In recent years, a number of governments and consumer groups in rich countries have tried to discourage the use of child labor in poor countries through measures such as product boycotts and the imposition of international labor standards. The purported objective of such measures is to reduce...

This paper discusses how an industrialized country could defend the wages and social benefits of its unskilled workers against wage competition from immigrants. It shows that fixing social standards harms the workers and that fixing social replacement incomes implies migration into unemployment....

How should the issue of domestic labor standards be handled in the GATT/ WTO? This question is part of a broader debate over the appropriate scope of international economic institutions such as the GATT, where member-countries are considering proposals for a new round of n3 negotiations that...

This study develops alternative quarterly measures of labor costs that refine the published data on hourly earnings and hourly compensation for the period 1953-1978. These new series account for deviations of hours paid for from hours worked, for the tax treatment of wages under the corporate...

This study is a theoretical and empirical analysis of the effects of time and money costs of labor market participation on married women's supply behavior. The existence of fixed costs implies that individuals are not willing to work less than some minimum number of hours, termed reservation...

Firms that are more highly levered are forced to raise capital more often, a process that generates information about them. Of course transparency can improve the allocation of capital. However, when the information about the firm affects the terms under which the firm transacts with its...

This paper studies simple partial equilibrium models of dynamic labor demand, under certainty. Labor turnover costs may or may not decrease the firm's average labor demand, depending on the form of the revenue function, on the rates of discount and of labor attrition, and on the relative size of...

Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing...