The current wage at a job may not fully reflect the "value" of that job. For example, a job with a low starting wage may be preferred to one with a high starting wage if the growth rate of wages is higher in the former than in the latter. In fact, differences in wage growth can potentially...

An examination of the effects of restricting the weekly hours of workers in a heterogeneous-agent, general-equilibrium framework. The main findings are that restricting weekly hours increases employment substantially, but may also lead to large declines in wages, productivity, output, and...

An examination of the effect of unions on the aggregate level of employment in the economy.

The part-time employment rate has declined since the early 1980s, especially among females. This paper examines the decline over the 1980-1990 period, with a focus on the gender differential, using gross change data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monthly transition rates between full-time...

An analysis of a one-period, two-sector model in which firms must pay a fixed cost of hiring. The authors show that this type of model results in more employment variability and less-procyclical wages than do models without fixed hiring costs.

An analysis of working hours, wages, and employment when production requires coordinating the work schedules of heterogeneous workers. The author shows that this coordination aspect of production can have important policy implications.

Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics shows that while the majority of job changers who state they were not fired or laid off choose jobs with wages that are higher than their previous jobs, a substantial proportion of these job changers choose jobs that have lower wages. A model is...

The development of a test for whether an industry reduces capacity by first closing its highest-cost plants, using plant-level data from the U.S. steel industry.

An estimation of a dynamic cost function for the U.S. steel industry to investigate the cost of adjusting blue- and white-collar employment levels and to examine the importance of specification of the adjustment-cost function.

An examination of the plant-closing decisions of integrated steel firms in the United States from 1977-1987 to determine whether firm characteristics influenced either the probability or the timing of a plant's closing during this decade of significant industry contraction.