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This paper directly tests for differences in returns to education between the employed and self-employed in Hong Kong. Using a step-function, we find significantly smaller returns for the self-employed, suggesting that in the highly competitive labor market of Hong Kong education plays a signaling role. This pattern persists for both genders, when accounting for self-selection into employment status and when accounting for self-employed professionals who signal.

Using establishment data, we show a strong association between flexible schedules and reduced absence rates even after controlling for other family friendly policies also thought to reduce absence. The evidence suggests that the other polices, financial support for caregivers and family leave for caregivers, play a weaker role in explaining absence. The primacy of the role of schedule flexibility remains in a variety of robustness exercises including an effort to account for endogeneity. The size of the influence also shows heterogeneity as it emerges as larger in female dominated workplaces. The estimates help to inform current policy deliberations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I. INTRODUCTION The determinants of perceived underpayment are estimated using a sample of young employed physicians. The estimates indicate that minority and white physicians build both intraracial and interracial income [...]

This paper posits that the provision of family friendly practices is, on balance, costly to firms and valuable to workers. As a consequence, we anticipate the emergence of a hedonic equilibrium in which workers provided with such practices face an implicit reduction in their earnings. Using WERS98 linked employer-employee data, we find that workers overstate their access to family friendly practices. We also find a surprisingly high compensating wage differential of around 20%. However, this result depends critically on a treatment model designed to purge typical estimates of the income effect. It is also largely associated with indicators of flexible working schedules and cannot be replicated for workplace nursery support or working at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of employer and workplace size in the federal sector job queue in the U.S. Excluding measures of size in the typical bivariate probit may result in spurious evidence of queuing which could be explained by an equilibrium in which size variables were part of the worker's choice of sector. The existence of a queue for federal sector jobs should by conditioned on the possibility that workplace and employer size are characteristics which workers consider when choosing a job.

This study presents evidence in the ongoing examination of whether or not union wage effects represent, in part, premiums to unpleasant aspects of unionized work. Three major empirical results follow: first, approximately one-sixth of the union differential can be attributed to the greater employment risk of union members; second, nearly one-half of the union return, and over one-third of the non-union return, to union density can simultaneously be attributed to employment risk; and, third, union members, on balance, receive larger premiums for employment risk. Such results extend previous work which argues that unions help reveal preferences about workplace public goods. In addition, they support those who contend that union density proxies other relevant omitted variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses individual level data from the United States to examine the influence of government employment on the provision of five major fringe benefits. Four of the five benefits are more likely to be provided to government workers than to their private sector counterparts. Unlike wage comparisons which typically find substantial overpayment only for federal workers, the effect on benefit provision seems particularly strong at the local level. The findings suggest that past wage differentials underestimate the true compensation advantage enjoyed by government workers. T
The primary objective of these comparisons is to examine whether or not otherwise equal government workers receive greater earnings than their private sector counterparts. Researchers (Smith, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1983; Quinn, 1979; Venti, 1986) have estimated such government wage differentials for men, women and minorities; for different levels of government; for different regions of the country; and for municipalities of different sizes. These studies have in common their exclusive reliance on wages as the measure of compensation. While some related studies (Quinn, 1982) have attempted to examine pension wealth by sector, or to adjust wage differentials for other compensation (Bellante and Long, 1981), no broad examination of the provision of a variety of benefits has been undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]