In initial cross-section estimates using data from the 1991-94 British Household Panel Study, the authors find that union members had lower overall job satisfaction than non-union members, and public sector workers had higher satisfaction than private sector workers. Controlling for individual...

A 1996 survey of Hong Kong establishments designed to identify hiring and employment patterns by workers' age shows that, as in the United States, many firms employed older workers but did not hire older workers. This pattern appears to reflect mainly economic forces, rather than public policy,...

Many studies have examined the influence of union density (union members as a percentage of all workers) on earnings in the private sector, but few such studies have looked at the public sector. Using data from the 1991 Current Population Survey, this study estimates the determinants of earnings...

Using data from a 1987 American Medical Association survey of young physicians, the authors investigate how accurately the women in the sample perceived the gender wage discrimination affecting them. Contrary to the conclusion of some studies that women inaccurately perceive gender...

This is the first study of how various factors, particularly unions, affect the likelihood of plant closures in Australia. Australia is of special interest in this connection, the authors argue, because of its unique industrial relations institutions, which, at the time of the study (1990-95),...

The Service Contract Act of 1965 is one of three major laws requiring that "prevailing wages" be paid by private employers with federal contracts. This paper develops a preliminary cost-benefit framework for evaluating that Act. On the benefit side, the authors identify and analyze eight...

The authors estimate the determinants of five types of variable payment schemes using panel data on German establishments in 1994 and 1996. Women were disproportionately included in schemes based on individual productivity and on profit-sharing, but not in those based on work group productivity....