David Ricardo initially believed machinery would help workers but revised his opinion, likely based on the impact of automation in the textile industry. Despite cotton textiles becoming one of the largest sectors in the British economy, real wages for cotton weavers did not rise for decades. As...

"Audit studies testing for discrimination have been criticized because applicants from different groups may not appear identical to employers. Correspondence studies address this criticism by using fictitious paper applicants whose qualifications can be made identical across groups. However,...

"The absence of a competitive market and the presence and strength of public-sector labor unions make it likely that public-sector pay reflects an element of rent extraction by government workers. In this paper, we test a specific hypothesis that connects such rent extraction to the level of...