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Abstract:
Immigrants have historically provided one of America's greatest competitive advantages. They have come to the United States largely to work and have played a major role in the country's recent growth. Between 1990 and 2007, the proportion of immigrants in the U.S. labor force increased from 9.3 percent to 15.7 percent. Approximately 45 percent of the growth of the work force over this period consisted of immigrants. Moreover, a large and growing proportion of immigrants come with high levels of education and skill. They have contributed disproportionately in the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy - the high-tech sector. Immigrants have co-founded firms such as Google, Intel, eBay, and Yahoo. And immigrant inventors contributed to more than a quarter of U.S. global patent applications.

Since even before the 2008 financial and economic crisis, some observers have noted that a substantial number of highly skilled immigrants have started returning to their home countries, including persons from low-income countries like India and China who have historically tended to stay permanently in the United States. These returnees contributed to the tech boom in those countries and arguably spurred the growth of outsourcing of back-office processes as well as of research and development.

Who are these returnees? What motivated their decision to leave the United States? How have they fared since returning?

This paper attempts to answer these questions through a survey of 1,203 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or received their education in the United States and returned to their home country.

We find that, though restrictive immigration policies caused some returnees to depart the United States, the most significant factors in the decision to return home were career opportunities, family ties, and quality of life.

Immigration, entrepreneurship, India, China, workforce, labor migration, policy

Abstract:
The founders of the United States considered intellectual property worthy of a special place in the Constitution - "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." In today's knowledge-based economy, capturing value from intellectual capital and knowledge-based assets has gained even more importance. Global competition is no longer for the control of raw materials, but for this productive knowledge.

This paper is the third in a series of studies focusing on immigrants' contributions to the competitiveness of the U.S. economy. Earlier research revealed a dramatic increase in the contributions of foreign nationals to U.S. intellectual property over an eight-year period. In this paper, we offer a more refined measure of this change and seek to explain this increase with an analysis of the immigrant-visa backlog for skilled workers. The key finding from this research is that the number of skilled workers waiting for visas is significantly larger than the number that can be admitted to the United States. This imbalance creates the potential for a sizeable reverse brain-drain from the United States to the skilled workers' home countries.

entrepreneur, immigrant, competitiveness, intellectual property

Abstract:
The popular image of American tech entrepreneurs is that they come from elite universities: Some graduate and start companies in their garages; others drop out of college to start their business careers. The dot-com boom reinforced the image of technology CEOs being young and brash. But, even though Bill Gates and Steve Jobs founded two of the world's most successful companies, they are not representative of technology and engineering company founders. Indeed, a larger proportion of tech founders are middle-aged, well-educated in business or technical disciplines, with degrees from a wide assortment of schools. Twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their fifties as do those in their early twenties, as this paper will show.

We surveyed 652 U.S.-born chief executive officers and heads of product development in 502 engineering and technology companies established from 1995 through 2005. These companies, identified from an existing dataset of corporate records in Dun & Bradstreet's Million Dollar Database, have more than $1 million in sales, twenty or more employees, and company branches with fifty or more employees.

We observed that, like immigrant tech founders, U.S.-born engineering and technology company founders tend to be well-educated. There are, however, significant differences in the types of degrees these entrepreneurs obtain and the time they take to start a company after they graduate. They also tend to be more mobile and are much older than is commonly believed.

U.S. born, entrepreneur, key founder, high-tech, start-up, education, Ivy League

Abstract:
Foreign national students have come to the United States to study in increasing numbers and participated in some of the most advanced academic research efforts to date, lending enormous brainpower to the development of technological and scientific innovations that benefitted America. The students were drawn to the United States by the country's highly vaunted academic research institutions and enormous budgets for funding basic and applied research.

Upon completion of their studies, significant numbers of foreign students have traditionally chosen to remain in the U.S. to work full-time or pursue post-doctoral work. More recently, as the economies of the developing world have grown rapidly and Western economies have grown less quickly, anecdotal evidence has begun to suggest that fewer foreign national students wish to stay in the U.S. after graduation. Reports in the popular press, and elsewhere have suggested that many of these students now believe that greater opportunities exist elsewhere in the world. To date, there has been very little empirical research, aside from the NSF surveys, into the post-graduate intentions of foreign nationals, and the key factors driving their decisions to seek to stay in the U.S. or to move abroad. This paper attempts to fill some of this void.

This paper is based on an Facebook survey of 1,224 foreign nationals who are currently studying in institutions of higher learning in the United States or who had graduated by the end of the 2008 academic school year.

We found that foreign national students in our sample are planning to leave the U.S. after graduation in numbers that appear to be higher than the historical norm as measured in STEM disciplines. A significant percentage of these students also say they intend to open businesses in the future. This expressed intention is prevalent among Indian and Chinese nationals currently studying in the U.S. This would appear to be a marked contrast to the recent past, when Chinese and Indian degree holders were very likely to stay in the U.S. and continue working or in a research capacity (even more so in the PhD ranks).

immigration, education, reverse migration, management, science, engineering, U.S. competitiveness

Abstract:
This paper develops four propositions that show that changes in the global job market for science and engineering (S&E) workers are eroding US dominance in S&E, which diminishes comparative advantage in high tech production and creates problems for American industry and workers:

(1) The U.S. share of the world's science and engineering graduates is declining rapidly as European and Asian universities, particularly from China, have increased S&E degrees while US degree production has stagnated.

(2) The job market has worsened for young workers in S&E fields relative to many other high-level occupations, which discourages US students from going on in S&E, but which still has sufficient rewards to attract large immigrant flows, particularly from developing countries.

(3) Populous low income countries such as China and India can compete with the US in high tech by having many S&E specialists although those workers are a small proportion of their work forces. This threatens to undo the North-South pattern of trade in which advanced countries dominate high tech while developing countries specialize in less skilled manufacturing.

(4) Diminished comparative advantage in high-tech will create a long period of adjustment for US workers, of which the off-shoring of IT jobs to India, growth of high-tech production in China, and multinational R&D facilities in developing countries, are harbingers.

To ease the adjustment to a less dominant position in science and engineering, the US will have to develop new labor market and R&D policies that build on existing strengths and develop new ways of benefiting from scientific and technological advances in other countries.

Abstract:
This study transforms the "October Inquiry" Survey of wages conducted by the International Labour Organization into a consistent data file on pay in 161 occupations in over 150 countries from 1983 to 1998 to examine the pattern of pay across occupations and countries. The new file tells us that: 1. Skill differentials vary inversely with gross domestic product per capita. During the 1980s-1990s, they fell modestly in advanced countries; they fell more sharply in upper middle income countries while rising markedly in countries moving from communism to free markets and in lower middle income countries. 2. Wages in the same occupation vary greatly across countries measured by common currency exchange rates and measured by purchasing power parity. Cross-country differences in pay for comparable work increased, despite increased world trade. 3. The principal forces that affect the occupational wage structure around the world are the level of gross domestic product per capita and unionisation/wage-setting institutions.

Abstract:
A great many American firms have organized workplace decision-making in new ways to get employees more involved in their jobs - using policies like self-directed work teams, total equality management, quality circles, profit-sharing, and diverse other programs. This paper uses a firm-based data set and employee-based information to illuminate several aspects about the locus and economic impacts of employee involvement (EI). Having information from employees as well as from firms allows us to ask not only what EI does for firms, the principal question in the literature on the subject, but also what EI does for workers; and to examine EI from the "bottom up" perspective of participants rather than managers. We find that EI practices are linked in an hierarchical structure that provides a natural scaling of EI activities and the intensity of the EI effort. Firms that have EI are also more likely to have profit-sharing and other forms of shared compensation. However, EI has a weak and poorly specified effect on output per worker, but it has a strong and positive impact on employee well-being.

Abstract:
The paper documents the large cross-country differences in labor institutions that make them a candidate explanatory factor for the divergent economic performance of countries and reviews what economists have learned about the effects of these institutions on economic outcomes. It identifies three ways in which institutions affect economic performance: by altering incentives, by facilitating efficient bargaining, and by increasing information, communication, and trust. The evidence shows that labor institutions reduce the dispersion of earnings and income inequality, which alters incentives, but finds equivocal effects on other aggregate outcomes, such as employment and unemployment. Given weaknesses in the cross-country data on which most studies focus, the paper argues for increased use of micro-data, simulations, and experiments to illuminate how labor institutions operate and affect outcomes.

Abstract:
The rules governing trade and capital flows have been at the centre of controversy as globalisation has proceeded. One reason is the belief that trade and capital flows have massive effects on the labour market - either positive, per the claims of international financial institutions and free trade enthusiasts, or negative, per the ubiquitous protestors at WTO, IMF and World Bank meetings demanding global labour standards. Comparing the claims made in this debate with the outcomes of trade agreements, this paper finds that the debate has exaggerated the effects of trade on economies and the labour market. Changes in trade policy have had modest impacts on the labour market. Other aspects of globalisation - immigration, capital flows and technology transfer - have greater impacts, with volatile capital flows creating great risk for the well-being of workers. As for labour standards, global standards do not threaten the comparative advantage of developing countries nor do poor labour standards create a 'race to the bottom'.

