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Prevailing Wage Laws and Construction Labor Markets
Kessler, Daniel P. - 1999
Prevailing wage laws, which require that construction workers employed by private contractors on public projects be paid at least the wages and benefits that are "prevailing" for similar work in or near the locality in which the project is located, have been the focus of an extensive policy...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471329
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Contract Form and Procurement Costs : The Impact of Compulsory Multiple Contractor Laws in Construction
Ashenfelter, Orley - 1997
It is claimed that many regulatory rules enforce inefficiencies in order to achieve the appearance of cost control. We assess the importance of these claims by measuring the effect of New York state's compulsory multiple contractor law on the cost of public construction in New York City....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012472908
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Plata y Plomo : How Higher Wages Expose Politicians to Criminal Violence
Pulejo, Massimo; Querubín Borrero, Pablo - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2023
Adequate wages are an important tool to shield public officials from special interests and corruption. But what is the … significantly more likely to prevent corruption in public procurement, a key area of illicit interactions between the state and … limit corruption, but also foster the use of violence as an alternative tool to influence policymaking …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014337819
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Innovation and public policy
Goolsbee, Austan (ed.); Jones, Benjamin F. (ed.) - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2021
"In advanced economies like the United States, innovation has long been recognized as a central force for increasing socioeconomic prosperity and improving human health. Today, U.S. government policy seeks to promote innovation through a suite of mechanisms, from tax credits in the private...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012544348
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Gender and Bureaucratic Corruption : Evidence from Two Countries
Decarolis, Francesco; Fisman, Raymond; Pinotti, Paolo; … - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2021
We examine the correlation between gender and bureaucratic corruption using two distinct datasets, one from Italy and a … second from China. In each case, we find that women are far less likely to be investigated for corruption than men. In our … Italian data, female procurement officials are 34 percent less likely than men to be investigated for corruption by …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012482615
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Detection of Bid Rigging in Procurement Auctions
Porter, Robert H. - 1992
This paper examines bidding in auctions for state highway construction contracts on Long Island in the early 1980s, in order to determine whether bid rigging occurred. Detection of collusion is possible because of limited participation in the collusive scheme. The paper looks at differences in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474967
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Can Union Labor Ever Cost Less?
Allen, Steven G. - 1986
This paper examines the effect of unions on efficiency by estimating cost function systems over three different sets of construction projects. The results show that union contractors have greater economies of scale. This gives them a cost advantage in large commercial office buildings, but in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012477051
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Why Construction Industry Productivity is Declining
Allen, Steven G. - 1985
According to unpublished data compiled by BLS, productivity in the construction industry reached a peak in 1968 and, except for a brief and small upturn between 1974 and 1976, has been falling ever since. This paper examines the sources of this productivity decline between 1968 and 1978 by...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012477530
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Unionization and Productivity in Office Building and School Construction
Allen, Steven G. - 1983
This paper examines the difference in productivity between union and nonunion contractors in the construction industry over a sample of 83 commercial office buildings and another sample of 68 elementary and secondary schools. The popular belief that the building trades unions reduce productivity...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012477962
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Imperfect Competition and Rents in Labor and Product Markets : The Case of the Construction Industry
Kroft, Kory - 2020
The primary goal of our paper is to quantify the importance of imperfect competition in the U.S. construction industry by estimating the size of rents earned by American firms and workers. To obtain a comprehensive measure of the total rents and to understand its sources, we take into account...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012481519