the probability of dependence on public assistance despite almost incessant discussion of welfare reform see levy 1978 and department of health and social security 1978 traditional systems of income support and their associated problems remain largely intact the most intractable difficulty has been the conflict between the desire to reduce costs by concentrating benefits on the poorest families and the desire to preserve work incentives by not withdrawing benefits too rapidly if a recipient family starts earning hanoch and honig 1978 show that the incentive effect of income support schemes is theoretically ambiguous levy 1979 investigates the labour supply issue empirically this paper looks at the whole issue of welfare dependency using data on american families receiving benefits under the largest scheme of public assistance aid to families with dependent children afdc we concentrate on an important group of poor families those without fathers and examine in particular the following issues a the effectiveness of afdc in selecting the very poorest families for the largest benefits b the extent to which the number of recipients is influenced by the generosity of benefits and the implicit tax on earnings c the extent to which recipients take advantage of the opportunity to supplement benefits with earnings d whether the implicit tax on earnings discourages families from working e whether the disproportionate share of blacks among recipients reflects a difference in attitudes about work and welfare between blacks and whites or whether it is explained by the adverse circumstances of blacks four different levels of dependence are considered none partial i e benefits less than earnings substantial i e benefits more than earnings and total the probability of each level of dependence is taken as a function of family characteristics including earning potential and of the characteristics of the afdc system section i describes a theory of family behaviour based on the assumption that observed differences in the behaviour of apparently identical families reflect an underlying distribution of unobserved differences section ii discusses the statistical method used to estimate the probabilities a straightforward generalization of logit analysis section iii presents and interprets the statistical results and section iv summarizes our answers to the five issues posed above two comments on the choice and use of the data should be made before proceeding the choice of data for 1967 was influenced not only by the availability of two surveys the survey of economic opportunity and a survey of afdc recipients but also by the fact that 1967 was the last year in which afdc was a relatively pure scheme subsequent legislation imposed constraints on the extent to which states could withdraw benefits as recipients incomes rose more recently the explosion in the size of the food stamp programme still very small in

the effects of regulation on research and development theory and evidence while other aspects of the effects of regulation on resource allocation have received considerable attention the impact of regulation on the innovative p ropensities of regulated firms has generated only limited and somewha t tenuous evidence accordingly this article investigates the effect s of regulation and firm structure on research and development r d expenditures a simple model of the behavior of a firm under a rate o f return regulation suggests that both the stringency of the allowed rate of return constraint and the inclusion or exclusion of r d in a firm s rate base will be key determinants of firm level r d expenditu res the empirical results strongly support the theoretical model copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

the determinants of welfare participation of female heads of household in canada this paper assesses the impact on the probability of welfare participation of budget constraint variables such as the expected wage welfare benefit level and implicit welfare tax rate the empirical results are based on a model of welfare participation that is estimated using a sample of female heads of household in canada the coefficients on the budget constraint variables are significant and carry signs that are generally consistent with the predictions of the model and the results of related studies based on data from the united states in addition to the budget constraint variables which include important policy tools a wide range of sociodemographic variables are included in the specification

sector choice multiple job holding and wage differentials evidence from poland this article uses data from poland to investigate the role played by wage differentials between the public and private sectors in influencing sector choice and the decision to moonlight standardising for worker characteristics and allowing for sector selection effects we find i a substantial private sector wage premium ii wage differentials are a significant determinant of sector choice and iii the desire to moonlight is particularly strong among those who face the greatest wage gap that is university educated employees

did canadian welfare reform work the effects of new reform strategies on social assistance participation this paper measures the extent to which declines in social assistance sa participation were associated with novel and aggressive reforms referred to as new reform strategies work requirements diversion earning exemptions and time limits controlling for province specific benefit levels eligibility requirements gdp growth labour market conditions and demographics sa participation rates were more than one percentage point lower equivalent to a 13 decline in provinces with new reforms work requirements with strong sanctions had the sharpest negative associations new reform strategies explain at least 10 of observed declines in sa participation twice that of benefit levels and eligibility requirements

