the effects of prevailing wage requirements on the cost of low income housing recent california legislation extends the application of prevailing wage regulations to construction workers building subsidized low income residential projects econometric evidence based on micro data covering 205 residential projects subsidized by the california low income housing tax credit since 1996 and completed by mid 2002 demonstrates that construction costs increased substantially under prevailing wage requirements estimates of additional construction costs in the authors most extensive models range from 9 to 37 the analysis controls for variations in cost by geographical location and for differences in project characteristics financing and developer attributes the authors estimate the effect of uniform imposition of these regulations on the number of new dwellings for low income households produced under the tax credit program in california under reasonable assumptions the mid range estimate of the prospective decrease exceeds 3 100 units per year

rent seeking and the transformation of employment relationships the effect of corporate restructuring on wage patterns determinants and inequality a key debate in research on corporate restructuring is whether this widespread and extensive transformation process made contemporary employment relationships more open with firms relying largely o

the transition to the knowledge economy labor market institutions and income inequality in advanced democracies the transition from fordism to the knowledge economy in the world s advanced democracies was underpinned by the revolution in information and communications technology ict the introduction and rapid diffusion of ict pushed up wages for college educated workers with complementary skills and allowed top managers and ceos to reap greater rewards for their own talents despite these common pressures income inequality did not rise to the same extent everywhere income in the anglo saxon countries remains particularly unequally distributed to shed new light on this puzzle the authors carry out a panel data analysis of eighteen oecd countries between 1970 and 2007 their analysis stands apart from the existing empirical literature by taking a comparative perspective the article examines the extent to which the relationship between the knowledge economy and income inequality is influenced by national labor market institutions the authors find that the expansion of knowledge employment is positively associated with both the 90 10 wage ratio and the income share of the top 1 percent but that these effects are mitigated by the presence of strong labor market institutions such as coordinated wage bargaining strict employment protection legislation high union density and high collective bargaining coverage the authors provide robust evidence against the argument that industrial relations systems are no longer important safeguards of wage solidarity in the knowledge economy

the davis bacon act an appraisal of recent studies the intensified controversy in recent years over the davis bacon act which requires the payment of prevailing wages on federally funded construction projects has resulted in several new studies of the effects of that act this invited paper reviews the evidence presented in these recent studies on several aspects of the act including how davis bacon wage determinations compare to local construction wages as measured by sources other than the act s administrators the effects of lags in the act s data gathering process and the savings that would result from calculating the prevailing rate as the arithmetic mean of local wages instead of the current use of the modal rate in most cases the authors conclude that although the cost studies to date have been faulty in several respects it is reasonably clear that davis bacon is unattractive on grounds of economic efficiency alone the question remains however whether these efficiency costs are offset partially or wholly by the possible equity benefits o

skill biased technological change and rising wage inequality some problems and puzzles the recent rise in wage inequality is usually attributed to skill biased technical change sbtc associated with new computer technologies we review the evidence for this hypothesis focusing on the implications of sbtc for overall wage inequality and for changes in wage differentials between groups a key problem for the sbtc hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s despite continuing advances in computer technology sbtc also fails to explain the evolution of other dimensions of wage inequality including the gender and racial wage gaps and the age gradient in the return to education

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

an empirical analysis of entrant and incumbent bidding in road construction auctions this paper explores differences in the bidding patterns of entrants and incumbents in road construction auctions we find that entrants bid more aggressively and win auctions with significantly lower bids than incumbents the differences in their bidding patterns are consistent with a model of auctions in which the distribution of an entrant s costs exhibits greater dispersion than that of an incumbent s and relations of stochastic dominance in the distributions do not persist for the entire range of estimated costs we also find that more efficient firms bid on average more aggressively and firms with greater backlogs bid less aggressively

