This paper presents an empirical analysis of firm-specific employment and wage outcomes for mechanics in the domestic airlines industry. A dynamic contracting model is presented that incorporates both costly employment adjustment and potential gaps between contract wage rates and the opportunity...

In the past 25 years immigration has re-emerged as a driving force in the size and composition of U.S. cities. This paper describes the effects of immigration on overall population growth and the skill composition of cities, focusing on the connection between immigrant inflows and the relative...

Strike outcomes in the 1880s had a 'winner-take-all' character. Successful strikes ended with a discrete wage gain; failed strikes ended with a return to work at the prestrike wage. The authors present a theoretical interpretation of these outcomes based on a war-of-attrition model. They fit an...

This article presents an empirical study of strike activity in a panel of contract negotiations for some 250 firm-and-union pairs. Evidence is presented on two sources of variation in dispute rates: changes in the characteristics of the collective bargaining agreement that affect subsequent...

This paper examines the effect of nominal contracting provisions on employment determination in union contracts. In most contracts, the nominal wage rate is wholly or partially predetermined. Real wage rates therefore contain unanticipated components that reflect unexpected price changes and the...

The guide outlines the main evaluation challenges associated with ALMP’s, and shows how to obtain rigorous impact estimates using two leading evaluation approaches. The most credible and straightforward evaluation method is a randomized design, in which a group of potential participants is...

It is widely believed that rent-sharing reduces the incentives for investment when long term contracts are infeasible because some of the returns to sunk capital are captured by workers. We propose a simple test for the degree of hold-up based on the fraction of capital costs that are deducted...

In the 1980s and 1990s successive United Kingdom governments enacted a series of reforms to establish a more market-oriented economy, closer to the American model and further away from its Western European competitors. Today, the United Kingdom is one of the least regulated economies in the...

This volume, the first in a new series by the National Bureau of Economic Research that compares labor markets in different countries, examines social and labor market policies in Canada and the United States during the 1980s. It shows that subtle differences in unemployment compensation,...