The substantial growth in income inequality over the 1980's has led to a large number of alternative explanations. One of the key issues that has yet to be fully explored is the role of changing skill requirements in the U.S. economy. In this paper, we attempt to fill that gap by providing...

This study investigates, for the period 1969 - 81, the determinants of the incidence and strength of cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) clauses in U.S. manufacturing and the effect of those clauses on wage inflation. The sample includes approximately 5,570 union contracts in over 2,600 bargaining...

Most of the recent work on the effect of regulation on the behavior of the firm has focused on the investment decisions of the firm. Very little work has been done on other aspects of the firm's behavior. This paper investigates the optimal behavior of a regulated firm faced with a wage demand...

Drawing on a single large U.S. corporation's personnel records for the years 1989–93, the authors analyze an example of the kind of formal salary system used by most large firms. They find that this firm's practices were consistent with most of the important conclusions of prior empirical...

Data is reanalyzed from an important series of 19th century experiments conducted by C. S. Peirce and designed to study the plausibility of the Gaussian law of errors for astronomical observations. Contrary to the findings of Peirce, but in accordance with subsequent analysis by Fréchet and...

Additive models for conditional quantile functions provide an attractive framework for nonparametric regression applications focused on features of the response beyond its central tendency. Total variation roughness penalities can be used to control the smoothness of the additive components much...