control techniques and upward flow of information in franchising in distant markets conceptualization and preliminary evidence abstract information exchange between franchisees and franchisors is viewed as instrumental for the attainment of both firm specific and systemic goals within franchise systems our study investigates the issue of control and control techniques employed by franchisors to monitor the performance of their franchisees in distant markers with special focus on the role of information exchange a major assumption underlies our work even though in the language of agency theory franchise contracts attempt to align the incentives of the principal i e franchisor and the agent i e franchisee such alignment is not easy to achieve due to basic conflicts in the parties respective goals for instance while franchisees are primarily interested in achieving short term profits franchisors are more concerned about strengthening the brand equity of their systems a perfect upward flow of information i e from franchisees to franchisors therefore is not necessarily guaranteed this paper introduces and empirically evaluates four hypotheses relating franchisees willingness to provide information to their respective franchisors first it is suggested that franchisees willingness to provide information to their franchisors will be positively related to the incidence of repeat purchases since incentives to free ride are expected to be low at such units in repeat customer industries hence franchisees will have little incentive to hide information second it is argued that the greater the age of relationship between the focal franchisee and franchisor the more secure both parties are likely to feel about the projection of this relationship into the future consequently a positive relationship between the age of the franchise relationship and franchisees willingness to provide information to franchisors is proposed next we suggest that the level of competition faced by franchisees is positively related to franchisees willingness to provide information to their franchisors the latter effect is expected for two reasons foremost such franchisees are likely to see the availability of authentic market information as a necessary tool for their franchisors if franchisors are to provide them with accurate localized advice for combating competitive forces second from an agency theory perspective franchisees have an incentive to conceal information about the external environmental factors only if such information serves to explain franchisees business success in terms of forces other than their effort this would not occur in a competitive environment setting finally multi unit franchisees are hypothesized to more willingly provide information to their franchisors than their single unit counterparts given their lower incentives to free ride and the higher level of security felt in their relationships with their franchisors the empirical verification of our contentions was carried out in two stages first we studied in depth the case of lebanon to develop the initial descriptive materials second and based on the first step we surveyed u s based franchisors with franchisees in the middle east and africa to assess our hypotheses results show that while the extent of competition faced by franchisees was found to be an incentive to provide information to franchisors the age of the relationship emerged as a disincentive to sharing information with the franchisors

buyer seller negotiations around the pacific rim differences in fundamental exchange processes the determinants of buyer seller negotiations in four cultures are investigated in a laboratory simulation one hundred thirty eight american 54 chinese 42 japanese and 38 korean business people participated in a two person buyer seller intracultural negotiation simulation in negotiations between americans the use of more problem solving bargaining strategies positively influenced negotiation outcomes in negotiations between chinese more competitive strategies led to better results in japanese and korean negotiations buyers achieved higher economic rewards than sellers in all four cultures bargainers were more satisfied with negotiation outcomes when partners were rated more attractive

bidding behavior in a repeated procurement auction a summary abstract this paper considers bidding behavior in a repeated procurement auction setting we study highway procurement data for the state of california between december 1994 and october 1998 we consider a dynamic bidding model that takes into account the presence of intertemporal constraints such as capacity constraints we estimate the model non parametrically and assess the presence of dynamic constraints in bidding

how costly is affirmative action government contracting and california s proposition 209 abstract this paper investigates the effect of disadvantaged business enterprise subcontractor goals on the winning bids for highway construction contracts using california s proposition 209 which prohibited the consideration of race or gender in awarding state funded contracts after proposition 209 prices on state funded contracts fell by 5 6 relative to federally funded projects for which preferences still applied most of the price decline after proposition 209 resulted from the mix of subcontractors employed which seems to arise from the higher costs of firms located in high minority areas finally short run barriers to entry and expansion may increase the cost of affirmative action

selling machinery to china chinese perceptions of strategies and relationships chinese perceptions of machinery suppliers from six countries are used to evaluate supplier strategies and the customer relationships formed strategies based on product quality and service had the greatest impact on preferences the relationship formed seemed to reflect mainly the perceived value of the product service package offered friendship in the traditional chinese sense did not seem to be a strong characteristic of these relationships

