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 freshman...

Using BLS data on 300 hospitals in 1985, the authors examine pay in four occupations, with a particular focus on the effect of supervision on the pay of nonsupervisory employees. There was a strong hospital-specific effect on wages that cut across occupations; thus, if a hospital paid relatively...

In the past decade, many state courts have ruled in favor of employees alleging they were improperly dismissed. The author of this paper advances an evolutionary theory of unjust-dismissal legislation in which employer groups, responding to the threat of large and variable damage awards imposed...

Using a longitudinal survey of fast-food restaurants in Texas, the authors examine the impact of recent increases in the federal minimum wage on a low-wage labor market. Less than 5% of fast-food restaurants were using the new youth subminimum wage in July/August 1991, even though the vast...

This paper examines the determinants of the number and quality of outside applicants for federal job openings, using a variety of time-series, cross-sectional, and panel data sets. The main finding is that the application rate for government jobs increases as the ratio of federal to private...

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...

This paper analyzes the price-indexation provisions of a sample of major Canadian collective bargaining agreements concluded between 1968 and 1975. Under these contracts, escalated wage increases comprised about one-third of total wage increases and represented a major source of erosion in the...

This paper describes the effects of deregulation on negotiated wage rates and employment levels of aircraft mechanics in the scheduled airline industry between 1978 and 1984. A firm-by-firm analysis of the established trunk airlines shows relatively small changes in real wage rates since 1978,...