the effect of taxation on labour supply the case of moonlighting the authors provide a simple test of supply side economics by estimating the responsiveness of moonlighting labour supply to changes in the marginal tax rate and the wage rate while standard theory teachers that changes in taxes and wage should have opposite and equal effects on labour supply taxes affect the entire asset position of the household in the short run an adjustment of hours in the second job may be the only option available to an individual in responding to a tax change thus analyses based on after tax wages may understate supply side effects to estimate these effects a tobit procedure is employed the empirical results suggest a backward bending supply curve over thet range of moonlighting hours data consist of a subsample of male blue collar workers from the 1978 cross section of the panel study of income dynamics

the economics of moonlighting a double self selection model the model proposed here for obtaining the labor supply functions of moonlighters uses a double self selection system to explore the husband s decision to moonlight together with his wife s decision to work subsequently the labor functions are classified under two regimes depending on whether the wife works the model is estimated based on a cross section of 4 448 married couples from the survey of income and program participation wave 2 i find that the household production time of husbands and wives are substitutes and that specific human capital deters moonlighting copyright 1990 by mit press

the impact of state economic differentials on household welfare and labor force behavior abstract this paper calculates state specific income expectations for low income households using a simultaneous model of household labor force and welfare participation decisions a variety of simulations indicate the interlocking effects of existing state differences in welfare wages and taxes on work welfare choices and income significant differences among similar households in different states occur equalization of welfare benefits eliminates some but not all of these differences but generates potentially serious policy problems for the states

minimum wages on the job training and wage growth using data from the employment opportunities pilot project we examine the relationships between minimum wages wage growth and on the job training we find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs particularly for men we find no evidence however of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities we conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process

the supply of off farm labor a random coefficients approach a joint model of off farm labor decisions for farm operator and spouse is presented attention is given to operator and spouse participation decisions as well as associated problems of multiple sample selectivity biases two stage fixed and random coefficient methods corrected for possible selectivity biases are used to estimate supply function parameters results indicate that supply function parameters are random variation in important supply parameters is investigated results also illustrate the importance of spouse decisions on off farm labor supply function structure

an economic model of welfare stigma perhaps the most basic assumption of the economic theory of consumer demand is that more is better than less virtually all of the major propositions of consumer theory can in a certain sense be derived from the assumption that goods are good interestingly however this tenet seems to be violated by the behavior of many individuals in the low income population for many turn out to be eligible for a positive welfare benefit but do not in fact join the welfare rolls for example it has been estimated that in 1970 only about 69 percent of the families eligible for afdc aid to families with dependent children participated in the program see richard michel 1980 the corresponding percentage for afdc u the program for which families with an unemployed male are eligible was only 43 percent and the participation rate in the food stamp program was only 38 percent see maurice mcdonald 1977 this phenomenon has puzzled many investigators because such individuals do not locate on the boundaries of their budget sets consequently most investigators ignore the problem when studying the effects of welfare programs on behavior in this paper this seemingly irrational rejection of an increase in income is modeled as resulting from welfare stigma that is from disutility arising from participation in a welfare program per se 1 the existence of stigma has been amply documented in the sociological literature patrick horan and patricia austin 1974 lee rainwater 1979 where interviews of recipients have often uncovered feelings of lack of self respect and negative self characterizations from participation in welfare nevertheless this phenomenon has not been modeled and many questions consequently remain when is the disutility of participation strong enough to prevent participation shouldn t we expect individuals to weigh the disutility of participation against the potential benefit in their decisions what is the elasticity of participation with respect to the potential benefit also in a slightly different vein how are the work disincentives of welfare affected by stigma these questions have been given scant attention by economists yet they are crucial for our ability to predict the impact of various welfare programs on the lowincome population here these questions are addressed by modeling nonparticipation as a utility maximizing decision the model is developed and estimated for the afdc program 2 the model posits an individual utility function containing not just disposable income but

