Search

Using data for three cohorts of women in the PSID, we show that annual earnings inequality fell sharply between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s, with a large decline in the component attributable ...

We study the relationship among productivity, management practices, and employee ability using German data combining management practices surveys with employees’ longitudinal earnings records. Including human capital reduces the association between productivity and management practices by 30%–50%. Only a small fraction is accounted for by the higher human capital of the average employee at better-managed firms. A larger share is attributable to the human capital of the highest-paid workers, that is, the managers. A similar share is mediated through the pay premiums offered by better-managed firms. We find that better-managed firms recruit and retain workers with higher average human capital.

The recession of 2008–9 was the deepest and longest downturn in US economic activity since the Great Depression. Like the historic episode of the 1930s, the Great Recession had a particularly large impact on labor markets. Unemployment peaked at 10% in 2009 and only fell back below 6% in 2014 ðfig. 1Þ. The impact on employment rates was even greater: the fraction of the working-age population with a job fell precipitously in 2008 and 2009 ðfig. 2Þ and has as yet only recovered a small fraction of these losses. Most economists believe that the Great Recession was caused by financial market stresses following the collapse of the housing bubble. Nevertheless, some have argued that labor market factors contributed to the persistence of the recession. Average real wages rose in the early stages of the recession and then remained relatively stable ðsee fig. 3Þ, suggesting that realwage rigidities—perhaps reinforced by the availability of extended unemployment insurance benefits—may have been impeding labor market adjustments. The unprecedented rise in long-term unemployment, which by 2011 accounted for nearly one-half of all unemployment spells, has likewise been interpreted by some analysts as evidence that benefit-induced frictions were slowing recovery from the recession. In 2011, the National Bureau of Economic Research asked the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to sponsor a series of studies on the labor market impacts of the Great Recession. The papers in this issue, all of which have been through the Journal of Labor Economics’ usual refereeing process, are the end result of this process. They offer new perspectives on three fun

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.

Strike outcomes in the 1880s had a 'winner-take-all' character. Successful strikes ended with a discrete wage gain; failed strikes ended with a return to work at the prestrike wage. The authors present a theoretical interpretation of these outcomes based on a war-of-attrition model. They fit an empirical model specifying the capitulation times of the two parties and the size of the wage gain in the event of a strike success. The results show a systematic relation between the determinants of strike success and the determinants of the wage gain for a successful strike. Copyright 1995 by University of Chicago Press.

We report the impacts of a job training program operated in the Dominican Republic. A random sample of applicants was selected to undergo training, and information was gathered 10–14 months after graduation. Unfortunately, people originally assigned to treatment who failed to show up were not included in the follow-up survey, potentially compromising the evaluation design. We present estimates of the program effect, including comparisons that ignore the potential nonrandomness of “no-show” behavior, and estimates that model selectivity parametrically. We find little indication of a positive effect on employment outcomes but some evidence of a modest effect on earnings, conditional on working.

This paper presents evidence on two aspects of strike activity associated with the renegotiation of union contracts: the effects of contract characteristics on dispute probabilities; and the effects of lagged strike outcomes on the incidence and duration of subsequent disputes. The empirical results show that strike probabilities are higher following a longer contract, and lower in limited reopening situations. Strike probabilities are also higher in summer and fall than in winter and spring. Finally, strike probabilities are significantly affected by lagged strike outcomes. Relative to a peaceful settlement, strike probabilities are 10 percentage points higher following a strike of two weeks or less, and 5 to 7 percentage points lower following a longer dispute.