Abstract:
The rules governing trade and capital flows have been at the center of controversy as globalization has proceeded. One reason is the belief that trade and capital flows have massive effects on the labor market - either positive, per the claims of international financial institutions and free trade enthusiasts, or negative, per the ubiquitous protestors at WTO, IMF, and World Bank meetings demanding global labor standards. Comparing the claims made in this debate with the outcomes of trade agreements, this paper finds that the debate has exaggerated the effects of trade on economies and the labor market. Changes in trade policy have had modest impacts on labour market. Other aspects of globalization - immigration, capital flows, and technology transfer - have greater impacts, with volatile capital flows creating great risk for the well-being of workers. As for labor standards, global standards do not threaten the comparative advantage of developing countries nor do poor labor standards create a 'race to the bottom'.

Abstract:
Capitalist countries have historically had quite different labour market institutions and social policies. Do these differences produce sufficiently different economic outcomes to identify a single peak set of institutions? This paper shows that: 1. Labour market institutions have large effects on distribution, but modest hard-to-uncover effects on efficiency. 2. Institutional diversity is increasing among advanced countries, as measured by the percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining. 3. The case for the US having the institutions for peak economy status rests on its 1990s full employment experience, which arguably counterbalances its high level of economic inequality The historical pattern whereby some capitalist countries do better than others in some periods (ie Japan in the 1970s-1980s), then run into problems is more consonant with the view that capitalism permits national differences in institutions to persist than with the view that all economies must converge to a single institutional structure.

Abstract:
The 1990s economic performance of the US suggests that the country may have the right mix of institutions and policies to be the peak capitalist economy in the new information economy. This paper develops criterion for judging peak status and examines whether the US fulfills these criterion. The US's employment and productivity performance make it a legitimate candidate for peak, but the record in distribution does not. As the late 1990s boom raised the wages of low skill workers, continued full employment will greatly strengthen the case for the US as peak economy. But with anything less than full employment the US economy will lose its luster. Even if this occurs, however, the US record in employing women and extending ownership to many workers deserves attention.

Abstract:
This paper analyzes changes in U.S. earnings differentials in the 1980s between race, gender, age, and schooling groups. There are four main sets of results to report.

First, the economic position of less-educated workers declined relative to the more-educated among almost all demographic groups. Education-earnings differentials clearly rose for whites, but less clearly for blacks, while employment rate differences associated with education increased more for blacks than for whites.

Second, much of the change in education-earnings differentials for specific groups is attributable to measurable economic factors: to changes in the occupational or industrial structure of employment; to changes in average wages within industries; to the fall in the real value of the minimum wage and the fall in union density; and to changes in the relative growth rate of more-educated workers.

Third, the earnings and employment position of white females, and to a lesser extent of black females, converged to that of white males in the 1980s, across education groups. At the same time, the economic position of more-educated black males appears to have worsened relative to their white-male counterparts.

Fourth, there has been a sizable college-enrollment response to the rising relative wages of college graduates. This response suggests that education-earnings differentials may stop increasing, or even start to decline, in the near future.

Abstract:
What enables some employee ownership firms to overcome the free rider problem and motivate employees to improve performance? This study analyzes the role of human resource policies in the performance of employee ownership companies, using employee survey data from 14 companies and a national sample of employee-owners. Between-firm comparisons of 11 ESOP firms show that an index of human resource policies, nominally controlled by management, is positively related to employee reports of co-worker performance and other good workplace outcomes (including perceptions of fairness, good supervision, and worker input and influence). Within-firm comparisons in three ESOP firms, and exploratory results from a national survey, show that employee-owners who participate in employee involvement committees are more likely to exert peer pressure on shirking co-workers. We conclude that an understanding of how and when employee ownership works successfully requires a three-pronged analysis of: 1) the incentives that ownership gives; 2) the participative mechanisms available to workers to act on those incentives; and 3) the corporate culture that battles against tendencies to free ride.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
This paper assesses the claim the the US faces an impending labor shortage due to the impending retirement of baby boomers and slow growth of the US work force, and that the country should orient labor market and educational policies to alleviate this prospective shortage. I find that this analysis is flawed, by making growth of GDP the target of economic policy and by paying inadequate attention to the huge supply of qualified low wage workers in the global economy. My analysis shows that the projections of future demands for skills lack the reliability to guide policies on skill development, and that contrary to the assumption implicit in the shortage analyses, demographic changes have not historically been consistently associated with changes in labor market conditions. I argue that if there is to be a shortage, the country should allow the competitive market to raise labor compensation rather than to adopt policies to keep labor costs low.

Abstract:
Beginning in 1979 with the newly electted Thatcher Government and continuing under successive Conservative and Labour Governments, the United Kingdom has embarked on a two-decade-long experiment in economic reform. We present evidence that the reform process has succeeded in making the UK more market-friendly than its European competitors. In fact, by the 1990s Britain ranked near the top of the league tables for freedom of markets, in some cases even ahead of the United States. To evaluate the effects of these reforms we compare trends in macroeconomic outcomes in the UK relative to the US, Germany, and France. During the 1980s and 1990s Britain halted the relative declines in GDP per capita and labour productivity that had characterized earlier decades, and partially closed the gap in income per capita with France and Germany. These gains were mainly attributable to relative rises in employment and hours. Unlike its EU competitors, Britain was able to achieve high employment-population rates with rising real wages for workers. The case that the change in economic performance can be credited to market-oriented reforms is harder to prove. Nevertheless, based on our own macro-level analyses, and micro-level evidence from several companion studies, we conclude that economic reforms contributed to halting the nearly century-long trend in relative economic decline of the UK relative to its historic competitors, Germany and France.

Abstract:
The Journal of Labor Research 20th anniversary symposium review of What Do Unions Do? offers a unique opportunity to examine how the claims made in the book have fared in ensuing research and to ponder what parts of the book I would change if I could. This paper responds to the 18 critical essays in the journal. It recognizes three major errors of omission: failure to take account of unionism outside the US; failure to analyze public sector unionism; and failure to analyze the effects of unionism on economic growth; and the problem of determining the "optimal level of unionism" on the basis of estimates of what unions do. Ensuing research has found that What Do Unions Do? correctly identified union effects on turnover, fringe benefits, earnings inequality, political action, profits, managerial flexibility and human resource management, and that wage effects vary widely. Estimates of the union effect on productivity tend to be positive but modest, ruling out negative effects on average, but not conclusively establishing positive effects. Critical comments from some of the symposium panelists notwithstanding, I believe that the bulk of the evidence supports the What Do Unions Do? claim that management opposition has been a major factor in the decline in union density in the US.

Abstract:
In the 1980s, the wages and employment rates of less-skilled Americans fell relative to those of more-skilled workers. This paper examines the contribution of the continuing inflow of less-skilled immigrants and the increasing importance of imports in the U.S. economy to these trends. Our empirical evidence indicates that both trade and immigration augmented the nation's supply of less-skilled workers, particularly workers with less than a high school education. By 1988, trade and immigration increased the effective supply of high school dropouts by 28 percent for men and 31 percent for women. We estimate that from thirty to fifty percent of the approximately 10 percentage point decline in the relative weekly wage of high school dropouts between 1980 and 1988 can be attributed to the trade and immigration flows. In addition, our analysis suggests that from 15 to 25 percent of the 11 percentage point rise in the earnings of college graduates relative to high school graduates relative to high school graduates from 1980 to 1985 can be attributed to the massive increase in the trade deficit over the same period, but that the effects of trade on the college/high school wage differential diminished with improvements in the trade balance during the late 1980s.

Abstract:
In this study we examine whether a workplace can induce good or bad attitudes among its employees and whether any such 'workplace attitudes' affect economic outcomes. This study analyzes responses of thousands of employees working in nearly two hundred branches to the employee opinion survey of a major U.S. bank in 1994 and 1996. The results document the existence and persistence of a genuine workplace effect in how workers view their jobs and organizations. Employee attitudes differ significantly across branches in ways that cannot be explained by branches randomly drawing workers from a distribution of workers with different innate attitudes. Furthermore, newly hired workers adopt the favorable or unfavorable attitudes that the branches exhibited before they arrived. These workplace attitudes also have significant effects on economic outcomes. Branches with less favorable attitudes have higher turnover, lower levels of sales, and lower rates of sales growth than branches where workers have more favorable attitudes. Less favorable branch attitudes are also a significant predictor of subsequent branch closings. The study's results show that there are happy and unhappy workplaces, as well as happy and unhappy workers, with very different patterns of turnover and productivity in these workplaces.

