This brief, written for the "Unrigging the Labor Market" convening on June 13, 2018 at Harvard Law School, summarizes the empirical research on the relationship between covenants not to compete, their enforceability, and wages

This study examines the effect of noncompete enforceability on training and wages. An increase from non-enforcement to mean enforceability is associated with a 14% increase in training, which tends to be firm-sponsored and designed to upgrade or teach new skills. In contrast to theoretical...

We examine the use of noncompete agreements (NCAs) and their relationship with wage bargaining and wage outcomes using new data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. NCAs cover 18% of the workers in our sample and adoption patterns are broadly consistent with prior research. The...