In this paper, the authors analyze the role of three institutional changes--the decline in the real value of the minimum wage, deunionization, and economic deregulation--on the rise in wage inequality in the United States during the 1980s. They argue that about a third of the increase in male...

Exploiting differences across U.S. states, this paper demonstrates that there is a tight link between higher education policies, past enrollment rates, and recent changes in the college wage premium among labor market entrants. The analysis reveals, however, that this relationship is much weaker...

The authors evaluate some explanations of immigrants' family labor-supply behavior. Upon arrival, immigrant husbands work less than natives but immigrant wives work more. A conventional labor-supply model uses wage assimilation to explain these differences but is not supported by the data. More...