Evidence from Current Population Surveys through 1997, various cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics suggests that the fraction of American employees paid salaries stayed constant from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, but fell slightly...

This study goes beyond the immense literature on the quantity of labor that households supply to examine the timing of their labor/leisure choices. Using two-year panels from the United States in the 1970s it demonstrates that couples prefer to consume leisure simultaneously: Synchronization is...

The distribution of job satisfaction widened across cohorts of young men in the United States between 1978 and 1988, and between 1978 and 1996, in ways correlated with changing wage inequality. Satisfaction among workers in upper earnings quantiles rose relative to that of workers in lower...

Using a wide array of examples from the literature and from original estimates, this essay examines the pitfalls that make good empirical research in labor economics as much art as science. Appropriateness and cleanliness of data are considered, as are problems of extreme observations and...

Two striking facts describe work timing in the United States: a lower propensity to work evenings and nights in large metropolitan areas, and a secular decline in such work since 1973. One explanation is higher and possibly increasing crime in large areas. I link Current Population Survey data...

We know that earnings inequality has increased sharply in the United States since the late 1970s, but there has been no evidence on the changing inequality of nonmonetary aspects of work nor on how any such changes are related to changes in earnings. I begin by studying patterns of interindustry...

A precondition for the absence of labor-market competition between immigrants and natives is that they differ in their willingness to accept work that offers different amenities. The implications of a model embodying this assumption are that immigrants will be observed experiencing inferior...

The incidence of evening and night work declined sharply in the United States between the early 1970s and the early 1990s, while the fraction of work performed at the fringes of the traditional regular working day grew. The secular decline in evening and night work did not result from industrial...

This study uses data for the U.S. from the May 1991 CPS and for Germany from the 1990 wave of the Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) to analyze when people work during the day and week. The evidence shows: 1) Work in the evenings or at night is quite common in both countries, with around 7 percent of...

Economists' productivity, as measured by publication in leading journals, declines very sharply with age. Additional evidence shows that this is a rational response to economic incentives and/or changing physical or mental abilities: There is no difference by age in the probability that an...