final section explores the total estimated redistribution from capital to labor in the manufacturing sector an important conclusion is that unions raise prices less than was previously believed

unionization and absenteeism until recently any labour economist doing empirical work on unionization was concerned almost exclusively with the effect of unionization on wages but beginning with freeman s 1976 analysis of the rich institutional structure of unions economists have been considering the role of unions in for example increasing productivity lowering quit rates enhancing fringe benefits reducing income inequality improving working conditions and affecting a variety of other attributes at the workplace 1 to date however no study has directly addressed a question that appears ripe for empirical analysis does unionization affect absenteeism this paper presents results from a study designed to answer that question the first section presents a simple model of absenteeism the second section discusses the five mechanisms through which unionization influences absenteeism the third section describes the data and variable selection results from logit regressions are presented in the fourth section and the paper cl

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

new evidence on unions and plant closings britain in the 1990s in this paper we exploit the longitudinal element of the 1990 and 1998 workplace employee relations surveys for britain to investigate the effect of unionism on establishment closings contrary to both recent u s research and long standing british work we find a strong positive association between two measures of unionism union recognition for collective bargaining purposes and union coverage and plant closings this association is robust to the inclusion of highly detailed industry controls but is driven by plants that are parts of multiestablishment entities no such relationship obtains in the case of single plant enterprises in explaining our findings we address their consistency with the widely perceived reduction in the disadvantages of british unionism in recent years

adam smith may have been right after all a new approach to the analysis of compensating differentials abstract if workers with low wages compared to their level of human capital exaggerate their workplace disamenities estimates of compensating differentials will be biased evidence of such a bias is found in a matched employee employer survey

who wants political integration evidence from the swedish eu membership referendum abstract the regional voting pattern of the swedish european union eu membership referendum is analyzed to determine voters preferences over two fiscal regimes an autonomous sweden or sweden as part of the eu a major difference between these regimes is that autonomy gives greater national discretion to handle risk sharing and redistribution between regions i find that inhabitants of rich and stable regions with high levels of schooling small receipts of central government transfers and trade relations displaying comparative advantages towards the eu were relatively positive to membership a plausible interpretation is thus that voters in safe and rich regions voted in favor of dismantling the swedish transfer system

compensating wage differentials and the duration of wage loss a formal model of occupational choice is developed that shows the extent to which the compensation for increased duration exceeds that for increased risk using the panel study of income dynamics linked to industry data on injuries and unemployment we find nearly all the compensating wage differential for losses due to workplace injuries is for increases in the duration of loss and similarly for losses due to cyclical unemployment the compensating differentials for risk of injury are larger for union than for nonunion workers while those for cyclical unemployment are smaller for union workers

premiums to employment in larger establishments evidence from peru abstract examination of the employer size wage effect for males in urban peru suggests the following higher wages in larger establishments do not merely compensate for higher worker quality or inferior working conditions size differences in the use of rising wage tenure profiles cannot provide a market clearing explanation for the employer size wage effect unless workers are extremely impatient thus larger employers appear to pay premiums unionization explains none of the premiums and minimum wage compliance explains at best a small fraction shirking based efficiency wage explanations for premiums are implausible because peruvian job security legislation greatly inhibits dismissals in larger establishments explanations meriting further research involve the use of high wages to reduce turnover and to improve productivity enhancing morale

economic influences on the structure of local government in u s metropolitan areas abstract there is a large degree of variation in the number of general purpose local governments and school districts per square mile and per person among united states metropolitan areas using data from 1982 this paper provides an empirical test of whether economic factors especially variation in demand for local government services partly account for these differences the empirical findings show that after controlling for political historic and institutional factors variations in the characteristics that affect demand for local government services do influence the number of local governments this result is consistent with the hypothesis first put forth by tiebout

union endogeneity and self selection the nature of union endogeneity is examined in the light of recently proposed estimators for union wage differentials the instrumental variable iv approach adopted by duncan and leigh is shown to yield little information on the precise nature of the endogenous process in particular it cannot be used to sign the direction of selection into the union and nonunion sectors since by construction the iv estimates impose opposite signs on the selection terms

