We specify and implement a test for the presence and importance of labor market networks based on residential proximity, in determining the establishments at which people work. Using matched employer-employee data at the establishment level, we measure the importance of these network effects for...

The authors use microlevel data on employers and employees from a sample of establishments in four major metropolitan areas in the United States to investigate whether Affirmative Action leads to the hiring of minority or female employees who are less qualified. Their measures of qualifications...

Theory predicts that minimum wages will reduce employer-provided on-the-job training designed to improve workers' skills on the current job, but it is ambiguous regarding training that workers obtain to qualify for a job. We estimate the effects of minimum wages on both types of training...

The authors use a unique new data set that combines data on individual workers and their employers to estimate marginal productivity differentials among different types of workers. They then compare these to estimated relative wages, leading to new evidence on productivity-based and...

Over the 1980s, there were sharp increases in the return to schooling estimated with conventional wage regressions. The authors explore whether the relationship between ability and schooling changed over this period in ways that would have increased the schooling coefficient in these...

We use new matched employer-employee data to estimate the contributions of sex segregation and wage differences by sex within occupation, industry, establishment, and occupation-establishment cells to the overall sex gap in wages. In contrast to earlier data used to study this question, our data...

We update the evidence on changes in job stability through the mid-1990s, using recently released Current Population Survey data for 1995 that parallel earlier job tenure supplements. In the aggregate, job stability declined modestly in the first half of the 1990s. Moreover, the relatively small...

This article tests the implications of the general human capital that (1) at the individual level, there is a negative relationship between the initial wage level and wage growth of inexperienced workers and (2) at the market level, the ratio of the present values of wage profiles of investors...

Two key attributes of a job are its wage and its duration. Much has been made of changes in the wage distribution in the 1980s but little attention has been given to job durations since Robert E. Hall (1972, 1982). The authors fill this void by examining the temporal evolution of job retention...