Abstract:
People flows refers to the movement of people across international borders in the form of immigration, international student flows, business travel, and tourism. Despite its peripheral status in debates over globalization, the movement of people from low income to high income countries is fundamental in global economic development, with consequences for factor endowments, trade patterns, and transfer of technology. In part because people flows are smaller than trade and capital flows, the dispersion of pay for similarly skilled workers around the world exceeds the dispersion of the prices of goods and cost of capital. This suggests that policies that give workers in developing countries greater access to advanced country labor markets could raise global economic well-being considerably. The economic problem is that immigrants rather than citizens of immigrant-receiving countries benefit most from immigration. The paper considers "radically economic policies" such as auctioning immigration visas or charging sizeable fees and spending the funds on current residents to increase the economic incentive for advanced countries to accept greater immigration.

Abstract:
Various arguments have been used to explain Sub-Saharan Africa's economic decline. We find that a stress on investments in education as a prerequisite for more rapid growth is misplaced; that greater openness is far from sufficient to insure economic progress; that income inequality and urban bias are not so extreme as to foreclose prospects for more rapid growth and poverty alleviation; and that the constraints imposed by Sub-Saharan Africa's human and physical geography are not core explanations for the regions poor performance. If African countries can establish an institutional environment that enables individuals to gain the rewards of their investments, the alleged barriers to the region's growth should prove surmountable.

Abstract:
A paper presented at the December 2004 conference "Labor Market Developments in the United States and Canada since 2000," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Canadian Consulate General in New York, the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, and the New York Association for Business Economics.

business cycle, recovery, fiscal policy, inequality, unemployment, employment, wages, the international economy

Abstract:
The extension of information and communication technologies to economic activity is changing the labour market in important ways. This article shows that computerization and use of the Internet are associated with greater hours worked as well as higher wages; that IT occupations are rapidly increasing their share of employment; that job search and recruitment are moving rapidly to the Web, with consequences for matching employers and employees; and possibly most important of all, that trade unions have begun to use the Internet as a tool for servicing members and carrying their message to the public, raising the possibility of a major change in the nature of the union movement.

Abstract:
Our research demonstrates that the view of unions as organizations whose chief function is to raise wages is seriously misleading. For in addition to raising wages, unions have significant non-wage effects which influence diverse aspects of modern industrial life. By providing workers with a voice both at the workplace and in the political arena, unions can and do affect positively the functioning of the economic and social systems. Although our research on the non-wage effects of trade unions is by no means complete and some results will surely change as more evidence becomes available, enough work has been done to yield the broad outlines of a new view of unionism.

Abstract:
This paper examines the magnitude of criminal activity among disadvantaged youths in the 1980s. It shows that a large proportion of youths who dropped out of high school, particularly black school dropouts, developed criminal records in the decade; and that those who were incarcerated in 1980 or earlier were much less likely to hold jobs than other youths over the entire decade. The magnitudes of incarceration, probation, and parole among black dropouts, in particular, suggest that crime has become an intrinsic part of the youth unemployment and poverty problem, rather than deviant behavior on the margin. Limited evidence on the returns to crime suggest that with the decline in earnings and employment for less educated young men, crime offers an increasingly attractive alternative.

Abstract:
With the continuing expansion of global economic integration, labor standards in developing countries have become a hot button issue. One result has been a proliferation of efforts to use the market to put pressure directly on multinational corporations to improve wages and working conditions in their overseas operations and to insist that their suppliers do so as well. This paper analyzes the dynamics of these efforts in terms of a 'market for standards' in which consumers, stimulated by human rights activists, demand that corporations improve working conditions in supplier factories. The paper presents evidence that such a consumer demand exists and analyzes the incentives corporations face to respond to it. It examines the nature of the critical intermediary role played by activists in stimulating consumer demands and assesses the outcomes in the major anti-sweatshop campaigns of the 1990s. The paper also addresses the limitations of such consumer-based campaigns and the concern expressed by some that these activist campaigns may do more harm than good, by deterring investment in and trade with poor countries. It concludes with an overall assessment of when 'doing good' actually does good.

Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain the greater hours worked by Americans compared to Germans in terms of forward-looking labor supply responses to differences in earnings inequality between the countries. We argue that workers choose current hours of work to gain promotions and advance in the distribution of earnings. Since US earnings are more unequally distributed than German earnings, the same extra work pays off more in the US, generating more hours worked. Supporting this inequality-hours hypothesis, we show that in both countries hours worked is positively related to earnings inequality in cross section occupational contrasts and that hours worked raises future wages and promotion prospects in longitudinal data.

Abstract:
The debate over the influence of labour market flexibility on performance is unlikely to be settled by additional studies using aggregate data and making cross-country comparisons. While this approach holds little promise, micro-analysis of workers and firms and increased use of experimental methods represent a path forward. Steps along this path could help end the current 'lawyer's case' empiricism in which priors dominate evidence.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper argues that the low cost of information, communication, and interaction on the Web offers trade unions opportunities to improve services and attract members and thus reinvent themselves for the 21st Century. Analyzing current use of the Internet by unions in the United Kingdom and United States, we develop five hypothesis about the impact of the Internet on unions. 1) the Customized Services hypothesis that unions will individualize services; 2) the Cyber-organizing hypothesis that the Web will ease organization and produce virtual minority unions at many non-union firms; 3) the Cyber-democracy hypothesis that the Web will enhance democracy in unions; 4) the Cyber-dispute hypothesis that the Web will become an important space for industrial disputes; and 5) the New Internationalism hypothesis that the Web will strengthen the international labor community. If unions fail to exploit the opportunities on the Web to gain members, we expect other organizations, Internet recruitment sites, specialized advice centers, and the like, to fill the e-union niche.

Abstract:
The current expansion has shattered the length of the previous longest peace-time boom and brought unemployment rates below four percent in 44 percent of metropolitan areas. We estimate the expansion's impact on the labor market outcomes of less-educated men. We find that young men, especially young African American men in tight labor markets experienced a boost in employment and earnings. Adult men had no gains, and their earnings barely changed even in areas with unemployment rates below 4 percent. Youths have higher earnings and employment in low crime states and poorer labor market outcomes in states where incarcerations are high.

Abstract:
This paper uses data from four different data sets to examine the union impact on the turnout of members and their support for union-preferred candidates. It rejects the claim that the union share of the electorate rose massively in the 1990s. It finds that union members are about 12 percentage points more likely to vote than non-union members and nonunion persons in union households are modestly more likely to vote than persons in nonunion households, but shows that most of the higher rate of turnout of unionists is due to socioeconomic factors that differentiate union members from others. With respect to voting preferences, union members are more likely to vote for a Democrat for the House or Presidency than demographically comparable nonunion voters, largely because union members have attitudes and voting inclinations favorable to the Democrats and to liberalism prior to a given campaign. Finally, the study identifies a sizable group of nonunion persons with pro-union attitudes that unions could potentially influence to maintain the union impact on elections even with declines in union density.

Abstract:
To what extent did the economic boom of the 1990s-early 2000s improve the well-being of persons in the bottom rungs of the income distribution? This paper uses a pooled cross-state time series regression design to estimate the effect of earnings, unemployment, and inequality on poverty in the boom. I find that the tight labor market reduced poverty substantively, gainsaying the gloom that developed in the 1980s about the effect of economic growth on the less advantaged; and that socially undesirable behaviour also fell in the period, potentially due in part to the boom. While the rising tide of economic progress can lift many boats, however, around 6-8% of Americans cannot be so helped, and thus constitute a relatively long term poverty population. Moreover, the level of the tide needed to improve the conditions of the less advantaged is a 4-5% unemployment rate, not the 6-6.5% unemployment once viewed as the NAIRU.

Abstract:
This paper summarized some new evidence concerning the impact of collective bargaining on productivity for workers of a given quality working with the same amount of capital. The new findings, which are based on econometric investigations, indicate that in many sectors,in particular manufacturing and construction, unionized work places are on average more productive than those that are nonunion. This positive union productivity effect is not an immutable constant. For example,in the underground bituminous coal industry, unionized mines were significantly less productive than nonunion mines in 1975 although they were significantly more productive in 1965.The routes by which unions affect productivity have not yet been carefully delineated, and they appear to differ from sector to sector. In manufacturing, reduced turnover and improved management seem to be key; in construction, better trained workers and more rationalized hiring and supervision seem to be primary. Finally, while the union/nonunion productivity differential is likely to be positive, it is on average not large enough to offset the greater compensation and capital intensity under unionism. Hence,higher productivity and lower profitability appear to go hand in hand under collective bargaining.

