This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of decomposition methods that have been developed since the seminal work of Oaxaca and Blinder in the early 1970s. These methods are used to decompose the difference in a distributional statistic between two groups, or its change over time, into...

The general equilibrium analysis of many important labor market issues is very different in an economy that is open to international trade than an economy (like the US in the 1950s) in which trade is not very important. Despite the fact that individual national economies have become increasingly...

Barely a day goes by without some expert telling us how the continental European economies are about to disintegrate unless their labor markets become more flexible. Basically, we are told, Europe has the wrong sort of labor market institutions for the modern global economy. These outdated...

This chapter reviews recent developments in the study of individual employment contracts. It discusses three reasons for an employer and an employee to have a contract: (1) to allocate risk in a way different from a spot market; (2) to enhance the efficiency of investment decisions by protecting...

This chapter provides an overview of the literature linking health, health insurance and labor market outcomes such as wages, earnings, employment, hours, occupational choice, job turnover, retirement, and the structure of employment. The first part of the paper focuses on the relationship...

This chapter reviews the behavioral and redistributive effects of transfer programs targeted at working-age people with disabilities. While we primarily focus on the United States, we also include programs in the Federal Republic of Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden. We look at how the...