This paper examines the effects of remedial mathematics on performance in university-level economics courses using a natural experiment. We study exam results prior and subsequent to the implementation of a remedial mathematics course that was compulsory for a sub-set of students and unavailable...

This paper uses personnel records of employees from an Australian bank to analyse the labour market consequences of career interruptions due to voluntary military service during the Second World War. The records contain the employees’ career position and pay histories, and pre-war outcomes are...

Women were first employed in large numbers by the British banking industry during the First World War, and were an essential part of the industry's labour force thereafter. During the interwar period, women were often confined to routine back office positions, and could not advance past the...

This paper provides the first experimental test of Edward Lazear's (1979) model of deferred compensation. We examine the relationship between firms' wage offers and workers' effort supply in a multi-period environment. If firms can ex ante commit to a wage schedule with deferred compensation,...

Islamist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere have sought to remove females from public life. This paper uses data from Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement and the Global Terrorism Database to examine the impact of the Pakistani Taliban's terror campaign in the...

This paper examines the effects of the Victorian Factory and Shops Act, the first minimum wage law in Australia. The Act differed from modern minimum wage laws in that it established Special Boards, which set trade-specific minimum wage schedules. We use trade-level data on average wages,...

The Victorian Factories and Shops Act of 1896, the second minimum wage law in the world, empowered administrative agencies ("Special Boards") to set trade-specific minimum rates based on age, sex, and occupation. Much like modern debates, Victorian supporters of minimum wages argued that they...

Minimum wages have been among the most controversial government interventions in labor markets. There have been several waves of minimum wage activity over the past century, beginning with a 1912 Massachusetts law. Since 1938 minimum wages in the United States have been set by a complex array of...