flexible contracts and subjective well being theory suggests that when workers choose between permanent and flexible contracts their utility should tend to equalize across contract types new estimates of job satisfaction show the critical role played by unmeasured worker heterogeneity they reveal that flexible contracts are a strong negative determinant of satisfaction with job security but are often a positive determinant of other dimensions of job satisfaction as a consequence flexible contracts have either a weak negative influence or no influence on overall job satisfaction moreover flexible contracts generally have no impact on overall life satisfaction of the employed these results appear broadly consistent with the presence of equalizing differences jel j28 j41

union wage differentials in the public and private sectors a simultaneous equations specification the paper attempts to integrate new approaches to estimating union wage effects with the analysis of public private sector wage differentials estimates of the union differential in both public and private sectors allowing for the endogeneity of union status are presented the hypothesis that the recently measured rents to public sector employment primarily reflect the recent increase in unionization in that sector is examined and receives considerable empirical support there was evidence of positive selection into the union sector especially for private sector workers union status appears to be strongly influenced by the expected wage gain from joining the union sector

the labor supply of fixed wage workers estimates from a real effort experiment abstract fixed wage workers comprise the bulk of the labor force and yet little is known about how they respond to changes in their wage given recent interest in theories of reciprocity and intrinsic motivation and their implications for effort provision the neoclassical prediction seems less obvious today to better understand the motivation of these workers i estimate their labor supply using a real effort experiment two results stand out first no one theory seems to fit the pooled data on average people work considerably harder than the minimum but they do not respond to changes in the wage second pooling the data is deceptive because there seem to be distinct types with differing responses to the wage most workers can be classified as reciprocal or intrinsically motivated and indeed these types respond as theory would predict reciprocators return wage gifts with increased effort and extrinsic incentives crowd out motivation for intrinsic workers

the relationship between unions and job satisfaction this paper examines the assoication between canadian unions and their member attitudes data on job satisfaction indicate that unionized workers in canada are less happy with the quality of their jobs than non union workers the former however are more satisfied with their financial compensation and job security than non members

outsourcing labor market pooling and labor contracts this paper considers the interaction between input sharing and labor market pooling in urban areas in particular it examines the impact of the size of a city and business risks on the organizational structures of firms located in urban agglomerations and it also discusses the impact of organizational structure on incentives to insure workers against income risks it is shown that manufacturing firms suffer from a coordination game in their decision to outsource production the existence of idiosyncratic risks causes manufacturers to refrain from outsourcing the incentives to offer wage and employment protection to workers are more pronounced when manufacturers outsource the production of their inputs to a local market which mitigates the impact of labor market pooling

motivating wage structures the traditional textbook model of labor supply treats the wage structure facing the individual utility maximizer as more or less exogenously given this paper modifies this crucial assumption and argues that it provides some interesting further detail on the labor supply model the employer is viewed as a labor cost minimizer subject to an output constraint and the additional constraint that each individual must receive a certain level of utility this gives an optimal demand for hours the employer is then assumed to devise a wage structure such that the individual employee willingly supplies exactly those number of hours that the employer demands it is argued that this is a more logical way of viewing labor supply compared to the traditional approach which effectively ignores the fact that it is employers who set hours of work a simple and appealing formula is developed which relates the optimal wage structure to the relative productivities of hours and men at the margin it is shown that the optimal wage structure depends only on the employer s technology finally labor taxes are integrated into the framework which demonstrates that the underlying ideas are little affected by this complication

the attenuation of human capital spillovers abstract this paper uses 2000 census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages the paper takes a geographic approach and focuses on the attenuation of agglomeration and human capital effects differencing and instrumental variable methods are employed to address endogeneity in the wage agglomeration relationship and also to deal with measurement error in our agglomeration and human capital variables three key results are obtained first the spatial concentration of employment within five miles is positively related to wage second the benefits of spatial concentration are driven by proximity to college educated workers an instance of human capital spillovers third these effects attenuate sharply with distance

compensating differentials for shift work a model analyzing the choice of shift is developed and estimated using data from two supplements to the current population survey the findings show a positive wage premium for shift work that varies with personal characteristics and there is strong evidence showing the importance of self selection as workers with low potential daytime earnings are more likely to choose night work and supplement their earnings the findings demonstrate that cross section estimates of wage premiums for union membership and firm size are biased upward because they pick up some of the compensating differential for shift work