Abstract:
This paper examines the use and consequences of shared compensation plans (profit sharing, profit related pay, SAYE schemes and company stock option plans) in a sample of UK workplaces and firms in the 1990s. The use of these plans has increased over time, in part in response to government programs. The evidence shows that companies and workplaces adopting shared compensation practices have had higher productivity than other firms, but the effects vary among programs, suggesting that the particulars matter a lot in aligning shared compensation and work place activities. Consistent with incentive theory, the evidence also shows that firms and workplaces with shared compensation practices have a higher incidence of shared decision-making/information sharing practices.

Abstract:
The 2004 Global Labor Survey (GLS) is an Internet-based survey that seeks to measure de facto labor practices in countries around the world, covering issues such as freedom of association, the regulation of work contracts, employee benefits and the prevalence of collective bargaining. To find out about de facto practices, the GLS invited labor practitioners, ranging from union officials and activists to professors of labor law and industrial relations, to report on conditions in their country. Over 1,500 persons responded, which allowed us to create indices of practices in ten broad areas for 33 countries. The GLS' focus on de facto labor practices contrasts with recent studies of de jure labor regulations (Botero et al., 2004) and with more limited efforts to measure labor practices as part of surveys of economic freedom (Fraser Institute) and competitiveness (World Economic Forum). Although our pool of respondents differs greatly from the conservative foundations and business leaders who contribute respectively to the Fraser Institute and World Economic Forum reports, the GLS and the labor market components of the economic freedom and competitiveness measures give similar pictures of labor practices across countries. This similarity across respondents with different economic interests and ideological perspectives suggests that they are all reporting on labor market realities in a relatively unbiased way. As a broad summary statement, the GLS shows that practices favorable to workers are more prevalent in countries with high levels of income per capita; are associated with less income inequality; are unrelated to aggregate growth rates; but are modestly positively associated with unemployment.

Abstract:
The distribution of earnings and the distribution of skills vary widely among advanced countries, with the major English-speaking countries, the US, UK, and Canada, having much greater inequality in both earnings and skills than continental European Union countries. This raises the possibility that cross-country differences in the distribution of skills determine cross-country differences in earnings inequality. Using the International Adult Literacy Survey, we find that skill inequality explains only about 7% of the cross-country difference in inequality. Most striking, the dispersion of earnings in the US is larger in narrowly defined skill groups than is the dispersion of earnings for European workers overall. The bulk of cross-country differences in earnings inequality occur within skill groups, not between them.

Abstract:
Germany's more compressed wage structure is taken by many analysts as the main cause of the German-US difference in job creation. We find that the US has a more dispersed level of skills than Germany but even adjusted for skills, Germany has a more compressed wage distribution than the US. The fact that jobless Germans have nearly the same skills as employed Germans and look more like average Americans than like low skilled Americans runs counter to the wage compression hypothesis. It suggests that the pay and employment experience of low skilled Americans is a poor counterfactual for assessing how reductions in pay might affect jobless Germans.

Abstract:
This paper shows that participation in crime and involvement with the criminal justice system has reached extraordinary levels among young men. With approximately 2 percent as many men incarcerated as in the labor force, the crime rate should have plummeted. It didn't. Evidence suggests that the depressed labor market for low skill American workers contributed to the continued high level of crime by less educated men, despite incapacitation and the deterrent effect of imprisonment. The costs of incarceration are such that even marginally effective prevention policies can be socially desirable.

Abstract:
This paper argues that detailed studies of particular economies, such as Bob Gregory's work on Australia, are relevant to all of economics. The paper builds on the concept of a model species from biology to develop the notion of a model economy one whose experiences illuminate fundamental economic issues; examines the criterion for an economy to serve as a model economy; and describes three areas labour relations and the awards system of wage-setting, marketising public services and growth through immigration and natural resources where Australian experience provides insights into economic behaviour and the operation of markets broadly.

Abstract:
This paper argues that detailed studies of particular economies, such as Bob Gregory%u2019s work on Australia, are relevant to all of economics. The paper builds on the concept of a model species from biology to develop the notion of a model economy %u2013 one whose experiences illuminate fundamental economic issues; examines the criterion for an economy to serve as a model economy; and describes three areas %u2013 labour relations and the awards system of wage-setting, marketizing public services and growth through immigration and natural resources %u2013 where Australian experience provides insights into economic behaviour and the operation of markets broadly.

Abstract:
This paper presents evidence on the relation among incarceration, crime, and the economic incentives to crime, ranging from unemployment to income inequality. It makes three points:

1) The U.S. has incarcerated an extraordinarily high proportion of men of working age overall, and among blacks. In 1993 the number incarcerated was 1.9 percent of the male work force; among blacks, the number incarcerated was 8.8 percent of the work force.

2) The rising trend in incarceration should have reduced the rate of crime, through the incapacitation of criminals and through the deterrent effect of potential arrest and imprisonment. But administrative records show no such drop in crime and the victims survey shows a fall far below what could be expected on the basis of incapacitation by itself.

3) The implication is that there was an increased propensity to commit crime among the non-institutional population.

The paper focuses attention on the possibility that the continued high rate of crime in the U.S., despite massive imprisonment of criminals may be one of the costs of the rising inequality in the country, and in particular of the falling real earnings of the less educated. While we lack a 'smoking gun' for such a relation, the preponderance of evidence suggests that economic incentives have played a role in the increased propensity to commit crime.

Abstract:
Greater job creation in the US than in Germany has often been related to greater wage dispersion coupled with less regulated labour and product markets in the US. Based on the Comparative German American Structural Database and the International Adult Literacy Survey we find that employment of skilled to unskilled labour is unrelated to differences in skill premium but that changes in relative employment are related to changes in relative wages raising the possibility of some substitution behavior. Still, the differing dispersion of wages is not a major contributor to differences in employment rates. The jobs problem in Germany is one of a general lack in demand for labor.

Abstract:
This study shows that the demographic and institutional origins of new US trained science and engineering PhDs changed markedly between the late 1960s-1970s to the 1990s-early 2000s. In 1966, 71% of science and engineering PhD graduates were US-born males, 6% were US-born females, and 23% were foreign born. In 2000, 36% of the graduates were US-born males, 25% were US-born females, and 39% were foreign born. Between 1970 and 2000 most of the growth in PhDs was in less prestigious smaller doctorate programs. The undergraduate origins of bachelor's obtaining science and engineering PhDs changed only modestly among US colleges and universities while there was a huge growth in the number of foreign bachelor's graduates obtaining US PhDs.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
Volunteer activity is work performed without monetary recompense. This paper shows that volunteering is a sizeable economic activity in the U.S.; that volunteers have high skills and opportunity costs of time; that standard labor supply explanations of volunteering account for only a minor part of volunteer behavior; and that many volunteer only when requested to do so. This suggests that volunteering is a 'conscience good or activity' -- something that people feel morally obligated to do when asked, but which they would just as soon let someone else do.

Abstract:
This paper examines performance in a tournament setting with different levels of inequality in rewards and different provision of information about individual's skill at the task prior to the tournament. We find that that total tournament output depends on inequality according to an inverse U shaped function: We reward subjects based on the number of mazes they can solve, and the number of solved mazes is lowest when payments are independent of the participants' performance; rises to a maximum at a medium level of inequality; then falls at the highest level of inequality. These results are strongest when participants know the number of mazes they solved relative to others in a pre-tournament round and thus can judge their likely success in the tournament. Finally, we find that cheating/fudging on the experiment responds to the level of inequality and information about relative positions. Our results support a model of optimal allocation of prizes in tournaments that postulate convex cost of effort functions.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
Women work much more in the US than in Germany and most other EU economies. We find that the US-German employment gap is not strongly related to cross-country differences in the level of pay or social benefits. The difference in employment is due to the different marketization of activities between the two economies: German women work as many hours as US women when we consider time spent in household production as well as in market production. For instance, German women spend more time preparing meals while US women use take-out and restaurants more intensely. The organization of some social activities, such as schooling, and the dispersion of skills, as well as pay differences, affect the degree of marketization.

Abstract:
We compare two approaches to analyzing the effects of immigration on the labor market and find that the estimated effect of immigration on U.S. native labor outcomes depends critically on the empirical experiment used. Area analyses contrast the level or change in immigration by area with the level or change in the outcomes of non- immigrant workers. Factor proportions analyses treat immigrants as a source of increased national supply of workers of the relevant skill. Cross-section comparisons of wages and immigration in the 1980 and 1990 Censuses yield unstable results casting doubt on the validity of these calculations. Analyses of changes over time for various education groups within regions give negative estimated immigration effects, which increase in magnitude the wider the area covered. Factor proportions calculations show that immigration was somewhat important in reducing the relative pay of U.S. high school dropouts during the 1980s, while immigration and trade contributed much more modestly to the falling pay of high school equivalent workers. The different effects of immigration on native outcomes in the area and factor proportions methodologies appear to result from the diluting effect of native migration flows across regions and failure to take adequate account of other regional labor market conditions in area comparisons.

