On the one hand, Franco Modigliani does not like rational expectations. On the other hand, Franco Modigliani does like rational expectations - indeed, as he says, he invented it. Many times in his complaints, Modigliani seems to be conflating the use of the rational expectations hypothesis with...

The severe productivity slowdown in coal mining in the 1970s has been widely attributed to the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. However, other variables also warrant attention. Increasing unrest in the coal fields and challenges to both the Mine workers Union and coal operators also...

There is evidence that shifts in the demand for labor are disadvantaging young black men. To help explain this change, we analyze a set of quantitative measures derived from face-to-face interviews of employers in Detroit and Los Angeles. The measures encompass employer skill demands, hiring...

The increase in inequality after the 1960s was due to substitution of capital and of skilled labor for unskilled labor induced by rise in the relative cost of unskilled labor resulting from wartime demand, wartime and postwar egalitarian wage polices, the fall in real interest rates and in the...

Typically, the empirical presence of sheepskin effects in the returns to schooling has been used as evidence supporting the screening hypothesis. In this study, sheepskin effects are found to exist, but are not stable across individuals according to whether or not they found their accumulated...

We posit that larger employers possess greater information than smaller employers about the effects of on-the-job training (OJT) investments on the productivity of their workers. As a result, larger employers pay a greater percentage of OJT costs, and OJT is effectively more firm-specific at...

Using data from a financial services firm, the determinants of salary growth are estimated in a two-stage model with special attention given to the roles of gender and race. While the analysis reveals no overt bias in salary growth decisions, there is evidence of institutional bias within one...

This article investigates work intensification in French manufacturing industry. The first part contains an analysis of the various forms of work intensification and their organizational and technological determinants. The analysis reveals the persistence of Taylorist forms of work...

Unionized employers may have an incentive to worsen the quality of working conditions in reaction to union-appropriated monopoly wage rents. Indeed, this is a plausible explanation for why union workers are found to have higher injury rates than their nonunion counterparts. This paper spells out...

This paper focuses on a new source of economic growth, personal capital formation, and provides an explanation for a part of economic growth that has heretofore been unexplained. Personal capital is the human capacity reflecting the quality of an individual's psychological, physical, and...