monopsony power in the market for nurses estimates are presented of the inverse elasticity of supply of nursing services to the individual hospital a quantity which is a natural measure of employer market power the estimates corresponding to employment changes taking place over one year are quite high in the neighborhood of 0 79 and even for changes taking place over three years are substantial in the neighborhood of 0 26 the estimates do not significantly differ for hospitals in major metropolitan areas and do not depend very sensitively on the assumed form of the oligopsony equilibrium this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

secondary job holding in germany since 2003 the number and ratio of multiple jobholders has more than doubled although the german labour market has been experiencing a strong and sustained upswing this study analyses multiple j

dividing the costs and returns to general training data from the national longitudinal survey of youth indicate that the employer often pays the explicit costs of not only on site training but also off site general training although few of these costs appear to be passed on to workers in the form of a lower wage while in training completed spells of general training paid for by previous employers have a larger wage effect than completed spells of general training paid for by the current employer a model where contract enforcement considerations cause employers to share the costs and returns to purely general training can explain these findings

multiple job holding among male workers in greece livanos i and zangelidis a multiple job holding among male workers in greece regional studies this paper studies the incidence of multiple job holding in greece and contributes to the literature by examining its determinants its variance across different regions and the effect of the business cycle on its occurrence the empirical analysis highlights the importance of both pecuniary and non pecuniary motives behind multiple job holding and reveals significant variations in its incidence across regions with areas that have a large primary sector having higher multiple job holding rates finally multiple job holding is found to be pro cyclical with the probability of holding a second job estimated to increase during economic expansion livanos i et zangelidis a les emplois multiples masculins en grece regional studies l article cherche a etudier la frequence des emplois multiples en grece et contribue a la documentation en examinant ses determinants sa variance a travers les diverses regions

why do firms train theory and evidence this paper offers a theory of training whereby workers do not pay for the general training they receive the superior information of the current employer regarding its employees abilities relative to other firms creates ex post monopsony power and encourages this employer to provide and pay for training even if these skills are general the model can lead to multiple equlibria in one equilibrium quits are endogenously high and as a result employers have limited monopsony power and provide little training while in another equilibrium quits are low and training is high using microdata on german apprentices we show that the predictions of our model receive some support from the data

the impact of welfare benefits on the conjugal status of single mothers in canada estimates from a hazard model this paper focuses on the determinants of the likelihood of a remarriage marriage for female heads with children using retrospective data from statistics canada s 1990 family history survey the study attempts to identify which socioeconomic characteristics of single mothers are conducive to conjugal union formation formal or informal particular attention is given to external time varying economic covariates so as to disentangle the impact they exert on single mothers propensity to start living with a new partner the empirical analysis is carried out using a proportional hazards model which permits the estimation of the effects of various covariates on the hazard of exiting single parenthood the most striking result is the strong effect of provincial welfare benefits on conjugal union formation however the analysis reveals that single motherhood far from representing a final state remains a transitory situation for a majority of women

job amenity and the incidence of double work abstract the hypothesis that workers in jobs associated with an amenity are more prone to moonlighting is derived and tested if earnings fall for such jobs it is rational to have two jobs while for jobs with no amenity a fall in earnings causes a rational worker to leave the sector altogether an amenity can be expected for instance for workers in primary sectors and evidence that farmers at an increasing rate have double occupations are provided the comparative statics on the models shows among other things that wage increases outside the amenity sector may have different effects than wage decreases inside the sector the models are tested on data on farmers and to some extent the regressions support the theoretical models

human capital investment under asymmetric information the pigovian conjecture revisited this article investigates how human capital investment labor turnover and wages are jointly determined when the current employer knows more about a worker s productivity than potential employers results derived are quite different from or unexplored by the standard human capital theory we show that the information asymmetry can cause an externality distortion in human capital investment because higher productivity due to the investment may not be recognized by the market the investment level increases in the degree of firm specificity of human capital the underinvestment problem is more severe when human capital is general than when it is firm specific

