A presentation of a model that incorporates many factors simultaneously -- including education, experience, and industry choice -- to explain the growing disparity in Americans earnings. Its main finding is that the shifting composition of the U.S. workforce is a significant and direct...

Deregulation of electricity generation will offer consumers many advantages, including dramatically lower energy costs. From a macroeconomic viewpoint, electricity purchases are interesting because they are a major component of consumers’ budgets (and thus of the CPI) and a large factor of...

An examination of the divergence of U.S. regional fortunes in the early 1980s, showing that once regional prices are factored in, relative wage rates continue to converge across regions. The trend in regional wage variation is also shown to be attributable to declining differences in labor...

A review of empirical evidence on intra- and interindustry wage differentials among industries and establishments, presenting five alternative explanations for large and persistent variance in wages across employers, as well as policy implications for the alternatives.

An exploration of why workers in large cities are more highly paid than their rural counterparts. The authors decompose city-size wage differentials into the portion due to worker traits and the portion due to intercity differences in wage structures and find that differences in worker-attribute...

A discussion of the role played by service exports in sustaining a regional economy, with the contention that its growth reflects a natural and inevitable response to rising wealth.

An investigation of the 1990-91 recession's impact on blue- versus white-collar workers, showing that although blue-collar workers bore the brunt of the downturn, white-collar employment growth was unusually slow by historical standards.

An overview of the proceedings of the October 1989 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland conference on the causes and consequences of structural changes in U.S. labor markets.