prevailing wage laws and construction labor markets prevailing wage laws which require that construction workers employed by private contractors on public projects be paid wages and benefits at least equal to those prevailing for similar work in or near the locality in which the project is located have been the focus of an extensive policy debate the authors analyzing current population survey data and census data find that the relative wages of construction workers decline slightly after the repeal of a state prevailing wage law however the small overall impact of law repeal masks substantial differences in outcomes for different groups of construction employees repeal is associated with a sizable reduction in the union wage premium and an appreciable narrowing of the black non black wage differential for construction workers

nonunion wage rates and the threat of unionization i investigate how the threat of union organization affects the wage paid to nonunion workers i start by outlining the standard model of wage determination by a nonunion employer when faced with the threat of union organization the model suggests that the nonunion wage will be directly related and the union wage gap will be inversely related to the threat i use repeated cross section data from the cps from 1977 2002 to develop a measure of the threat as the predicted probability of union membership i use this measure to estimate earnings functions that use several sources of variation in the likelihood of union membership to identify the threat effect in a manner that reduces the likelihood of omitted variable bias finally i investigate two cases where there has arguably been a change in the likelihood of union organization that is not correlated with changes in the demand for labor these include the wage changes surrounding the introduction of rightto work rtw laws in two states during the period studied and wage changes surrounding deregulation of key industries in the late 1970s and early 1980s the results are mixed the preferred estimates from the analysis using predicted probability of unionization as the threat measure imply very little relationship between either nonunion wages or the union wage gap and the threat the estimates that rely on the introduction of rtw laws show a significant relationship between nonunion wages and the introduction of rtw laws in one of the two states stronger evidence of threat effects is found in the experience of deregulated industries where regulation was a central factor in union strength

beyond spreads measuring sovereign market stress in the euro area abstract we develop a novel composite indicator to measure sovereign bond market stress in the euro area the indicator integrates yield and liquidity spreads along with volatility into an overall measure of sovereign market stress an application to the spillover literature suggests that stress mainly originates from a few countries but that spillover patterns also vary over time

union effects on nonunion wages evidence from panel data on industries and cities the authors test for threat and crowding effects of unions on non union wages at the industry and city levels using panel data on the percent organized and nonunion industry and city wage differentials constructed from current population surveys over the period 1973 89 at the industry level increases in the percent organized were associated with decreases in the nonunion industry wage differential suggesting that crowding effects were the predominant union effect on nonunion industry wage differentials in contrast at the city level increases in the percent organized were associated with increases in the nonunion city wage differential suggesting that threat effects predominated the authors also find evidence of negative cross occupation union effects on nonunion industry wage differentials supporting their hypothesis that the industry level results were partly driven by complementarity between union and nonunion labor

interest rate linkages within the european monetary system further analysis j costas karfakis and demetrios m moschos 1990 examine the interest rate linkages within the european monetary system ems concluding that the german interest rate plays a dominate role within the ems the authors reexamine the interest rate linkages within the ems with the addition of the interest rate of the united states their results suggest that both the united states and german interest rates play an important but not dominant role in ems interest rate linkages copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

cross cultural interaction the international comparison fallacy international management studies have been based primarily on the comparison of managerial behavior in countries around the world often these studies have implied that business people behave similarly with their domestic colleagues as with their foreign counterparts in questioning that assumption this study tests whether intra cultural behavior accurately predicts cross cultural behavior using a negotiation simulation and a sample of 462 japanese american and canadian businesspeople behaviors in cross cultural negotiations were found to differ in some important ways from those in intra cultural negotiations

the politics of union decline the contingent determinants of union recognition elections and victories despite the close political regulation of union recognition disputes sociologists have paid little attention to recent political determinants of success in these contests a state centered political opportunity approach suggests that if conservative political officials can reduce the number of union recognition elections union organization will be blocked partly because many labor scholars claim there was a postwar departure in labor movement fortunes we attempt to detect and model a contingent break in the relationship between republican control of the presidency and these elections using interactive specifications our findings show that shortly after the conservative anti union reagan administration took office recognition elections and union victories in these elections fell sharply with macroeconomic and other determinants held constant other political conditions with explanatory power include congressional oversight committee ideology and conservative appointments to the key regulatory age

