This essay on labor economics examines neoclassical theory's rise to ascendancy following the second World War, with a secondary focus on the relative decline but continued influence of institutionalist economic theory. The authors describe the evolution of institutional and neoclassical theory...

Our analysis replicates earlier studies of OSHA's inspection effects to see if, in the face of recordkeeping changes and new inspection targeting procedures, the relationships previously found still hold. The sizes and patterns of coefficients that we obtain in our analyses, including the lack...

Legal and administrative determinations of employers' compliance with "equal employment opportunity" (EEO) requirements often hinge on the issue of the availability of protected class members to employers. That is,courts and affirmative action review agencies compare the hire rates of protected...

This paper explores the determinants of pension funding in the public sector. We formulate and test several hypotheses about the determinants of public employer pension funding practices, using a new data set describing financial and other characteristics of state, local, and teacher plans. The...

Proponents of comparable worth assert that within a firm jobs can be valued in terms of the skill, effort and responsibility they require, as well as the working conditions they offer, and that jobs that are of comparable worth to the firm should receive equal compensation. After documenting the...

Our paper attempts to identify the types of data nee3ed to estimate tradeoffs between wages and fringe benefits (such as pensions); it also explores the usefulness for this estimation of one particular employer- based data set collected by gay Associates. We stress three things: first, that...