The U.S. labor force participation rate rose rapidly during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It then flattened out in the 1990s, and since 2000 it has fallen, without much sign of an imminent rebound. We attempt to distinguish between cyclical and structural influences on the participation rate by...

Since 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from about 66 percent to about 63 percent. The sources of this decline have been widely debated among academics and policymakers, with some arguing that the participation rate is depressed due to weak labor demand while others argue that...

The Employment Cost Index for wages and salaries is based on a comparison of the average wage rates for the same set of jobs across a three-month interval. Employment for the majority of the jobs remains the same over the three months. However, if the index were based solely on the jobs for...

We investigate the impact of tax subsidies on the firms decision to offer insurance, and on conditional firm spending on insurance. We do so using the micro-data underlying the Employee Compensation Index, which has a major advantage for this exercise: the matching of very high quality...

This article explores the question of whether unionization influences the decision of a firm to merge with another firm. We combine merger data, taken from COMPUSTAT, with firm-specific union data obtained from several sources. An econometric matching model allows us to isolate the effects of...