classic or new monopsony searching for evidence in nursing labor markets the market for registered nurses rns is often offered as an example of classic monopsony while a new monopsony literature emphasizes that firm labor supply is upward sloping independent of market structure using data from multiple sources we explore the relationship between nursing wages in hospitals and measures of classic and new monopsony wage level analysis fails to provide support for classic monopsony the relative wages of rns in 240 u s labor markets being largely uncorrelated with hospital system concentration longitudinal analysis shows nursing wages declining with increases in hospital concentration we interpret these results as providing support for classic monopsony effects in the short run but question whether wage effects are sustained in the long run no relationship is found between nursing wages and a new monopsony measure of mobility but support for new monopsony is found for women elsewhere in the labor market rns display greater interemployer mobility than do women or men in general two conclusions follow first upward sloping labor supply need not imply monopsonistic outcomes second absent more compelling evidence nursing should not be held up as a prototypical example of monopsony classic or new

firm sponsored general education and mobility frictions evidence from hospital sponsorship of nursing schools and faculty this study asks why hospitals provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty this support is striking because nursing education is clearly general clearly paid by the firm and information asymmetries appear minimal using aha and survey data i find hospitals employing a greater share of their msa s registered nurses are more likely to provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty net of size and other institutional controls given the institutional context i interpret this result as unusually specific evidence that technologically general skill training may be made de facto specific by imperfect and costly mobility

investment in general training the role of information and labour mobility following the seminal work of becker i964 it is widely accepted in the literature that firms will be unwilling to finance training which workers may use in other firms this paper takes issue with this prediction and suggests that firms will frequently share in the cost of such general training 1 becker argues that a firm which pays for the training of workers in skills of potential use to other firms will lose these workers since other firms bear none of the costs of general training they can attract a worker with such training by outbidding the firm which trained him recognising this absence of property rights over an investment in general training firms will refuse to provide it hence if general training is to take place the trainee will have to pay for it if potential trainees are unwilling or unable to pay general training will not take place a shortage in general training is likely to emerge this may be especially pronounced in developing countries 2 in contrast the outlook for

tanzanian formal sector workers participation in informal production a theoretical model is developed explaining formal sector workers participation in the informal sector a reduced form informal sector participation function is derived from a specific utility function a specific informal sector production function and a specific informal sector earnings function the participation function can be estimated consistently and provides a solution to the problem that informal sector wages in developing countries are hard to observe a sample of tanzanian formal sector workers is used to estimate the participation function a majority of tanzanian formal sector workers participate in informal production participation in informal production is inversely related to household income to living in dar es salaam and to being a mother with small children participation is positively related to age and multiple job holding seems to play a very different role in the transition from work to retirement in tanzania compared to industrialized countries

an untold story the characteristics of welfare use in british columbia the dynamics of welfare participation are analyzed using a unique longitudinal data set derived from provincial administrative records over the period 1980 92 the principal findings are that the majority of welfare spells are experienced by single men and women without children and that while most welfare spells are short there is a high incidence of recidivism although continuous long term use and dependence on welfare is not characteristic of most recipients experiences the program does not provide an effective route to financial independence since most users periodically return to the program

the evolution of welfare participation among canadian lone mothers 1973 1991 canadian lone mothers under age thirty five exhibited an increasing reliance on welfare income along with stagnant wages and declining levels of market work and earnings between 1973 and 1991 in contrast lone mothers age thirty five and over exhibited a decreasing reliance on welfare income along with rising levels of market work wages and earnings a key factor accounting for rising welfare use among younger lone mothers was a decline in wages relative to welfare benefits accompanied by a mixed pattern of demographic change falling family size offset by growing proportions of lone mothers who are never married much of the declining welfare use among older lone mothers can be explained by decreasing family size and increasing education accompanied by market wages that grew at the same rate as welfare benefits

family composition and off farm participation decisions in israeli farm households this article studies the relationship between the off farm participation behavior of farm operators and their spouses and the demographic composition of the household we focus on farm families without parents siblings or partners and examine the effects of the existence of elderly children of the farm couple we find that both the father and the mother tend to reduce their participation in off farm work as the number of elderly children rises this result holds even after controlling for observed characteristics we also find that the effect of elderly children stems from considerations related to both farm production and household production