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

unions and nonunion wage dispersion previous research has found that union standard rate policies lower the dispersion of union wages and that unions indirectly raise nonunion wage levels as firms weigh the probability of unionizing and wage costs these two findings imply that unions lower the dispersion of nonunion wages since for a given payroll a nonunion firm can achieve the greatest reduction in the probability of unionism by giving raises to those who would benefit most from a union this hypothesis is confirmed on current population survey data taking into account the endogeneity of unionism ceteris paribus nonunion wage dispersion is lower in more highly unionized industries copyright 1987 by mit press

unions norms and the rise in u s wage inequality from 1973 to 2007 private sector union membership in the united states declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women during this period inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent we report a decomposition relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution s shrinking weight we argue that unions helped institutionalize norms of equity reducing the dispersion of nonunion wages in highly unionized regions and industries accounting for unions effect on union and nonunion wages suggests that the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality an effect comparable to the growing stratification of wages by education

international multilateral negotiations and social networks compared to their bilateral counterparts multilateral negotiations in an international setting present an extremely complex set of negotiation phenomena this paper proposes a model of negotiations that examines how national culture organization specific factors and individual characteristics of the negotiators impact the multilateral negotiation process in a cross national context specifically social network theory and tools are utilized to examine how coalitions form and roles emerge among participants the model also posits the effect of social network activity on negotiation outcomes research propositions are forwarded in hopes of setting an agenda for the research stream implied by the model methods for testing the model and implications for academics and managers are also discussed

this job is getting old measuring changes in job opportunities using occupational age structure high and low wage occupations are expanding rapidly relative to middle wage occupations in both the u s and the e u we study the reallocation of workers from middle skill occupations towards the tails of the occupational skill distribution by analyzing changes in age structure within and across occupations because occupations typically expand by hiring young workers and contract by curtailing such hiring we posit that growing occupations will get younger while shrinking occupations will get old after verifying this proposition we apply this observation to local labor markets in the u s to test whether markets that were specialized in middle skilled occupations in 1980 saw a differential movement of both older and younger workers into occupations at the tails of the skill distribution over the subsequent 25 years consistent with aggregate trends employment in initially middle skill intensive labor markets hollowed out between 1980 and 2005 employment losses among non college workers in the middle of the occupational skill distribution were almost entirely countered by employment growth in lower tail occupations for college workers employment losses at the middle were offset in roughly equal measures by gains in the upper and lower tails of the occupational skill distribution but gains at the upper tail were almost entirely limited to young college workers consequently older college workers are increasingly found in lower skill lower paying occupations this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

contagion in eurozone sovereign bond markets the good the bad and the ugly we test for contagion between eurozone bond markets during the sovereign debt crisis using a three regime markov switching var we identify two distinct crisis phases the bad and the ugly with differing patterns of shock transmission evidence of contagion is scant

the effect of unions on wage inequality in the u s labor market this study uses current population survey micro data for 1973 74 and 1993 to evaluate the effect of changing union membership on trends in male and female wage inequality unionization rates of men fell between the two sample periods with bigger declines among lower skill groups these trends account for 15 20 of the rise in male wage inequality union membership rates of low wage women also declined while unionization increased among higher wage women on balance shifting unionization accounts for very little of the rise in female wage inequality economy wide trends in unionization mask a sharp divergence between the private sector where unionism was declining and the public sector where it was rising comparisons across sectors suggest that unionization substantially slowed the growth in wage inequality in the public sector

the effects of cultural adaptation on business relationships americans selling to japanese and thais a 2 4 culture of participants degrees of cultural adaptation experimental design with 145 thai and 101 japanese professionals is used to investigate the effect of cultural adaptation on attraction and outcomes when americans adapt to japanese and thais this study extends the research of francis 1991 the curvilinear relationship between adaptation and attraction found in francis is not replicated for thais the relationship appears monotonic positive for japanese it reaches a plateau beyond moderate adaptation

