We were asked to discuss specific methodological approaches to evaluating three hypothetical interventions. This article uses this forum to discuss three misperceptions about randomized trials. First, nobody argues that randomized trials are appropriate in all settings, and for all questions....

This paper examines the relationship between real wages in the United States and productivity. The measure of productivity includes the impact of public capital as well as private capital. Both neo-classical and Keynesian theories predict that real wages increase with increases in the capital...

We conduct an interactive online experiment framed as an employment contract between employer and worker. Subjects from the US, India, and Africa are matched in pairs within and, in some cases, across countries. Employers make a one-period offer to a worker who can either decline or choose a...

Income inequality between different races in the U.S. is especially large. This difference is even larger when gender is involved. In a complementary study, we have developed a dynamic micro-economic model accurately describing the evolution of male and female incomes since 1930. Here, we extend...

The nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the last three decades, with firms increasingly relying on contractors, temp agencies, and franchises rather than hiring employees directly. We investigate the impact of this transformation on the wage...

We examine the changing relationship between unionization and wage inequality in Canada and the United States. Our study is motivated by profound recent changes in the composition of the unionized workforce. Historically, union jobs were concentrated among low-skilled men in private sector...

Equating a job with an individual rather than an occupation, we re-examine whether U.S. workers are increasingly concentrated in low and high-wage jobs relative to middle-wage jobs, a phenomenon known as employment polarization. By assigning workers in the CPS to real hourly wage bins with...

Since the late 1970s, wage inequality has increased strongly both in the U.S. and Germany but the trends have been different. Wage inequality increased along the entire wage distribution during the 1980s in the U.S. and since the mid 1990s in Germany. There is evidence for wage polarization in...

This article offers the first empirical evidence that labor force exit rates rise when workers' relative earnings fall. The model takes into account that a job not only provides economic security but also affirms a worker's social status, which is tied to their relative position in the labor...