estimation and recent behavior of urban population and employment density gradients abstract the monocentric model of urban structure predicts that urban population density declines with distance from the central business district using the negative exponential function to approximate the decline mills e s mills studies in the structure of the urban economy johns hopkins press baltimore md 1972 estimated population and employment density gradients from 1948 to 1963 for a sample of 18 smsas this paper updates mills estimates and examines recent patterns in population and employment suburbanization the updated series estimated here is obtained using a corrected version of mills method the original procedure incorporated a bias which mills noted and later corrected e mills and k ohta in asia s new giant patrick and rosovsky eds the brookings institution washington d c 1976 the comparability of the series begun by mills and extended here is not interrupted however because as mills suspected the bias is indeed small provided smsa data are used on the other hand urbanized area definitions of metropolitan areas cause the original and corrected versions to yield significantly different results this finding has implications for the appropriate choice of data for urban studies

efficiency and internal organization works councils in west german firms efficiency voice theory has not explained why highly competent managers cannot maintain effective communication without formal or mandatory institutions of l abor s voice powerful west german works councils are negatively rela ted to productivity in the sample suggesting that the best managers can do better without councils however excessive pressure on worker s should encourage both unionization and councils to gain compensatin g differentials and the simultaneous wls tobit estimates also suppor t this effect general productivity benefits from formal voice organi zation are strongly rejected but evaluating welfare efficiency and causality directly requires data on job satisfaction and managerial ability copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

understanding organizational wage structures a resource dependence approach data on the salaries for high level administrative positions in 608 colleges and universities were used to examine the relative salaries for six positions controlling for other factors we found t

permanent differences in unemployment and permanent wage differentials this paper tests for the existence of wage premiums based on geographic and industry unemployment differences these differences are broken down into permanent and transitory components in equations controlling for variation in state generosity of unemployment insurance benefits findings indicate that wage premiums arise for long run unemployment differences but that negative short run shocks to industries generate wage cuts while positive shocks generate wage hikes therefore labor contracts accommodate long term anticipated unemployment and entail sharing of short term unemployment risks

nominal and real union wage differentials and the effects of industry and smsa density 1973 83 many studies have examined the influence of union density union members as a percentage of all workers on earnings in the private sector but few such studies have looked at the public sector using data from the 1991 current population survey this

the economic consequences of labor unionization evidence from stock price crash risk this study investigates the impact of labor unionization on stock price crash risk we find that labor unionization is negatively associated with stock price crash risk such negative relation is more pronounced when firms can intimate more credible evidence on unfavorable prospects and when firms face more powerful labor unions our findings are consistent with the notion that firms take strategic actions to reduce the bargaining advantages enjoyed by labor unions and that labor unions force firms to take less risky investments and discontinue underperformed projects more timely which leads to lower stock price crash risk

worker investments in safety workplace accidents and compensating wage differentials the theory of compensating wage differentials cwds assumes that firms supply and workers demand workplace safety predicting a positive relationship between accident risk and wages this article allows for safety provision by workers which predicts a countervailing negative relationship between individual risk and wages firms pay higher wages for higher safety related productivity using national longitudinal survey of youth panel data and data on fatal and nonfatal accidents our precise cwds imply a value of a statistical injury of 45 4 thousand and a value of a statistical life of 6 3 million in line with our model individual risk and wages are negatively correlated

land use regulation and the intensive margin of housing supply abstract this paper proposes a method for estimating the extent to which density regulation causes the actual housing supply per land unit to deviate from the unconstrained amount i e the impact of density regulation on the intensive margin of housing supply to overcome the challenges that both the housing supply per land unit which is a combination of quantity and quality measures and its unconstrained amount are unobserved to the researchers we extend the framework of epple gordon and sieg 2010 by explicitly allowing substitution between the quantity and quality inputs in the housing production function and by imposing a regulatory upper limit on the use of the quantity input we show theoretically that the land share of the housing value can be used as a proxy for the stringency of the density regulation we apply this method in our investigation of the stringency of floor to area ratio far regulation in urban china at the land parcel level and find that the regulation imposes a significant binding constraint on the housing supply per land unit we then explore the spatial and temporal variations of far regulation stringency we also find that the far regulation stringency intensified the housing price appreciation that occurred during the economic stimulus period after 2008

