Our paper seeks to provide an explanation for why the prevalence of COLA provisions and their characteristics vary widely across U.S. industries. We develop models of optimal risk sharing between a firm and union that allows us to investigate the determinants of a number of characteristics of...

Our paper seeks to provide an explanation for why the prevalence of COLA provisions and their characteristics vary widely across U.S. industries. We develop models of optimal risk sharing between a firm and union that allows us to investigate the determinants of a number of characteristics of...

This paper focuses on a few directions in which protective labor legislation might be expanded in the United States over the next decade and the implications of expansion in each area for labor markets. Specifically, it addresses the areas of hours of work, unjust dismissal, comparable worth,...

This paper provides an analysis and summary of the effects of the Workers' Compensation (WC) system on wages and work injury experience. It stresses how lessons learned from other forms of social insurance can be applied to research on WC. I begin with a brief overview of the characteristics of...

This paper addresses three academic labor market issues; the declining salaries of faculty employed at public colleges and universities relative to their private institution counterparts, the growing dispersion of average faculty salaries across academic institutions within both the public and...

This paper presents a survey of the small, but growing, empirical literature by economists on the consequences of comparable worth. It discusses in turn studies of comparable worth's effects (or potential effects) on the male/female earnings gap, on female employment, on female labor supply and...