Abstract:
During the last 150 years, shoe manufacturing in the U.S. has gone from one of the largest employers in manufacturing to one of the smallest, yet some firms have survived and remained profitable. This study examines the role of changing methods of compensation in shoe manufacturing, in a sector that faces severe import competition. During the 1970s - 1990s, most firms in the industry shifted from piece rate to time rate modes of compensation as a strategy for survival. Using longitudinal establishment data files, we find wide variation in labor input usage and in labor's share of sales among establishments in the sector, with establishments having high labor shares of cost disproportionately likely to close down over time; and a widening range of labor input usage in production associated with the widening U.S. wage structure. Using data for a simple manufacturer, methods of pay was part of a move toward continuous flow methods of production, with job rotation and rapid changes in work tasks to introduce new styles. The switch reduced productivity, but brought offsetting cost savings in the form of lower workers' compensation insurance costs, smaller inventories, lower monitoring costs, and lower hourly wages, and made it easier for the firm to introduce new shoe styles. On net, the shirt to time rates lowered labor's share of cost at the company and increased the economic surplus available to the firm.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Works councils, found in most Western European economies, are elected bodies of employees with rights to information, consultation, and in some cases co-determination of employment conditions at local workplaces, mandated by law. Many European employers and unions believe that councils improve communication between workers and management, raising social output, while reducing the speed with which decisions are made. This paper analyzes the operation of councils as a means of improving social output by creating more cooperative labor relations. It argues that councils are mandated because the incentive for companies to institute them and delegate them power falls short of the social incentive; that workers provide more accurate information to employers about preferences when councils have some say over how that information is used; and that the communication from employers to workers produces socially desirable worker concessions in bad times that would not occur absent this institution. It compares a jury style random selection of works councilors with selection via elections.

Abstract:
This paper uses time series and cross-industry data on employment and wages in Puerto Rico to assess the effects of applying the U.S. minimum wage to the Puerto Rican labor market. We find that the U.S. minimum has a massive effect on the earnings distribution in Puerto Rico and that it has substantially lowered employment and altered the allocation of labor across industries. The reduction in employment is due to the fact that the minimum has a high level relative to average earnings or productivity, not to an especially high estimated elasticity of employment to the minimum. We claim that the results support the textbook model of the minimum wage more strongly than studies of the minimum in the U.S. because in Puerto Rico the U.S. minimum has "real bite."

Abstract:
The low cost of information, communication, and interaction on the web offers trade unions opportunities to improve services and attract members, and thus reinvent themselves for the twenty-first century. The authors argue that unions can use the web to: develop virtual minority unions at many non-union firms; improve services to members; enhance democracy in unions; aid in industrial disputes; and strengthen the international labour community. They conclude that, if unions fail to exploit the opportunities on the web to gain members, other organizations are likely to provide services to workers on the internet.

Abstract:
Is the expansion of jobs in low-wage services in Europe restricted by high wages? With services now the main sector source of employment growth this question becomes crucial, and we examine it through a detailed comparison of the role of low-wage services in the US and Germany. We find a clear low-wage service jobs deficit in Germany, but this is not due to excessively high German wages. Relative wages in low-wage sectors are extremely similar in the two countries. This is a striking finding given the much wider wage distribution in the US. The explanation for this phenomenon is the much greater intra-industry wage dispersion in the US producing similar industry mean wages as the much narrower German distribution.

Abstract:
This paper shows that in the 2000s unions in the UK and US made innovative use of the Internet to deliver union services and move toward open source unions better suited for the modern world than traditional union structures. In contrast to analysts who see unions as being on an inexorable path of decline, I argue that these innovations are changing unions from institutions of the Webbs to institutions of the Web, which will improve their effectiveness and revive their role as the key worker organization in capitalism.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
This paper examines the spurt in U.S. unionism during the Great Depression. It argues that the Depression spurt is better understood as resulting from a Depression sparked endogenous social process than from New Deal legislation and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) leadership. Four pieces of evidence are offered for this interpretation: 1. The ubiquity of spurts in unionization across countries, particularly in the Depression. 2. The widespread use of recognition strikes during the 1930s spurt. 3. The growth of CIO affiliates with little CIO financial or organizing aid. 4. The growth of American Federation of Labor (AFL) affiliated unions. I model unionization as the outcome from a conflict between union/worker organizing activity and employer opposition, both of which depend on the proportion organized. Union organizing and activity rises with density, then falls with density. Employer opposition is high at low densities but falls once unions gain control of the relevant market. The result is a nonlinear difference equation that produces spurts of union growth. The Depression initiated a spurt by increasing worker desires for unions and by raising density above the critical level' for rapid growth in many industries.

Abstract:
The European Union and the United States operate different variants of market capitalism. The EU model uses social dialogue institutions to help determine economic outcomes, particularly in the labor market, whereas the US relies more on market forces. The theory of competitive markets provides a powerful framework for analyzing market driven economies and for assessing the conditions under which unfettered markets yield desirable outcomes. But there is no comparable framework for analyzing institution driven economies. This paper argues that models of efficient bargaining/the Coase Theorem offer the best framework for analyzing social dialogue economies and for identifying policies and institutional reforms to improve their functioning.

Abstract:
This essay reviews what economists have learned about the impact of labor market institutions, defined broadly as government regulations and union activity on labor outcomes in developing countries. It finds that: 1) Labor institutions vary greatly among developing countries but less than they vary among advanced countries. Unions and collective bargaining are less important in developing than in advanced countries while government regulations are nominally as important. 2) Many developing countries compliance with minimum wage regulations produce spikes in wage distributions around the minimum in covered sectors. Most studies find modest adverse effects of the minimum on employment so that the minimum raises the total income of low paid labor. 3) In many countries minimum wages "spill-over" to the unregulated sector, producing spikes in the wage distributions there as well. 4) Employment protection regulations and related laws shift output and employment to informal sectors and reduce gross labor mobility. 5) Mandated benefits increase labor costs and reduce employment modestly while the costs of others are shifted largely to labor, with some variation among countries. 6) Contrary to the Harris-Todaro two sector model in which rural-urban migration adjust to produce a positive relation between unemployment and wages across regions and sectors, wages and unemployment are inversely related by the "wage curve". 7) Unions affect non-wage outcomes as well as wage outcomes. 8) Cross-country regressions yield inconclusive results on the impact of labor regulations on growth while studies of country adjustments to economic shocks, such as balance of payments problems, find no difference in the responses of countries by the strength of labor institutions. 9) Labor institution can be critical when countries experience great change, as in China's growth spurt and Argentina's preservation of social stability and democracy after its 2001-2002 economic collapse. Cooperative labor relations tend to produce better economic outcomes. 10) The informal sector increased its share of the work force in the developing world in the past two decades. The persistence of large informal sectors throughout the developing world, including countries with high rates of growth, puts a premium on increasing our knowledge of how informal sector labor markets work and finding institutions and policies to deliver social benefits to workers in that sector.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
This paper examines cross-country differences in labour policies and practices and employee performance and attitudes toward work from a sample of nearly 30,000 employees in a large multinational manufacturing firm. The analysis shows: 1) large establishment and country differences in work practices, performance, and attitudes toward work across countries; 2) qualitatively similar responses of workers to work practices across countries; 3) a strong link between the establishment average of employee reports on the quality of labour-management relations and establishment average measures of employee performance 4) a positive relation between average employee performance and average employee-management relations at the country level, but no relation between country level performance in the firm and measures of the extent of national labour regulations or practices.

Abstract:
This paper examines the pattern of change in turnout in elections and in the rate of voting of different socioeconomic groups in the US. It shows that while the changing education and income structure of the population and changes in laws and regulations that make it easier to register and to vote should have raised turnout, the proportion of the voting age population that votes has fallen. This is partly due to the increased proportion of voting age persons who are ineligible to vote, but it is hard to pin down the magnitude of that effect due to problems with data. It also finds that turnout has become much more unequal by age, education, and income.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
Using data from the NBER survey of Inner City youth and the National longitudinal survey of young men, this paper examines the effect of church-going and other aspects of the background of youth on their allocation of time, socially deviant behavior, and labor force behavior.

1) Church-going is associated with substantial differences in the behavior of youths, and thus in their chances to 'escape' from inner city poverty. It affects allocation of time, school-going, work activity, and the frequency of socially deviant activity.

2) The diverse background factors examined in this study have different effects on various outcomes. Their differential effects suggest true causal impacts, with for example, the proportion of a youth's family working having positive effects on his labor market activity but not on other activities.

3) In addition to church going, the background factors that most influence 'who escapes' are whether other members of the family work and whether the family is on welfare.

