This paper uses a new administrative micro-data set to examine the effect of a legislated increase in the minimum and maximum workers' compensation benefit on the duration of workplace injuries in Minnesota. As a result of legislation, workers in some earnings groups received higher benefits if...

In the last decade, state courts in many areas of the United States have ruled in favor of employees alleqing they were improperly dismissed. Many economists have contended that any judical or legislative departure from the employment-at-will doctrine is regressive and inefficient because it...

This paper uses Current Population Survey data on a large sample of workers to estimate the determinants of participation in state workers' compensation programs in the United States. The principal finding is Chat higher workers' compensation benefits are associated with greater participation in...

This paper performs a longitudinal comparison of public and private sector pay. Although not decisive because of small sample sizes, the results tend to corroborate the conclusions of previous cross-sectional studies. Specifically, I find that on average wages of federal workers exceed those of...

This paper examines the determinants of the number and quality of outside applicants for federal job openings using a variety of time-series, cross-sectional and panel data sets. The main finding is that the application rate for government jobs increases as the ratio of federal to private sector...

The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially around 1970 and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women soared just after 1972. We explore the relationship between these two changes and how each was shaped by the...

We present the first estimates of the returns to years of schooling before 1940 using a large sample of men and women, employed in a variety of sectors and occupations, from the Iowa State Census of 1915. We find that the returns to a year of high school, and to a year of college, were...

Economic inequality is higher today than it has been since 1939, as measured by both the wage structure and wealth inequality. But the comparison between 1939 and 1999 is largely made out of necessity; the 1940 U.S. population census was the first to inquire of wage and salary income and...

How does one's place of residence affect individual behavior and long-run outcomes? Understanding neighborhood and place effects has been a leading question for social scientists during the past half-century. Recent empirical studies using experimental and quasi-experimental research designs...

In the most widely analyzed type of efficiency wage model of involuntary unemployment, firms pay wages in excess of market clearing to give workers an incentive not to shirk. Such payments in excess of market clearing and the resultant equilibrium unemployment act as a worker discipline device....