liquidity constraints as a cause of moonlighting an investigation of whether some workers respond to liquidity constraints by moonlighting is carried out using a unique large data set it is found that workers are more likely to moonlight if 1 they have low current incomes relative to their educational attainment and 2 they plan to purchase a house or a car during the next six months

multiple job holding in the united kingdom evidence from the british household panel survey this article examines the determinants of multiple job holding in the uk we address these issues using data from the first 11 waves of the british household panel survey bhps which covered the period from 1991 to 2001 evidence from the bhps does not support the hypotheses of main job hours constrained and main job insecurity we argue that the incentive for moonlighting in the uk is due to financial pressures and the desire for heterogeneous jobs the empirical work is carried out separately for men and women

is there monopsony in the labor market evidence from a natural experiment recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market however there is little direct empirical support for these models we use an exogenous change in wages at department of veterans affairs va hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market we estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic with short run elasticity around 0 1 we also find that non va hospitals responded to the va wage change by changing their own wages

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

the role of temporary agency employment in tight labor markets the authors use case study evidence from hospitals and auto parts manufacturers to investigate why employers used and even increased their use of temporary help agencies during a period of tight labor markets in the 1990s in high skill occupations the evidence suggests employers paid substantially more to agency help than to regular employees in large part to gain additional time to recruit employees for permanent positions and thereby avoid raising wages for new hires and existing employees in low skill occupations temporary help agencies appear to have facilitated the use of more risky workers by lowering their wages and benefits and the costs associated with turnover as in high skill occupations the use of agency temporaries in low skill occupations relieved pressure on companies facing tight labor markets to raise employees wages and may have contributed to the stagnant wage growth and low unemployment observed in the 1990s

the puzzling pattern of multiple job holding across u s labor markets multiple job holding mjh rates differ substantially across u s regions states and metropolitan areas rates decrease markedly with respect to labor market size these patterns have been largely overlooked despite being relatively fixed over at least the past 20 years this article explores explanations for these persistent differences we account for roughly two thirds of the mean absolute deviation in mjh across local labor markets msas the results suggest that variation in mjh across labor markets is driven by labor market differences in job opportunities and worker preferences most important in explaining variation in mjh are msa industry and occupation structure ancestry shares commute times and to a lesser extent labor market churn

multiple job holding the artist s labour supply approach this article analyses a labour supply model in which individuals maximize a utility function that depends on leisure time consumption and time devoted to an activity that is termed artistic this activity may generate income that depends nonlinearly on hours dedicated to it the individual can also work in the labour market an activity that does not increase utility by itself in exchange for an hourly wage and obtain income not related to hours conditions are obtained that sort individuals into two groups part time and full time artists deriving their labour supply functions in both activities the predictions of the model are tested empirically using a sample of musicians from a uruguayan performing rights society increases in outside wages drive part time artists out of the labour market but no significant increase in arts hours is detected higher nonlabour income also reduces nonarts work time of part time artists but does not have a significant impact in their arts hours conversely arts

minimum wages for ronald mcdonald monopsonies a theory of monopsonistic competition recent empirical work on the effects of minimum wages has called into question the conventional wisdom that minimum wages invariably reduce employment we develop a model of monopsonistic competition with free entry to analyse the effects of minimum wages and our predictions fit the empirical results closely under monopsonistic competition we find that a rise in the minimum wage raises employment per firm causes firm exit and may increase or reduce industry employment minimum wages increase welfare if they raise industry employment but welfare effects are ambiguous if employment falls

oligopsony and monopsonistic competition in labor markets we argue that models of oligopsony or monopsonistic competition provide insights and explanation for many empirical phenomena in labor markets using a simple model with job differentiation and preference heterogeneity we illustrate how such models can be employed to explain the existence of wage dispersion the persistence of labor market discrimination market failures in the provision of training and the anomalous employment effects of minimum wages