do wages compensate for anticipated working time restrictions evidence from seasonal employment in austria this article investigates the existence of compensating wage differentials across seasonal and long term jobs that arise due to anticipated working time restrictions using longitudinal information from the austrian administrative records we derive a definition of seasonality based on observed regularities in employment patterns as wages change across seasonal and long term jobs for the same individual over time we can control for individual specific effects and use variation in the starting month of seasonal jobs as an exogenous predictor of anticipated unemployment we find that employers pay on average a positive wage differential of about 11 for seasonal jobs

teams teamwork and absence we argue that firms with interdependent worker productivity team production have a higher cost of absence and as a consequence spend additional resources on monitoring absence as a result firms with team production should have lower absence rates we estimate the determinants of absence for blue collar workers using a sample of german manufacturing establishments workplace teams are used as a proxy for team production the estimates reveal that firms with teams have lower absence rates as do smaller establishments the size effect however is unique to establishments with teams which fits prior theoretical work that has not been previously tested

land use regulations compliance and land markets in argentina empirical evidence on the impact of stringent land use regulations on the price of land and housing in urban areas is growing yet most research has been carried out in countries where ordinances are enforced if enforcement is lax the ultimate impact of strict rules on land and housing prices is unclear lower levels of compliance with rules can result in negative externalities and thereby exert downward pressure on the price of formal land this paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between land use regulations compliance and land prices in the three major metropolitan areas of argentina the country with the most stringent land use and urban development regulations in latin america using an original dataset gathered from parcel and municipal level surveys results show that municipalities with higher levels of regulation have lower rates of compliance with property laws and lots selling legally in these municipalities have lower land prices 2013 urban studies journal limited

unionism in a competitive industry this article explores a model in which a union confronts many competitive workers firms and consumers under monopoly unionism union coverage may be incomplete then union wages and employment are insensitive to product demand variation under efficient unionism coverage can never be incomplete some union variables necessarily vary with product demand preliminary evidence on the demand independence under incomplete coverage hypothesis is presented also more structure is imposed and further hypotheses are derived and the manner in which the model can be enriched to allow for a variety of union related issues within a consistent framework is set out

an empirical model of employed search unemployed search and nonsearch the 1969 1971 national longitudinal surveys data on young men were used to study the employed worker s choice among employed search unemployed search and not searching for a new job we assume that an unobserved variable search intensity governs this choice such that unemployed search involves a greater intensity than employed search which of course is associated with greater intensity than nonsearch the principal results are that current wages seniority collective bargaining coverage employment outside construction and employment by government are each ceteris paribus negatively associated with search intensity further each of these variables lowers the probability of not searching and raises the probabilities of employed and unemployed job search

do unions capture monopoly profits this paper challenges the conclusion reached in recent studies that unions reduce profits exclusively in highly concentrated industries from their review of previous studies and their analysis of 1977 data on 367 fortune 500 firms the authors conclude that there is no convincing evidence that concentration produces monopoly profits for unions to capture moreover they find that the union wage effect is not greater in concentrated industries as suggested by the hypothesis that unions capture concentration related profits evidence is found suggesting that a firm s market share its expenditures on research and development and its protection from foreign competition provide more likely sources for union rents than does industry concentration several recent studies have found that unions reduce profits significantly and some have concluded that this profit reduction is restricted to highly concentrated industries both conclusions are important the finding that unions reduce profitability indicates that in general the cost increasing effects of unions outweigh any positive productivity effects they may bring to the workplace such a

the backing of government bonds and monetarism abstract this paper examines the implications of the fiscal backing of government bonds for the effects of conventional macroeconomic policies and in particular for certain monetarist propositions it shows that the validity of some basic monetarist hypotheses requires a considerable degree of accommodation by the fiscal authority relative to the central bank otherwise government bonds may matter in a manner as described in the traditional literature e g mundell 1971 patinkin 1965 though some differences arise of perhaps independent interest the framework developed in the analysis is an intertemporal general equilibrium model with all the descriptive features of the conventional flexible price is lm model

beyond demand and supply curves in macroeconomics this paper surveys recent issues in macroeconomics from the viewpoint of dynamic economic theory the need to look beyond demand and supply curves and the insights that come from doing so are emphasized examples of issues in debt management and fiscal policy are analyzed

