The authors examine the sensitivity of wage setting in two federal pay systems—the General Schedule (GS) system, covering white-collar workers, and the Federal Wage System (FWS), covering blue-collar workers—to local wages and cost-of-living. In 1978 and 1980, the years of the...

In final offer arbitration the decision of the arbitrator provides the parties with information about the preferences of the arbitrator that is not available prior to the award. Using data from Wisconsin teacher negotiations from 1977 to 1986, the authors find that the information contained in...

Recent studies have investigated arbitrator decision rules in both experimental and field settings. The authors of this paper evaluate the external validity of experimental studies by comparing the decisions made in an experiment with those made in actual cases by the same arbitrators. The...