Some workers bargain with prospective employers before accepting a job. Others could
bargain, but find it undesirable, because their right to bargain has induced a sufficiently
favorable offer, which they accept. Yet others perceive that they cannot bargain over
pay; they regard the posted wage as a take-it-or-leave-it opportunity. Theories of wage
formation point to substantial differences in labor-market equilibrium between bargained
and posted wages. The fraction of workers hired away from existing jobs is another key
determinant of equilibrium, because a worker with an existing job has a better outside
option in bargaining than does an unemployed worker. Our survey measures the
incidences of wage posting, bargaining, and on-the-job search. We find that about a
third of workers had precise information about pay when they first met with their
employers, a sign of wage posting. We find that another third bargained over pay before
accepting their current jobs. And about 40 percent of workers could have remained on
their earlier jobs at the time they accepted their current jobs.

This paper examines the relationship between price growth and
skill intensity across 150 manufacturing industries between 1989
and 1995. There are two main findings. First, wage growth and
intermediate goods price increases are passed through to final
product prices roughly in proportion to their factor shares.
Second, product prices have grown relatively less in sectors that
more intensively utilize less-skilled labor. The latter finding
is consistent with the Stolper-Samuelson theory of expanded trade
with countries that are abundant in less-skilled workers, as well
as with some models of technological change.

This monograph proposes a new approach for measuring features of society’s subjective
well-being, based on time allocation and affective experience. We call this approach
National Time Accounting (NTA). National Time Accounting is a set of methods for
measuring, comparing and analyzing how people spend and experience their time --
across countries, over historical time, or between groups of people within a country at a
given time. The approach is based on evaluated time use, or the flow of emotional
experience during daily activities. After reviewing evidence on the validity of subjective
well-being measures, we present and evaluate diary-based survey techniques designed to
measure individuals’ emotional experiences and time use. We illustrate NTA with: (1) a
new cross-sectional survey on time use and emotional experience for a representative
sample of 4,000 Americans; (2) historical data on the amount of time devoted to various
activities in the United States since 1965; and (3) a comparison of time use and wellbeing
in the United States and France. In our applications, we focus mainly on the Uindex,
a measure of the percentage of time that people spend in an unpleasant state,
defined as an instance in which the most intense emotion is a negative one. The U-index
helps to overcome some of the limitations of interpersonal comparisons of subjective
well-being. National Time Accounting strikes us as a fertile area for future research
because of advances in subjective measurement and because time use data are now
regularly collected in many countries.

This paper presents an overview and interpretation of the literature relating school quality to
students‘ subsequent labor market success. We begin with a simple theoretical model that
describes the determination of schooling and earnings with varying school quality. A key insight
of the model is that changes in school quality may affect the characteristics of individuals who
choose each level of schooling, imparting a potential selection bias to comparisons of earnings
conditional on education. We then summarize the literature that relates school resources to
students’ earnings and educational attainment. A variety of evidence suggests that students who
were educated in schools with more resources tend to earn more and have higher schooling. We
also discuss two important issues in the literature: the tradeoffs involved in using school-level
versus more aggregated (district or state-level) quality measures; and the evidence on school
quality effects for African Americans educated in the segregated school systems of the South.

We use a demand/supply framework to analyze 1) the decline in union
membership since 1977 in the United States and 2) the difference in
unionization rates between the United States and Canada. We extend earlier
work on these problems by analyzing new data for 1991 from the General Social
Survey and for 1992 from our own household survey on worker preferences for
union representation. When combined with earlier data for 1977 from the
Quality of Employment Survey and for 1984 from a survey conducted for the
AFl-CIO, we are able to decompose changes in unionization into changes in
demand and changes in supply. We also analyze data for 1990 from a survey
conducted for the Canadian Federation of Labor on the preferences of Canadian
workers for union representation.
We find that virtually all of the decline in union membership in the
United States between 1977 and 1991 is due to a decline in worker demand for
union representation. There was almost no change over this period in the
relative supply of union jobs. Additionally, very little of the decline in
unionization in the U.S. can be accounted for by structural shifts in the
composition of the labor force. Next, we find that all of the higher
unionization rate in the U.S. public sector in 1984 can be accounted for by
higher demand for unionization and that there is actually more frustrated
demand for union representation in the public sector. Finally, we
tentatively conclude that the difference in unionization rates between the
U.S. and Canada is accounted for roughly in equal measure by differences in
demand and in supply.