public open space conservation under a budget constraint abstract this paper analyzes the fiscal and land value impacts of public open space conservation in a budget constrained city it derives the necessary and sufficient conditions for open space conservation to increase the level of municipal services and the total land value within the city the theoretical results together with the empirical evidence found in the literature suggest that open space conservation can increase the level of municipal services and total land value in a significant share of american cities even if it generates no amenities open space conservation will likely increase total land values and municipal services in metropolitan areas that have stringent land use regulations high development densities and relatively little open space but will likely reduce municipal services and total land values in small lightly regulated cities surrounded by rural land and fiscally constrained in providing essential public goods h4 r3 q2

heterogeneous firms and the organization of production firms in the same industry exhibit systematic differences in the organization of production and the structure of employment entrepreneurial ability is the specific scarce input that limits the size of a firm this input must be allocated to two activities coordinating production and monitoring workers able entrepreneurs can convert calendar time into larger supplies of coordinating effort that enable them to assemble large firms greater ability implies a higher shadow price of time which increases the implicit costs of monitoring a dispersion of entrepreneurial abilities generates an equilibrium size distribution of firms differences in monitoring costs affect the choice of worker productivities the design of products and the organization of production the monitoring cost hypothesis advanced in this paper goes a long way in explaining the equilibrium of an industry containing heterogeneous firms that differ in size and behavior

union effects on productivity profits and growth has the long run arrived this article interprets literature examining union effects on economic performance production function studies indicate small overall union impacts on productivity positive effects where they exist appear to result from management response to decreased profit expectations and from a natural selection process lower profitability among unionized firms is well established more interesting is the possibility that unions appropriate quasi rents deriving from long lived tangible and intangible capital the connection between unions investment behavior and productivity growth emerges as a particularly fruitful line of empirical inquiry although it does not encourage a sanguine view of unionism s long run impact

sample truncation in fha data implications for home purchase indexes the home purchase index is the single most important price series in the consumer price index cpi in december 1980 for example the relative importance of home purchase in the cpi for all urban consumers was 10 3 percent another component of homeownership cost contracted mortgage interest had a weight of 9 8 percent in the cpi the mortgage cost index is computed as the product of the home purchase index and an index of mortgage interest rates thus a ten percent increase in measured home purchase prices is sufficient to increase the all items cpi by approximately two percent the importance of the home purchase index places great value on the accuracy of its measurement however the index is one of the most often criticized of all cpi series the primary objections result from the decision by the bureau of labor statistics bls to base the index on sales data provided by the federal housing administration fha these fha data have been employed in numerous econometric studies including analyses of housing demand 14 place to place house price indexes 16 and the substitutability of land and capital in the production of housing services 18 at the same time the fha samples are widely recognized to be unrepresentative of the universe of house sales with possible distorting effects in some applications also in recent years the home purchase index has differed markedly from other national level house price indexes published by the u s bureau of the census and the national association of realtors 2 probably the most critical problem with the fha data base results from the program s ceilings on the size of insurable mortgages these ceilings historically have

labor unions and the distribution of wages and employment in south africa few countries have higher wage inequality than south africa where wages of african and white workers differ by a factor of five using survey data collected in 1993 the authors analyze the complex effect of unions on this wage gap among male african workers in the bottom decile of the wage distribution union membership was associated with wages that were 145 higher than those of comparable nonunion workers and among those in the top decile the differential was 19 regression estimates also indicate that returns to observed productive characteristics of workers such as education and experience were larger for nonunion than union workers if the large union relative wage effect were cut in half the authors estimate that employment of african youth age 16 29 would increase by two percentage points and their labor force participation rate would also increase substantially

unions and hospitals some unresolved issues abstract this article investigates the impact of unions on the wages of hospital workers our ols findings agree with previous ols studies unions increase registered nurses rns wages by five percent and by about eight to ten percent for other hospital workers by contrast we find after correcting for selectivity bias in hospital unionization status a direct union effect of about twenty percent on rn wages and in excess of thirty percent on wages of other hospital workers while the results based on selectivity bias adjustments make us uneasy we do not reject them out of hand we also find indirect union effects up to five percent by other unionized occupations within a hospital and up to ten percent by other unionized hospitals in the local labor market prospective reimbursement programs have a negative impact on the wages of hospital workers but are only significant for non unionized occupations our three empirical tests of monopsony all reject the view that monopsony is a factor in hospital wage setting even considering the large union effects based on selectivity bias adjustment we conclude that unions have been a minor contributor to hospital cost inflation