influences on exchange processes buyers preconceptions of a seller s trustworthiness and bargaining toughness exchange theories posit that trust has an important and favorable influence on dyadic interactions this paper examines the notion that trust plays a key role in making a seller s tough bargaining strategy successful in a bargaining experiment we manipulated subjects preconceptions about a seller s trustworthiness and bargaining toughness as hypothesized a seller s expected trustworthiness plus toughness in bargaining led to higher levels of buyer seller cooperation and agreement and a higher level of buyer concessions

disadvantaged business enterprise goals in government procurement contracting an analysis of bidding behavior and costs programs that encourage the participation of disadvantaged business enterprises dbe as subcontractors have been a part of government procurement auctions for over three decades in this paper we examine the impact of a program that requires prime contractors to subcontract out a portion of a highway procurement project to dbe firms we study how dbe subcontracting requirements affect bidding behavior in federally funded projects within a symmetric independent private value framework we use the equilibrium bidding function to obtain the cost distribution of firms undertaking projects either with or without subcontracting goals we then use nonparametric estimation methods to uncover and compare the cost of firm bidding on a class of asphalt projects related to surface treatment in texas the analysis shows little differences in the cost structure between projects that have subcontracting goals and those that do not

bid preference programs and participation in highway procurement auctions we use data from highway procurement auctions subject to california s small business preference program to study the effect of bid preferences on auction outcomes our analysis is based on an estimated model of firms bidding and participation decisions which allows us to evaluate the effects of current and alternative policy designs we show that incorporating participation responses significantly alters the assessment of preferential treatment policies

an empirical comparison of soviet and american business negotiations fifty six soviet businesspeople and 160 american businesspeople participated in simulated intracultural one on one buyer seller negotiations all participants completed questionnaires after the negotiation sessions and six negotiators from each cultural group were videotaped during the interactions analysis of the questionnaire data indicated that soviet negotiators achieved higher individual profits when using a competitive approach in negotiations this result is in contrast to a more cooperative approach associated with higher profits for the american participants analysis of the videotapes suggests both similarities and differences in observed bargaining behaviors across the two cultural groups

union membership union organization and the dispersion of wages a variance components model explains wage dispersion with a specific version of generalized least squares the estimation preserves individual data while examining the influence of union penetration on dispersion in both the union and nonunion sectors controlling for both individual and industry characteristics and for the endogeneity of wages union penetration correlates strongly with reduced dispersion in the union sector but not in the nonunion sector a decomposition reveals the relative importance of the influences of union penetration and of union membership copyright 1990 by mit press

the political economy of minimum wage legislation two questions are addressed in this paper a why do labor unions and certain employer organizations respectively promote and impede minimum wage legislation b do these groups have significant impacts on minimum wages question a is examined in the context of models that identify the economic self interest of unionized skilled workers and capitalists in legal wage floors question b is approached by a median legislator utility maximization model that leads to tobit estimation of the relationship between state minimum wage rates and measures of statewide organized labor and capital and average hourly earnings

measuring financial asset return and volatility spillovers with application to global equity markets we provide a simple and intuitive measure of interdependence of asset returns and or volatilities in particular we formulate and examine precise and separate measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers our framework facilitates study of both non crisis and crisis episodes including trends and bursts in spillovers and both turn out to be empirically important in particular in an analysis of sixteen global equity markets from the early 1990s to the present we find striking evidence of divergent behavior in the dynamics of return spillovers vs volatility spillovers return spillovers display a gently increasing trend but no bursts whereas volatility spillovers display no trend but clear bursts

cultural differences in conducting intra and inter cultural negotiations a sino canadian comparison a study on conflict resolution strategies of canadian and chinese peoples republic of china executives was conducted responses to two types of joint project conflicts task related and person related with potential partners from their own culture or from the other culture were examined neither group of executives altered its strategy when negotiating across cultures chinese executives were more likely to avoid conflicts but recommended more negative strategies discontinue negotiation withdraw negotiation when conflict emerged person related conflicts were found to generate more negative responses than task related conflicts especially for chinese executives both canadian and chinese executives preferred to negotiate with canadians than with chinese

