In this paper we study the endogenous determination of minimum wage employing a political-economic game-theoretic approach. A major objective of the paper is to clarify the crucial role of the strength of the workers’ union and of political culture on the determination of the minimum wage. In...

In this paper we study the endogenous determination of minimum wage employing a political-economic game-theoretic approach. A major objective of the paper is to clarify the crucial role of the strength of the workers' union and of political culture on the determination of the minimum wage. In...

The Great Recession has been hard on recent college graduates, but it has been even harder for black recent college graduates. This report examines the labor-market outcomes of black recent college graduates using the general approach developed by Federal Reserve Bank of New York researchers...

A series of earlier CEPR reports documented a substantial decline over the last three decades in the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy. This fall-off in job quality took place despite a large increase in the educational attainment and age of the workforce, as well as the productivity...

Over the past three decades, the “human capital” of the employed black workforce has increased enormously. In 1979, only one-in-ten (10.4 percent) black workers had a four-year college degree or more. By 2011, more than one in four (26.2 percent) had a college education or more. Over the...

In this paper we empirically examine the impact of labor market flexibility on FDI flows to oil-rich GCC and compare it to middle income countries in 2006-2011. We account for potential endogeneity and nonstationarity and adopt system GMM and IV estimation methodologies. Our findings show that...

The U.S. workforce is substantially older and better-educated than it was at the end of the 1970s. The typical worker in 2010 was seven years older than in 1979. In 2010, over one-third of US workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from just one-fifth in 1979. Given that older and...

The decline in the economy’s ability to create good jobs is related to deterioration in the bargaining power of workers, especially those at the middle and the bottom of the pay scale. The restructuring of the U.S. labor market – including the decline in the inflation-adjusted value of the...

Over the last two decades, high – and, in some countries, rising – rates of low-wage work have emerged as a major political concern. If low-wage jobs act as a stepping stone to higher-paying work, then even a relatively high share of low-wage work may not be a serious social problem. If,...

This paper investigates whether increases in the minimum wage in France have the same impact on the average wage when intended to preserve the purchasing power of the minimum wage as when intended to raise it. We find that the impact of the minimum wage on the average wage is strong, but differs...