moonlighting multiple motives and gender differences this paper examines the incidence and reasons for moonlighting with a focus on gender differences the study specifies and estimates a bivariate probit model of labour supply and the decision to hold more than one job it is found that the factors leading men and women to moonlight are similar a wage decomposition analysis reveals that 93 percent of the differential between male and female moonlighters wages is not explained by differences in characteristics and little connection is found between an individual s human capital and their moonlighting wage finally it is found that moonlighters are less likely to report their income

utility based estimation of labour supply functions in the regular and irregular sectors recent theoretical work on labor supply has shown that the tax and transfer system can induce some individuals to work in the irregular labor market models designed to represent such behavior are unable to sign unambiguously the impact of the marginal tax rate as well as many key exogenous parameters on the hours supplied in the irregular market except under strong restrictions on preferences in this paper the authors estimate a simultaneous labor supply model that allows testing some of the more common assumptions found in the literature using a unique data set on the underground economy of the metropolitan area of quebec city canada estimates of elasticities with respect to predetermined variables are presented moreover they test and empirically reject the assumptions of perfect substitution between regular and irregular work activities as well as additive separability of the utility function copyright 1992 by royal economic society

a problem with the negative income tax abstract the goal of a negative income tax is to increase the work incentives of welfare recipients this note points out that it may not do so and empirical simulations show that this is a real world possibility

a time series analysis of labour absence in australia the authors find evidence from australian time series data supporting two hypotheses about the determination of labor absence first labor absence modeled in a utility maximizing framework that stresses the opportunity cost of labor absence receives considerable support from the data variables that change the slope and or shift the budget constraint facing workers affect labor absence secondly the authors find tentative evidence that coercive or difficult work environments which apparently affect job satisfaction adversely affect labor absence in particular it appears that labor absence is a leading indicator of a deteriorating industrial relations environment characterized by increased industrial disputation copyright 1989 by mit press

why do temporary help firms provide free general skills training the majority of u s temporary help supply ths firms offer nominally free unrestricted computer skills training a practice inconsistent with the competitive model of training i propose and test a model in which firms offer general training to induce self selection and perform screening of worker ability the model implies and the data confirm that firms providing training attract higher ability workers yet pay them lower wages after training thus beyond providing spot market labor ths firms sell information about worker quality to their clients the rapid growth of ths employment suggests that demand for worker screening is rising

why is the rate of single parenthood lower in canada than in the u s a dynamic equilibrium analysis of welfare policies a critical question in the design of welfare policies is whether to target aid according to household composition as was done in the u s under the aid to families with dependent children afdc program or to rely exclusively on means testing as in canada restricting aid to single mothers for instance has the potential to distort behavior along three demographic margins marriage fertility and divorce we contrast the canadian and the u s policies within an equilibrium model of household formation and human capital investment on children policy differences we consider are eligibility dependence of transfers on the number of children and generosity of transfers our simulations indicate that the policy differences can account for the higher rate of single parenthood in the u s they also show that canadian welfare policy is more effective for fostering human capital accumulation among children from poor families interestingly a majority of agents in our benchmark economy prefers a welfare system that targets single mothers as the u s system does yet does not unlike the u s system make transfers dependent on the number of children

testing some predictions of human capital theory new training evidence from britain we confront the predictions of various theories with new training data from the british household panel survey we find that employer financed training is associated with significantly higher wages at current and future firms with a larger impact in future firms this is consistent with human capital theory with credit constraints and with the new training literature assuming imperfectly competitive labor markets

the economics of private sector training a survey of the literature abstract this survey organizes and summarizes existing theoretical work on private sector training the theoretical models focus on investment efficiency finance and turnover recent developments in the on the job training literature are characterized by strategic interaction between employers and employees and emphasize market imperfections