a comparison of canadian and japanese cognitive styles implications for management interaction many american and canadian companies seeking to form joint ventures and alliances with japanese companies or to negotiate contracts with them have discovered that the interaction can be difficult and frustrating value differences and preferences for different management practices have been identified that contribute to these interaction problems however little research has investigated potential differences in cognitive style that might also contribute to intercultural conflict this study compares samples of canadian and japanese mba students using the myers briggs type inventory mbti and links the findings to interaction difficulties reported in the literature

living wages protection for or protection from low wage workers living wage laws are touted as anti poverty measures yet they apply to only a small fraction of workers most commonly covering only employers with city contracts the apparent contradiction between broad anti poverty goals and narrow coverage suggests that goals other than poverty reduction may partly underlie living wage campaigns this paper considers the hypothesis that living wage laws act to maintain or increase rents among unionized municipal workers by raising the wages that city contractors would have to pay living wage laws may reduce the incentives for cities to contract out work that would otherwise be done by unionized municipal employees hence increasing the bargaining power of municipal unions and leading to higher wages for their members the evidence presented here from an analysis of cps data for 1996 2000 indicates that the wages of unionized municipal workers are indeed increased as a result of living wage laws covering contractors

on the estimation of union threat effects some researchers view unions primarily as functioning to increase earnings inequality among the working class while others see them as threatening employers so that they raise wages for unorganized workers and minimize working class inequality threat effects are defined as the tendency for nonunionized employers to respond to the threat of unionization by increasing the earnings and benefits of their workers this paper probes a contextual method for estimating the effects of unionization on the earnings of unorganized workers this method controls for structural characteristics that affect workers earnings and incorporates information about the organizational strength and vitality of specific unions using data from seven manufacturing industries in indianapolis the results suggest that 1 unionized workers earnings positively affect the earnings of unorganized workers in unionized plants 2 unionized workers earnings negatively affect nonunionized workers earnings in nonunionized plants and 3 when plant size is controlled unionized workers earnings have no significant effect on the earnings of nonunionized workers in nonunionized plants these results highlight the complexity and difficulty of estimating the effects of union threat and their importance for understanding earnings inequality in the workplace

dynamic decision making a cross cultural comparison of u s and peruvian export managers export managers from the u s and peru completed a survey designed to measure cooperative decisions during a sequence of three simulated interactions with business partners during the initial stage of the relationship the decisions of peruvian export managers reflect less trust than do those of their u s counterparts during the second stage peruvian exporters respond differently to weak cheating results generally are consistent with cultural differences in attitudes toward in group v out group members however the influence of cultural differences gradually erodes in favor of personal characteristics and relationship specific history suggesting that cultural differences between business partners decline in importance as they get to know each other

can union labor ever cost less this paper examines the effect of unions on efficiency by estimating cost function systems over three different sets of construction projects the results show that union contractors have greater economies of scale this gives them a cost advantage in large commercial office buildings but in school and hospital construction nonunion contractors have lower costs at all output levels despite the cost differences profits for nonunion contractors in school and hospital construction are no higher than those for union contractors because the burden of higher union costs is shifted to buyers

are two better than one bargaining behavior and outcomes in an asymmetrical power relationship many consumer transactions are characterized by bargaining between parties holding unequal power positions the group polarization hypothesis suggests that the effects of group size will differ for high and low power bargainers accordingly power position and size of bargaining unit one two were manipulated in a threat vulnerable 2 2 game factor effects on economic performance communication style and post bargaining attitudes were examined at the unit and system levels supporting the group polarization hypothesis two person groups tend to magnify the power manipulation i e group size interacts with power position on post bargaining attitudes and system performance