4) The allocation of time and activities by youth is significantly influenced by market opportunities (or perceptions thereof). Those youths who believe it is easy to find a job are more likely to engage in socially productive activities than others. Youths who see many opportunities to make money illegally are less likely to engage in socially productive activities than other youths.

Abstract:
Sweden has a remarkable record in reducing inequality and virtually eliminating poverty. This paper shows that: 1) Sweden achieved its egalitarian income distribution and eliminated poverty largely because of its system of earnings and income determination, not because of the homogeneity of the population nor of its educational system. 2) In the job market Sweden is distinguished by a relatively egalitarian distribution of hours of work among those employed, which may be an interrelated part of the Swedish economic system, and until the recent recession, by a high employment rate. 3) Tax and transfer policies contribute substantially to Sweden's overall distribution record. In contrast to many social welfare systems, Sweden's is largely a workfare system, providing benefits for those with some work activity. 4) Part of Sweden's historic success in maintaining jobs for low wage workers while raising their wages resulted from policies that directly or indirectly buttress demand for low skill workers, notably through public sector employment. 5) Sweden's tax and transfer policies have maintained the position of lower income workers and families, including those with children, during its recent economic decline.

Abstract:
Living wage campaigns have enacted ordinances/policies to raise low wages in over 100 localities. The campaigns galvanize citizens more than national economic issues and allow for pay increases fine-tuned to local realities, but cover relatively few workers. To help the low-paid broadly, the coalitions in living wage campaigns have to scale up to the state or national level while unions and national groups work to devolve labor issues from the gridlock at the federal level to states and localities.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper shows a widening in black-white earnings and employment that gaps among young men from the mid-1970s through the 1980s that differs among subgroups. Earnings gaps increased most among college graduates and in the midwest while gaps in employment-population rates grew most among high school dropouts. We attribute the differential widening to distinct shifts in demand for subgroups due to changes in industry and regional employment, the falling real minimum wage and deunionisation, the growth of the relative supply of black to white workers that was marked among college graduates, and to increased crime, that was marked among high school dropouts. The differential factors affecting the groups highlights the economic diversity of black Americans.

Abstract:
Numerous studies have found that married men earn consider-ably more than single men of the same education, experience, etc. There are several possible explanations of this phenomenon. Recent theoretical developments in the economics of marriage predict that males with higher wage rates have a greater gain from marriage and are therefore more likely to marry. Alternatively, one of the benefits of marriage is specialization in the labor force; married men spend more hours in the labor force than single males and thus have a greater incentive to invest in human capital. The empirical work in this paper suggests that a large fraction of the unexplained wage differential between married males and unmarried males may be attributable to the former explanation.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Workers who hold a firm's stock make decisions other than those that pure capital owners would make, but there exist institutions and compensation packages that will generally lead workers to favor efficient firm decisions. Workers care about their firm-specific rents and may seek shares in their firm to use them to protect those rents. Their views toward firm decisions will differ depending on their firm-specific human capital and tenure in the firm. The workers most favorable to efficient firm decisions are the very young and very old, who have the least amount to lose in employment rent and those with larger shares of ownership. An appropriate severance pay policy will induce workers to choose efficient outcomes even if it calls for their own layoffs. Single company based defined contribution pension funds, which hold shares in their own firm, are likely to tilt worker- owners to favor efficient decisions when layoffs and other changes are modest, but not when the changes are huge. Pension funds are more likely to buy up shares and successfully change behavior in small firms, in firms that are highly levered, and when the investment community has diverse views on the benefit from changing a firm's current irresponsible policies.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This study documents the rapid spread of higher education around the world and the consequent reduced share of the US in the world's university students and graduates. It shows that the proportion of young persons who go to college has risen in many advanced countries to exceed that in the US while human capital leapfrogging in the huge populous developing countries has produced massive increases in their university educated work forces. One result of the expansion of higher education overseas is that the US has come to rely extensively on the immigration of highly educated persons to maintain a lead position in science and technology. International students make up roughly half of university graduate immigrants to the US, which makes policies toward those students a key determinant in the country's success in attracting immigrant talent.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of trade unionism on the exit behavior of workers in the context of Hirschman`s exit-voice dichotomy. Unionism is expected to reduce quits and permanent separations and raise job tenure by providing a "voice" alternative to exit when workers are dissatisfied with conditions. Empirical evidence supports this contention, showing significantly lower exit for unionists in several large data tapes. It is argued that the grievance system plays a major role in the reduction in exit and that the reduction lowers cost and raises productivity.

Abstract:
This study examines the effect of trade unionism on the dispersion of wages among male wage and salary workers in the private sector in the United States. It finds that the application of union wage policies designed to standardize rates within and across establishments significantly reduces wage dispersion among workers covered by union contracts and that unions further reduce wage dispersion by narrowing the white-collar/blue-collar differential within establishments. These effects dominate the more widely studied impact of unionism on the dispersion of average wages across industries, so that on net unionism appears to reduce rather than increase wage dispersion or inequality in the United States.

Abstract:
Workers have responded differently to declining union density in the US and UK. US workers have unfilled demand for unions whereas many UK workers free-ride at unionized workplaces. To explain this difference, we create a scalar measure of worker needs for representation and relate desire for unionism to this measure and to the choices that the US and UK labor relations systems offer workers. Our measure of needs has similar properties across countries and is the single most important determinant of worker desire for unions and collective representation. Conditional on needs, we find that in both countries workers are more favourable to unions when management is positive toward unions, but also favor them when management strongly opposes unionism, compared to management having a neutral view. Much of the difference in the response of US and UK workers to declining unionism appears to be due to the different institutional arrangements for voice that the countries offer to workers.

Abstract:
The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) is a highly prestigious award for science and engineering (S&E) graduate students. This paper uses data from 1952 to 2004 on the population of over 200,000 applicants to the GRF to examine the determinants of the number and characteristics of applicants and the characteristics of awardees. In the early years of the program, GRF awards went largely to physical science and mathematics students and disproportionately to white men, but as the composition of S&E students has changed, larger shares have gone to biological sciences, social sciences, and engineering, and to women and minorities. The absolute number of awards has varied over time, with no trend. Because the number of new S&E college graduates has risen, the result is a sharp decline in the number of awards per S&E bachelor's graduate. In the 2000s approximately 1/3rd as many NSF Fellowships were granted per S&E baccalaureate than in the 1950s-1970s. The dollar value of the awards relative to the earnings of college graduates has also varied greatly over time. Our analysis of the variation in the number and value of awards and of the characteristics of applicants and awardees finds that:

1. The primary determinant of winning a GRF are academic skills, which greatly impact panel ratings of applicants. Consistent with efforts to increase S&E diversity, women and minorities have higher changes of winning an award than white men with similar attributes.

2. The size of the applicant pool varies with the relative value of the stipend, the number of S&E bachelor's graduates, and the lagged number of awards per graduate. We estimate that for every 10% increase in the stipend value, the number of applications goes up by 8 to 10 percent.

3. The average measured skill of awardees falls when the number of awards are increased and rises with the value of fellowships.

4. The supply of applicants contains enough qualified candidates to allow for a sizeable increase in the number of awards without greatly reducing measured skills.

5. The supply of highly skilled applicants is sufficiently responsive to the value of awards that increases in the value of stipends could attract some potentially outstanding science and engineering students who would otherwise choose other careers.

Abstract:
This paper uses data from NBER surveys of over 40,000 employees in hundreds of facilities in 14 firms and from employees on the 2002 and 2006 General Social Surveys to explore how shared compensation affects turnover, absenteeism, loyalty, worker effort, and other outcomes affecting workplace performance. The empirical analysis shows that shared capitalism has beneficial effects on all outcomes save for absenteeism and that it has its strongest effects on turnover, loyalty, and worker effort when it is combined with: a) high-performance work policies (employee involvement, training, and job security), b) low levels of supervision, and c) fixed wages that are at or above market level. Most workers report that cash incentives, stock options, ESOP stock, and ESPP participation motivate them to work harder. The interaction of the effects of shared capitalism with other corporate policies suggests that the various shared capitalist and other policies may operate through a latent variable, corporate culture.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper examines how measurement error biases longitudinal estimates of union effects. It develops numerical examples, statistical models, and econometric estimates which indicate that measurement error is a major problem in longitudinal data sets, so that longitudinal analyses do not provide the research panacea for determining the effects of unionism (or other economic forces) some have suggested. There are three major findings:1) The difference between the cross-section and longitudinal estimates is attributable in large part to random error in the measurement of who changes union status. Given modest errors of measurement, of the magnitudes observed,and a moderate proportion of workers changing union status, also of the magnitudes observed, measurement error biases downward estimated effects of unions by substantial amounts. 2) Longitudinal analysis of the effects of unionism on nonwage and wage outcomes tends to confirm the significant impact of unionism found in cross-section studies, with the longitudinal estimates of both nonwage and wage outcomes lover in the longitudinal analysis than in the cross-section analysis of the same data set. 3) The likely upward bias of cross-section estimates of the effect of unions and the likely downward bias of longitudinal estimates suggests that,under reasonable conditions, the two sets of estimates bound the "true" union impact posited in standard models of what unions do.

