We examine why employers use temporary agency and contract company workers and the implications of these practices for the wages, benefits, and working conditions of workers in low-skilled labor markets. Through intensive case studies in manufacturing (automotive supply), services (hospitals),...

Using a variety of data sources, the contributors explore how performance standards and incentives affect the behavior of public managers and agency employees, their approaches to service delivery, and ultimately, the outcomes for participants.

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title 1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the...

This paper reviews what we currently know about the benefits and costs of different varieties of a "living wage": a local government requirement, now adopted by over 50 local governments, for wages above the federal minimum imposed on employers with some financial link to the local government....

This book provides a very useful introduction to methodologies for measuring inequality, a comprehensive overview of changes in inequality which have occurred in the United States, and an informative discussion of a variety of policy-related issues.

Using models developed for this study which incorporate an array of behaviors generally omitted from conventional models relating backloading to turnover, Gustman and Steinmeier find that backloading plays only a slight role in explaining mobility differences associated with pension coverage....

Hyclak and Johnes explore the extent to which wage rigidity differs across regional labor markets in the U.S. and how it affects the unemployment response to shifts in regional aggregate demand. They also look at the determinants of differences in wage rigidity across regional labor markets.

Hyclak examines changes in the structure of wages paid for some 40 different jobs found in four different occupational groups. In addition, he concentrates on the jobs and the skills required as the primary determinant of wages, an approach, he says, that complements the more traditional human...

This book explores this apparent change in the employment contract from a new perspective. Whereas earlier studies in this area focused on the rigidities in the quantity side of the employment relationship, e.g., changes in job tenure and rates of displacement, the authors focus on the price...

Alpert and Woodbury present a comprehensive set of explorations into the impacts that the provision of various types of employee benefits (or lack thereof) have on labor markets. And while there are, as the editors point out, substantial differences between the employee benefits systems of...