Prevailing wage laws, which require that construction workers employed by private contractors on public projects be paid at least the wages and benefits that are "prevailing" for similar work in or near the locality in which the project is located, have been the focus of an extensive policy...

It is claimed that many regulatory rules enforce inefficiencies in order to achieve the appearance of cost control. We assess the importance of these claims by measuring the effect of New York state's compulsory multiple contractor law on the cost of public construction in New York City....

This paper examines bidding in auctions for state highway construction contracts on Long Island in the early 1980s, in order to determine whether bid rigging occurred. Detection of collusion is possible because of limited participation in the collusive scheme. The paper looks at differences in...

The 21st century global decline in productivity growth is not well understood. One possible contributor is a decline in economic dynamism. We explore the contribution of firm formation and employee movement to productivity using administrative data on the population of New Zealand construction...

The efficiency of common law rules is central to achieving efficient resource allocation in a market economy. While many theories suggest reasons why judge-made law should tend toward efficient rules, the question whether the common law actually does converge in commercial areas has remained...

This paper summarizes important developments in collective bargaining in the construction industry in the 1980s and 1990s. Workers in the industry have experienced high unemployment and a 17 percent drop in real wages. Union density has declined from 33 percent in 1981 to 22 percent in 1992,...

According to unpublished data compiled by BLS, productivity in the construction industry reached a peak in 1968 and, except for a brief and small upturn between 1974 and 1976, has been falling ever since. This paper examines the sources of this productivity decline between 1968 and 1978 by...

The main findings of this paper are that despite the existence of various affirmative action programs designed to improve the position of women and minorities in public construction, little has changed in the last twenty five years. We present evidence showing that where race conscious...

This paper examines the difference in productivity between union and nonunion contractors in the construction industry over a sample of 83 commercial office buildings and another sample of 68 elementary and secondary schools. The popular belief that the building trades unions reduce productivity...

Previous studies using micro data to estimate the impact of unions on productivity in construction in the early 1970's have found productivity to be higher for union than nonunion contractors in the private sector. The validity of these studies has been questioned in light of the declining...