This study uses Current Population Survey micro data for 1973–74 and 1993 to evaluate the effect of changing union membership on trends in male and female wage inequality. Unionization rates of men fell between the two sample periods, with bigger declines among lower skill groups. These...

The imposition of a national minimum wage standard provides a natural experiment in which the “treatment effect†varies across states depending on the fraction of workers initially earning less than the new minimum. The author exploits this fact to evaluate the effect of the April 1990...

Steady increases in the cost of medical care, coupled with a rise in the fraction of workers who lack medical insurance, create incentives for workers who are injured off-the-job to file Workers' Compensation claims. Many analysts have interpreted the high rate of Monday...

In July 1988, California's minimum wage rose from $3.35 to $4.25. During the previous year, 11% of workers in the state and 50% of California teenagers had earned less than the new state minimum. Using published data and samples from the Current Population Survey, the author compares changes in...

In many European countries, sectoral bargaining agreements are automatically extended to cover all firms in an industry. Employers and employees can also negotiate firm-specific contracts. The authors of this paper use a large matched employer-employee data set from a 1995 survey in Spain to...

Between 1996 and 1998 California and Texas eliminated the use of affirmative action in college and university admissions. At the states' elite public universities admission rates of black and Hispanic students subsequently fell by 30–50% and minority representation in the entering...