Abstract: To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, we conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel in late 2015. The findings point to a significant rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements – defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers – rose from 10.7 percent in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015. The percentage of workers hired out through contract companies showed the largest rise, increasing from 1.4 percent in 2005 to 3.1 percent in 2015. Workers who provide services through online intermediaries, such as Uber or Task Rabbit, accounted for 0.5 percent of all workers in 2015. About twice as many workers selling goods or services directly to customers reported finding customers through offline intermediaries than through online intermediaries.

This paper estimates the effects of school quality -- measured by the
pupil-teacher ratio, the average term length, and the relative pay of
teachers -- on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and
1949. Using earnings data from the 1980 Census, we find that men who were
educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to
additional years of schooling, holding constant their current state of
residence, their state of birth, the average return to education in the
region where they currently reside, and other factors. A decrease in the
pupil-teacher ratio from 30 to 25, for example, is associated with a 0.4
percentage point increase in the rate of return to education. The estimated
relationship between the return to education and measures of school quality
is similar for blacks and whites. Since improvements in school quality for
black students were mainly driven by political and judicial pressures, we
argue that the evidence for blacks reinforces a causal interpretation of the
link between school quality and earnings. We also find that returns to
schooling are higher for students educated in states with a higher fraction
of female teachers, and in states with higher average teacher education.
Holding constant school quality measures, however, we find no evidence that
parental income or education affects state-level rates of return.

This paper evaluates evidence on the effectiveness of elementary and secondary schooling in the
U.S. Contrary to popular perception, most standardized test scores have not declined in the last
quarter century, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data show a
modest upward trend. In addition, school spending per pupil and NAEP scores exhibit a positive
correlation in the aggregate data. A review of the Tennessee Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio
(STAR) experiment indicates that students who were randomly assigned to smaller classes
performed better on standardized tests. Both the aggregate NAEP data and the STAR experiment
suggest that a 7 student reduction in class size is associated with a 5 to 8 percentile point increase
in test scores, on average. Evidence also suggests that students from low socioeconomic status
families learn just as much during the school year as students from high socioeconomic status
families, but students from low socioeconomic status families fall behind during the summer
months. Finally, the earnings of high school graduates relative to high school dropouts increased
substantially between 1979 and 1996, suggesting that high schools provide skills that are valued
by the labor market.

We re-examine the evidence presented by Neumark and Wascher (1992) on
the employment effect of the minimum wage. We find three critical flaws in
their analysis. First, the school enrollment variable that plays a pivotal
role in their specifications is derived on the false assumption that
teenagers either work or attend school. Measurement error biases
contaminate all the empirical estimates that use this enrollment variable.
Second, Neumark and Wascher measure the effect of the minimum wage by a
coverage-weighted relative minimum wage index. This variable is negatively
correlated with average teenage wages. Taken literally, their results show
that a rise in the coverage-weighted relative minimum wage lowers teenage
wages. Examining the direct effects of state-specific minimum wages, we
find that increases in state minimum wages raise average teenage wages but
have essentially no employment effects.
Finally, a careful analysis of Neumark and Wascher's data shows that
subminimum wage provisions are rarely used. This casts doubt on their
claim that subminimum provisions blunt any disemployment effect of the
minimum wage.
Neumark and Wascher contend that other minimum wage studies are biased
by failing to control for school enrollment, and by failing to consider the
lagged effects of minimum wages. We re-analyze the experiences of
individual states following the April 1990 increase in the Federal minimum
wage, allowing for a full year lag in the effect of the law and controlling
for changes in (properly measured) enrollment rates. Contrary to their
claims, allowing for lagged effects and controlling for enrollment status
actually strengthens the conclusion that the 1990 increase in the Federal
minimum had no adverse employment effect.