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the impact of unionism on the fringes paid blue-collar workers using data on individual establishments. The main substantive finding is that trade unionism raises the fringe share of compensation, particularly pension and life, accident and health insurance. The magnitude of the effect is sufficiently large as to suggest that estimates which neglect fringes understate the union effect on compensation. The paper uses the data on the compensation of blue-collar and white-collar workers within an establishment to control for within-establishment pay policies and estimate the potential effect of blue-collar unionism on the fringes of white-collar workers.

Abstract:
In this paper we evaluate the success of policies that were implemented in the 1980s that were designed to improve the workings of the UK labour market. Our primary conclusion is that the Thatcherite reforms succeeded in their goals of weakening union power; may have marginally increased employment and wage responsiveness to market conditions and may have increased self-employment. They were accompanied by a substantial improvement in the labour market position of women. But the reforms failed to improve the responsiveness of real wages to unemployment; they were associated with a slower transition from nonemployment to employment for men; a devastating loss in full-time jobs for male workers and produced substantial seemingly noncompetitive increases in earnings inequality.

Abstract:
The age-earnings profile of male workers is significantly influenced by the age composition of the workforce. When the number of young workers increased sharply in the 1970s, the profile "twisted" against them, apparently because younger and older male workers are imperfect substitutes in production. The effect is especially marked among college graduates. By contrast, the age-earnings profile of female workers appears to be little influenced by the age composition of the female workforce, possibly because the intermittent work experience of women makes younger and older women closer substitutes in production. The dependence of the age-earnings profile on demographically induced movements along a relative demand schedule suggests that standard human capital models of the profile, which posit that earnings rise with age and experience solely as a result of individual investment behavior, are incomplete.

Abstract:
Much work on crime has focussed on the effect of criminal sanctions on crime, ignoring (except as a control variable) the effect of labor market conditions on crime. This study reviews studies of time series, cross area, and individual evidence pertaining to the effect of unemployment and other labor market variables on crime and compares the "strength" of the labor market-crime and the sanctions-crime relations.It corcludes that there is a labor market-crime link but that this link is not well estimated by existing studies and is weaker than the sanctions-crime link. The rise in crime in recent years does not appear to be greatly due to the performane of the labor market.

Abstract:
This paper contrasts International Social Science Programme (ISSP) surveys for Hungary, supplemented with related survey data for East Germany, Poland, and Slovenia, with ISSP data for Western countries, to examine the extent to which workers in traditionally communist societies differ in their attitudes toward work conditions, wage inequality, the role of unions and the role of the state in determining labor market outcomes. We find sufficiently marked differences in responses between Hungary and the other previously communist countries and in Western countries to suggest that communism left an identifiable common legacy in the labor area. The citizens of former communist countries evince a greater desire for egalitarianism, are less satisfied with their jobs, and are more supportive of state interventions in the job market and economy than Westerners. These differences suggest that the move to a market economy will be marked by considerable 'social schizophrenia' due to an attitudinal legacy of their communist past.

Abstract:
This paper examines available industry data on two profitability measures, the price-cost margin and the ratio of quasi-rents to capital, for the purpose of determining the effect of unionism on profits. It finds that unionism reduces profitability and that this effect occurs in highly concentrated industries. The effect of unionism is quite substantial in most calculations, suggesting that the fraction organized in a sector be included in standard Industrial Organization profitability calculations in the future.

Abstract:
This study investigates the impact of unionization and firm, business line, or establishment survival. A consistent empirical finding is that unions raise wages above those found in nonunion firms, and that in a competitive product market one would expect to find that unionized firms would go out of business more than nonunion firms. However, if unions engage in economic rent-sharing, then during periods of economic hardship unionized firms may be able to remain solvent by giving back some of these rents. In order to answer this question we analyze three data sets: a data set on the union status of solvent and insolvent enterprises and business lines from the Compustat files, a data set on the union status of workers who have lost their jobs due to permanent plant closures or business failures obtained by matching files from Current Population Survey, and a data set from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on the outcomes of elections won by unions and on the outcomes of labor-management dispute cases. Overall, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that unions behave in an economically rational manner, pushing wages to the point where union firms may expand less rapidly than nonunion firms, but not to the point where the firm, plant, or business line closes down.

Abstract:
This study investigates the impact of unionization on closures of firms, business lines, and establishments. Analyzing data from two major data sets--one (from the COMPUSTAT files) on the union status of solvent and insolvent enterprises and business lines, and one (obtained by matching files from the Current Population Survey) on the union status of workers who have lost their jobs due to permanent plant closures or business failures--the authors find little support for the hypothesis that unionization increases the insolvency of firms. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that unions behave in an economically rational manner, pushing wages to the point where union firms may expand less rapidly than non-union firms, but not to the point where the firm, plant, or business line closes down.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This study uses a 10-year longitudinal database on U.S. manufacturing establishments to analyze the dynamics of the adoption and termination of employee involvement programs (EI). We show that firms' use of EI has not grown continuously, but rather introduce and terminate EI policies in ways that imply that the policies are complementary with each other and with other advanced human resource practices, seemingly moving toward an equilibrium distribution of EI policies. Using a Markov model, we estimate the long-run distribution of the number of EI programs in firms and find that adjustment to the steady-state distribution takes about 20 years.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper analyzes changes in U.S. earnings differentials in the 1980s between race, gender, age, and schooling groups. There are four main sets of results to report.

First, the economic position of less-educated workers declined relative to the more-educated among almost all demographic groups. Education-earnings differentials clearly rose for whites, but less clearly for blacks, while employment rate differences associated with education increased more for blacks than for whites.

Second, much of the change in education-earnings differentials for specific groups is attributable to measurable economic factors; to changes n the occupational or industrial structure of employment; to changes in average wages within industries; to the fall in the real value of the minimum wage and the fall in union density; and to changes in the relative growth rate of more-educated workers.

Third, the earnings and employment position of white females, and to a lesser extent of black females, converged to that of white males in the 1980s, across education groups. At the same time, the economic position of more-educated black males appears to have worsened relative to their white-male counterparts.

Fourth, there has been sizable college-enrollment response to the rising relative wage of college graduates. This response suggests that education-earnings differentials may stop increasing, or even start to decline, in the near future.

Abstract:
This paper examines behavior in a tournament in which we vary the tournament prize structure and the information available about participants' skill at the task of solving mazes. The number of solved mazes is lowest when payments are independent of performance; higher when a single, large prize is given; and highest when multiple, differentiated prizes are given. This result is strongest when we inform participants about the number of mazes they and others solved in a pre-tournament round. Some participants reported that they solved more mazes than they actually solved, and this misreporting also peaked with multiple differentiated prizes.

Abstract:
This paper argues that public sector labor relations is best understood in a framework that focuses on unions` ability to shift demand curves rather than to raise wages, as is the case in the private sector. It reviews the public sector labor relations literature and finds that: (i) public sector unionism has flourished as a result of changes in laws; (2) the effects of public sector unions on wages are likely to have been underestimated; (3) public sector unions have a somewhat different effect on wage structures than do private sector unions; (4) compulsory arbitration reduces strikes with no clearcut impact on the level of wage settlements; (5) public sector unions have diverse effects on non-wage outcomes as do private sector unions. In terms of evaluating public sector unionism, the paper argues that by raising both the cost of public services (taxes) and the amount of services public sector unionism involves a different welfare calculus than private sector unionism.

Abstract:
This paper investigates the magnitude of the elasticity of demand for labor in time series data using more general and complete models of demand than have been previously employed. It argues that previous analyses have imposed two invalid constraints in calculations, which bias downward estimated elasticities. The first invalid constraint is the assumption that real capital prices have an equal opposite effect to real wages in the demand equation. We show on measurement error grounds that this constraint should not be imposed in econometric work even when long run homogeneity of prices correctly characterizes the market. The constraint is rejected in the data. The second invalid constraint is that all explanatory variables have the same lag distribution. We argue that this constraint is invalid when decisions are made under uncertainty and find that it is also rejected by the data. The principal positive empirical finding is that with the constraints relaxed, the elasticity, of demand with respect to real wages is much larger than the estimates in the literature, indicating much greater price responsiveness on the demand side of the labor market than has previously been thought.