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

occupations and the structure of wage inequality in the united states 1980s to 2000s occupations are central to the stratification systems of industrial countries but they have played little role in empirical attempts to explain the well documented increase in wage inequality that occurred in the united states in the 1980s and 1990s we address this deficiency by assessing occupation level effects on wage inequality using data from the current population survey for 1983 through 2008 we model the mean and variance of wages for each occupation controlling for education and demographic factors at the individual level to test three competing explanations for the increase in wage inequality 1 the growth of between occupation polarization 2 changes in education and labor force composition and 3 residual inequality unaccounted for by occupations and demographic characteristics after correcting for a problem with imputed data that biased kim and sakamoto s 2008 results we find that between occupation changes explain 66 percent of the increase in wage inequality from 1992 to 2008

performance pay and wage inequality an increasing fraction of jobs in the u s labor market explicitly pay workers for their performance using bonus pay commissions or piece rate contracts using data from the panel study of income dynamics we show that compensation in performance pay jobs is more closely tied to both observed and unobserved productive characteristics of workers than compensation in non performance pay jobs we also find that the return to these productive characteristics increased faster over time in performance pay than in non performance pay jobs we show that this finding is consistent with the view that underlying changes in returns to skill due for instance to technological change induce more firms to offer performance pay contracts and result in more wage inequality among workers who are paid for performance thus performance pay provides a channel through which underlying changes in returns to skill get translated into higher wage inequality we conclude that this channel accounts for 21 of the growth in the variance of male wages between the late 1970s and the early 1990s and for most of the increase in wage inequality above the eightieth percentile over the same period

skill biased technological change and wage inequality evidence from a plant retooling1 one of the most popular explanations for the increased wage inequality that has occurred since the late 1970s is that technological change has resulted in a downward shift in the demand for low skill workers this pattern is also alleged to account for the growth in racial inequality in wages over the same period this article reports on a case study of the retooling of a food processing plant a unique longitudinal multimethod design reveals the nature of the technological change the changes in job requirements and the mechanisms by which the changes affect the wage distribution for hourly production workers this research finds that indeed the retooling resulted in greater wage dispersion and that the changes have also been associated with greater racial inequality in wages however contrary to the claims of advocates of the skill bias hypothesis organizational and human resources factors strongly mediated the impact of the changing technology absent these high road organizational choices th

does the dm dominate the euro market an empirical investigation starting point is the german dominance hypothesis according to which germany has a dominant position within the ems this makes it impossible for other member countries to pursue their own monetary policies using monthly data of three month euro market rates from 1980 to 1988 for the u s germany the u k the netherlands france and italy we test this hypothesis in a multivariate cointegration framework we find that germany has a strong position in europe which is not restricted to the ems concerning long run development one might speak of a dominant position however there are short run relations between european countries which are not linked to relations with germany copyright 1993 by mit press

the effect of federal davis bacon and disadvantaged business enterprise regulations on highway maintenance costs the author compares winning bids on state and federal highway maintenance projects in colorado between 2000 and 2011 to determine whether federal prevailing wage and disadvantaged business enterprise regulations are associated with increased construction costs the effect of the davis bacon act is evaluated when average wage rates prevail for almost all workers involved in highway maintenance for most of the period of the study the federal minimum for work completed by disadvantaged businesses is 10 the goal for colorado exceeds this minimum by two to three percentage points summary data indicate that federal projects are more expensive than state projects but projects funded by the federal government are also larger and more complex regression results indicate that with controls for project size and complexity no statistically significant difference is found in the cost of federal and state projects results also indicate that federal regulations are not associated with reduced bid competition a

understanding the domain of cross national buyer seller interactions cross national face to face selling has thus far received very little scholarly treatment in marketing literature with few notable exceptions most existing research in this area has been fragmentary and opportunistic these problems are largely because of the lack of a broad generalizable framework within which to conceptualize and execute research studies in offering such a conceptual framework this article looks at buyer seller interactions from a communication perspective

