Has greater turbulence among firms fueled rising wage instability in the U.S.? Gottschalk and Moffitt ([1994]) find that rising earnings instability was responsible for one third to one half of the rise in wage inequality during the 1980s. These growing transitory fluctuations remain largely...

I review the uses of American employer salary surveys for labor market research. Recent computational, theoretical, and econometric advances render these surveys ripe for exploitation. I summarize theories of employer wage effects and then describe salary surveys and their preparation for...

How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals’ earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which...

This paper discusses how optimal monetary policy is affected by differences in the combination of shocks an economy experiences and the rigidities it exhibits. Without both nominal rigidities and economic shocks, monetary policy would be irrelevant. Recognizing this, policymakers increasingly...

Inflation has been accused of causing distortionary price and wage fluctuations (sand) as well as lauded for facilitating adjustments to shocks when wages are rigid downwards (grease). This paper investigates whether these two effects can be distinguished from each other in a labor market by the...

How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals’ earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which...

A study of rising wage inequality based on data from a private salary survey conducted over the last three decades.

How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals’ earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which...

A discussion of the role played by service exports in sustaining a regional economy, with the contention that its growth reflects a natural and inevitable response to rising wealth.

An investigation of the 1990-91 recession's impact on blue- versus white-collar workers, showing that although blue-collar workers bore the brunt of the downturn, white-collar employment growth was unusually slow by historical standards.