Abstract:
This study contrasts the labor market performance of the U.S. and OECD Europe in the 1980s and critically evaluates the view that the U.S. has generated more jobs because its labor market is more `flexible`. The study finds that the greater employment expansion in the U.S. was associated with slower growth of real wages and productivity than in most of OECD Europe rather than with relatively costless flexibility. It also finds that while some aspects of relative wage flexibility, for instance in youth versus adult wages, helped limit U.S. unemployment, other aspects, for instance regional wage, show no greater flexibility in the U.S. than in the U.K., where labor markets are allegedly less flexible. Finally, the study argues that the disparate experiences of the U.K., with a relatively decentralized labor market, and Sweden, with a centralized wage-setting system, show that decentralized labor markets are neither necessary nor sufficient for employment-enhancing wage settlements.

Abstract:
Since the mid-1970s, the number of single-parent families has increased greatly in the U.S., contributing to the nation's child poverty problem. In response, the federal government and various states have tried to increase child support payments from non-custodial parents. Using data from administrative records and from the child support modules in the Survey of Income Program and Participation (SIPP) and the April and March Current Population Surveys (CPS), we find that the proportion of never married mothers receiving child support rose sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, with the largest increases in states where child support payment were particularly modest. Using within-state variation over time to determine the effect of policy on child support payments, we estimate that increased government expenditures on child support policies are responsible for about one fifth of the upward trend. Our results show that child support expenditures and tougher child support legislation policies work best in tandem. States that both increased expenditures and adopted tougher laws experienced the largest increase in the proportion of never married mothers receiving support.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper contrasts the differing experience of public sector unionism, which has expanded in the United States, and private sector unionism, which has contracted, in the past several decades. It uses the experience of other countries, particularly Canada, to rule out some explanations of the divergent trends. The paper finds that the major reason for the private sector decline is increased management opposition to union organization, motivated in part by profit-seeking behavior, and augmented by trade union responses; and that the major reason for the public sector union expansion is decreased market opposition due to pas- sage of comprehensive collective bargaining laws and motivated in part by vote-seeking behavior.

Abstract:
Puerto Rico has an extraordinarily low employment rate for men. We document the low employment rate using Census of Population and labor force survey data and offer "the rich uncle (Sam) hypothesis" that the connection of the relatively poor economy of Puerto Rico to the wealthier US has created conditions that generate low employment. In support of the hypothesis, we show: 1) that GNP and GDP have diverged on the island, distorting the relationship between GDP and employment, due potentially to federal tax benefits to companies operating in Puerto Rico; 2) transfers to Puerto Rican families funded mainly by the federal government, which account for about 22 percent of personal income; 3) open borders to the U.S. that give men with high desire for work incentive to migrate to the US, and potentially creates a lower bound to wages on the island; (4) a wage structure with relatively higher earnings in low paid jobs; and (5) employment in the informal sector, which is unmeasured in official statistics. We note that other regional economies with rich "uncles", such as East Germany with West Germany, Southern Italy with Northern Italy, have comparable employment problems.

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Abstract:
This paper examines the role of trade unions as determinants of: pension coverage, expenditures by firms for pensions; the provisions of pension plans; and pension fund investments. It also examines the impact of union pensions on the age-earnings profile of union workers. It has four basic findings:(1) Unions greatly increase pension coverage, and alter the determinants of coverage, in ways that go beyond the monopoly wage effects of unionism.(2) Unions alter the provisions of pension plans in ways that benefit senior workers and that equalize pensions among workers.(3) Estimates of the age-earnings profile of union workers are seriously flawed by failure to take account of the union impact on pensions, which generally enhance the earnings of the oldest groups.(4) Union pension funds can and do shun the stocks of nonunion firms without lowering the value of the portfolio. Investments in actual projects which take lower returns are, up to a point, justifiable in terms of the full economic benefit accruing to workers.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper examines how shared capitalism compensation systems - those that link employee pay to company performance - affect diverse employee outcomes. It uses two data sets: the national GSS survey that provides a broad representative view of the extent of the programs; and the NBER Shared Capitalism Project surveys of workers in 14 companies that use shared capitalism programs extensively. We find that greater involvement in the programs is generally linked to greater participation in decisions, higher quality supervision and treatment of employees, more training, higher pay and benefits, greater job security, and higher job satisfaction. We also find positive interactions of shared capitalism with high-performance policies in predicting participation in decisions and overall job satisfaction, and negative interactions of shared capitalism with close supervision in affecting almost all of the outcomes. Overall the results support the idea that workers can gain by sharing, but whether this happens is contingent on other workplace policies.

Abstract:
This study examines the economic effects of changes in a group of managerial policies, a key element of which was the switch from piece rate to time rate modes of compensation, in one of the last remaining firms in the U.S. shoe industry in the 1990s. The firm, which we call 'Big Foot' (BF), entered the 1990s using a set of human resource policies that included piece rates to motivate workers, which induced relatively high productivity. But, faced with severe foreign competition, it switched to time rates and associated managerial policies, which produced higher profits despite lowering productivity. The reason profits increased is that time rate-related labor management policies reduced labor and other costs by enough to offset a fall in productivity. Data for shoe manufacturing from the Longitudinal Research Data (LRD) files of the U.S. Census show, more generally, that establishments with high labor costs and relatively many nonproduction workers, both of which are associated with management policies that often include piece rates, had lower rates of survival in this period than other establishments. Our finding that labor management policies associated with piece rate compensation can raise productivity but lower profitability is consistent with the broad decline of piece rate pay in advanced economies.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper analyses the relation between the percent of workers organized in a product market and the wages received by union workers and by nonunion workers. It argues that the greater is the union coverage of a sector, the lower will be the elasticity of demand for the product of organized firms (since there will be fewer nonunion competitors) and as a result the lower will be the elasticity of demand for union labor and the larger the union wage gains. Estimates of the link between coverage and wages using information on individuals and on establishments shows the expected positive relation for union workers across manufacturing industries. By contrast, nonunion wages in manufacturing appear to be unrelated or only modestly related to the percentage organized. Estimates of the link between the percentage of construction workers unionized in a state and the wages of union and nonunion construction workers reveal relationships similar to those for manufacturing. Overall, the results strongly suggest that the percent organized is an important determinant of union wages and of the union-nonunion wage differential.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

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No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper examines what is known about the causes of the high and increasing levels of youth joblessness and related problems in the youth labor market. Partly because of inconsistencies in reported rates of youth employment across surveys and partly because of problems in measuring key social variables, it is difficult to reach firm conclusions. As far as can be told, much of the relatively high rate of youth joblessness can be attributed to turnover and mobility patterns that are normal in the U.S. economy, but much is also directly related to a dearth of jobs. Demand forces, which have come to be neglected in favor of supply in much popular discussion of youth joblessness, are major determinants of variation in youth employment over time and among areas. For groups facing the most severe joblessness problems, however, the difficulty due to lack of jobs appears to be compounded by problems of employability related to deleterious social patterns. Surprisingly, perhaps, the factors that determine the probability that young persons end up employed or jobless differ substantively from those that determine wages. The paper explains the decline in the earnings of young workers relative to old workers in terms of the increased number of young persons. It speculates that the decline in relative wages may have contributed significantly to the stable ratio of employment to population among young whites. The causes of the downward trend in youth employment for nonwhites -- which constitute one of the major developments of the period -- remain a conundrum.

Abstract:
This study examines two innovative efforts to provide union services to workers with the aid of low cost Internet communication: the AFL-CIO's Working America, a "community affiliate" that enrolled 2 million workers from 2004 to 2007 by canvassing them at their homes and over the Internet (www.workingamerica.org); and the UK'S Trade Union Congress's www.unionreps.org.uk, a discussion board for worker representatives to communicate about workplace issues. Working America demonstrates that workers without collective bargaining will join a union organization that communicates on-line and off-line and campaigns for worker interests in society. Unionreps.org shows that local worker representatives can form an on-line community that shares information to improve the services they give workers. Combining the two innovations could be a step toward a new "open source" union form that provides union services at low cost outside of collective bargaining.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

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No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper examines evidence regarding the impact of the changed labor market on the higher educational system. Four basic propositions can be drawn from the paper`s findings. Firstly, the labor market for the highly educated underwent a downturn in the 1970s, reducing the relative earnings of new college graduates and forcing them into jobs not normally considered as requiring college training. Secondly, this downturn resulted in a leveling off, and, in the case of white males, a sharp decline, in college enrollment. Statistical and survey questionnaire data show that this is due to the economic responsiveness of potential students to market incentives. The effects of this labor market change were most severe in the liberal arts, teaching, and academic and research-oriented occupations. In other business-oriented fields such as management and accounting, and in engineering, economic opportunities remained substantial or in some cases improved. Consistent with these changes were changes in enrollments and degrees. Depressed job markets experienced rapid declines in enrollment, while fields such as engineering experienced an increase in enrollment. Concurrently, professional schools benefited while liberal arts schools suffered from labor market induced patterns of change in enrollment.