the american jobs crisis and its implication for the future of employment policy a call for a new jobs compact the author proposes a new jobs compact to close the nation s jobs deficit to create sufficient high quality jobs to raise wages and end thirty years of wage stagnation and to update and strengthen labor and employment policies a set of market and institutional failures are identified as root causes of these problems and local innovations and policy proposals are suggested for overcoming them achieving these objectives will require a stronger voice in national policymaking as well as proactive efforts to mobilize and coordinate the constituencies that share an interest in and responsibility for employment policy and practice the author calls on the president and the secretary of labor to lead these efforts by mobilizing and engaging business labor women ethnic community and education leaders at regional and national levels

through the contested terrain implementation of downsizing announcements by large u s firms 1984 to 2005 since the 1980s leading u s firms have announced massive downsizing plans in the name of maximizing shareholder value but some observers are skeptical about how serious firms are in implementing

are bid preferences benign the effect of small business subsidies in highway procurement auctions abstract bid preferences in procurement auctions allow firms from an identifiable group an advantage in bidding against unfavored firms while economic efficiency is expected to fall as a result of bid preferences government procurement costs may either increase or decrease depending on the competitive response of favored and unfavored firms this paper uses data from california auctions for road construction contracts where small businesses receive a 5 percent bid preference in auctions for projects using only state funds and no preferential treatment on projects using federal aid i show that while firms bidding behavior matches theoretical predictions procurement costs are 3 8 percent higher on auctions using preferences the higher procurement cost in preference auctions is attributed to reduced participation by lower cost large firms structural estimates of latent firm costs are then used to evaluate how efficiency and the division of surplus between firms and the government are impacted by bid preferences firm profits are 3 1 percent lower under bid preferences however this is overwhelmed by the efficiency loss due to reduced large firm participation the efficiency loss conditional on firm participation is estimated to represent around 0 1 percent of overall procurement costs including the adverse effect of preferences on the participation of large firms increases the estimated efficiency loss to 3 6 percent which represents 27 cents for each additional dollar awarded to small businesses through the program counterfactual simulations indicate that if participation were instead inelastic to bid preferences the 5 percent bid preference would be close to the optimal level

risk asset pricing and monetary policy transmission in europe evidence from a threshold var approach abstract this paper investigates in how far monetary policy shocks impact european asset markets conditional on different risk states we distinguish between macroeconomic risk economic policy risk and financial risk and separately extract three factors via principal component analysis from a set of candidate variables these factors augment a threshold vectorautoregressive model that contains assets and a short rate impulse responses show that we indeed see state dependency in the reaction of asset prices to monetary policy shocks this indicates that asset markets distinguish between different types and states of risk investment grade corporate bond yields show the most pronounced state dependency if we distinguish between states of high and low economic policy risk non investment grade corporate bond yields as well as equity of industrial firms face the strongest state dependency for macroeconomic risk financial equity shows state dependency for financial risk regimes further on we illustrate that during periods of severe crisis different risk regimes coincide this impedes a clear delimitation among these three types of risk as a consequence of our findings monetary policy transmission via distinct asset prices highly depends on the degree of these different kinds of risk inherent in europe

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

immigration and inequality immigration is often viewed as a proximate cause of the rising wage gap between highand low skilled workers nevertheless there is controversy over the appropriate theoretical and empirical framework for measuring the presumed effect and over the precise magnitudes involved this paper offers an overview and synthesis of existing knowledge on the relationship between immigration and inequality focusing on evidence from cross city comparisons in the u s while some researchers have claimed that a cross city research design is inherently flawed i argue that the evidence from cross city comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings based on aggregate time series data in particular cross city and aggregate time series comparisons provide support for three key conclusions 1 workers with below high school education are perfect substitutes for those with a high school education 2 high school equivalent and college equivalent workers are imperfect substitutes with an elasticity of substitution on the order of 2 3 within education groups immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes together these results imply that the average impacts of recent immigrant inflows on the relative wages of u s natives are small the effects on overall wage inequality including natives and immigrants are larger reflecting the concentration of immigrants in the tails of the skill distribution and higher residual inequality among immigrants than natives even so immigration accounts for a small share 5 of the increase in u s wage inequality between 1980 and 2000