wage differentials and moonlighting by civil servants evidence from cote d ivoire and peru as part of their efforts to reduce fiscal deficits many governments have allowed public sector salaries to erode often on the assumption that government workers are overpaid vis a vis those in the private sector that assumption is tested by analyzing public private pay differentials in cote d ivoire and peru switching regressions models are estimated using full information maximum likelihood fiml and the results are compared to those obtained using ordinary least squares ols techniques the ols yields seriously biased estimates of the pay structure suggesting that public wages are higher than private wages the fiml estimates show the opposite our probit analysis also shows that the wage disadvantage of civil servants is a determinant of the greater prevalence of moonlighting among public than private employees the evidence suggests that reductions in employment rather than pay while being less palatable in the short term will be more effective in the long run

the off farm labor supply of farmers theoretical and empirical models are developed to examine the off farm wages labor force participation and hours of work of farmers econometric estimates use data from a 1971 survey of illinois farmers the off farm wage depends on farmer human capital and the local labor market the major result confirms the sensitivity of off farm work to economic incentives a 10 increase in the off farm wage entails an 11 increase in hours of off farm work holding farm characteristics constant results also indicate effects of seasonality risk and life cycle factors on off farm work

child support welfare dependency and poverty female headed families have among the highest poverty rates of any major demographic group in the united states the purpose of this paperis to investigate empirically the effectiveness of current child support enforcement policies and to determine their role in reducing poverty and welfare dependency a special supplement to the april 1982 current population survey provides the data for the analysis the results indicate that child support enforce ment may represent an effective means for re ducing welfare program costs but isunlikely to have a dramatic effect on either welfare de pendency or poverty copyright 1986 by american economic association

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

is it all about money an examination of the motives behind moonlighting multiple job holding is an important labour market phenomenon in this article we examine individuals motives for multiple job holding specifically we estimate an empirical model of the motivation for moonlighting assuming that individuals hold a second job for either financial or for nonpecuniary motives our results contribute to a better understanding of multiple job holding we find that multiple job holding is used by individuals as a way to deal with the financial difficulties or the increased financial commitments in their household individuals are more likely to moonlight for money in the early stages of their adult life finally individuals with more labour market experience are more likely to moonlight for pecuniary than nonpecuniary reasons

monopsony power pay structure and training although interest in monopsonistic influences on labor market outcomes has revived in recent years only a few empirical studies provide direct evidence on this topic in this article the authors analyze the effect of monopsony power on pay structure using a direct measure of labor market thinness the authors find evidence of monopsony power as firms facing fewer local competitors offer lower wages to skilled labor and trainees but not to unskilled labor the findings have important implications for the economic theory of training as most recent models assume monopsonistic pay setting for skilled labor but not for trainees

optimal enforcement of noncompete covenants noncompete covenants or covenant not to compete cnc are clauses in employment contracts in which the employee agrees not to gain employment with a competitor firm in this article we study the efficiency aspects of such contracts by incorporating the effect of labor mobility restrictions on knowledge transfer across firms investment decisions by firms and investment by workers following research that shows state wise variations in the degree of cnc enforcement we allow the strength of cnc enforcement to vary as a matter of regulatory policy and derive the optimal strength of enforcement we also look at how regulations around cncs should be optimally designed when employers can use collusive agreements such as no poaching agreements as an alternative to noncompete clauses given recent allegations of employer collusion among large silicon valley firms we argue for a cautious approach in designing policies on cnc enforcement jel j24 j41 j63 k31

the shadow margins of labor market slack we use a mix of new and existing data to develop the aggregate hours gap ahg a novel measure of labor market underutilization our measure differentiates individuals by detailed categories of labor market participation and uses data on their desired work hours as a measure of their potential labor supply we show that desired hours vary widely by demographics and detailed labor force status and that the gap between desired and actual work hours is strongly positively correlated with reported search effort the aggregate hours gap suggests a more sluggish labor market recovery since the great recession than either the official unemployment rate or alternative measures of labor market underutilization modest amounts of underutilization among the part time employed and a substantial degree of underutilization among those out of the labor force account for the disparity the aggregate hours gap also does well in accounting for wage movements over our sample period

wage differentials employer size and unemployment the unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed the unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases 1 identical workers and employers 2 identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices and 3 identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

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