Interindustry wage differentials in wage regressions estimated for individuals have been interpreted as evidence consistent with efficiency wage models. A principal competing explanation is that these differentials are generated by differences across workers in unobserved ability. This paper...

We use county-level data on employment and earnings in the restaurant-and-bar sector to evaluate the impact of minimum wage changes on low-wage labor markets. Our empirical approach is similar to the literature that has used state-level panel data to estimate minimum-wage impacts, with the...

Ashenfelter and Krueger's (1993) within-twin, measurement-error- corrected estimate of the return to schooling is about 13-16 percent. If their estimate is unbiased, then their results imply considerable downward measurement error bias in uncorrected within-twin estimates of the return to...

We explore several problems in drawing causal inferences from cross-sectional relationships between marriage, motherhood, and wages. We find that heterogeneity leads to biased estimates of the quot;directquot; effects of marriage and motherhood on wages (i.e., effects net of experience and...

We study the effect of minimum wage increases on employment in automatable jobs – jobs in which employers may find it easier to substitute machines for people – focusing on low-skilled workers for whom such substitution may be spurred by minimum wage increases. Based on CPS data from...

We explore the impact of wage offers on job applications, testing implications of the directed search model and trying to distinguish it from random search. We use a field experiment conducted on a Chinese job board, with real jobs for which we randomly varied the wage offers across three...

We investigate the impact of union strength on changes in nonunion wages and employment. The prevailing model in this area is the threat model, which predicts that increases in union strength cause increases in nonunion wages and decreases in nonunion employment. In testing the threat model, we...

Ashenfelter and Krueger's (1993) within-twin, measurement-error- corrected estimate of the return to schooling is about 13-16 percent. If their estimate is unbiased, then their results imply considerable downward measurement error bias in uncorrected within-twin estimates of the return to...