This paper tests a central implication of the theory of equalizing differences, that workers sort into
jobs with different attributes based on their preferences for those attributes. We present evidence
from four new time-use data sets for the United States and France on whether workers who are more
gregarious, as revealed by their behavior when they are not working, tend to be employed in jobs
that involve more social interactions. In each data set we find a significant and sizable relationship
between the tendency to interact with others off the job and while working. People’s descriptions of
their jobs and their personalities also accord reasonably well with their time use on and off the job.
Furthermore, workers in occupations that require social interactions according to the O’Net
Dictionary of Occupational Titles tend to spend more of their non-working time with friends.
Lastly, we find that workers report substantially higher levels of job satisfaction and net affect while
at work if their jobs entail frequent interactions with coworkers and other desirable working
conditions.

This paper compares self-reported changes in families’ financial status to actual changes based on annual
time-series data calculated from the PSID. The results indicate that the Consumer Price Index does a
reasonably accurate job reconciling self-reported changes in financial status with measured changes in real
income. Earlier work by Nordhaus (I998) reached a different conclusion because it did not account for
changes in the shape of the income distribution.

This paper uses longitudinal CPS 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 that higher workers’
compensation benefits are associated with greater participation in the
workers’ compensation program, after allowing for worker characteristics,
state dummy variables and other aspects of the workers’ compensation law.
Moreover, this result holds for both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing
workers. Workers’ compensation benefits, however, have an insignificant
effect on program participation for the sample of women. Overall, a 10%
increase in benefits is associated with a 7.1% increase in program
participation. In addition, the results show that the waiting period that is
required before benefit payments begin has a substantial negative effect on
participation in the workers’ compensation program. Finally, with the
exception of unemployment insurance, there is little evidence that workers are
comparatively more likely to participate in other social insurance programs
while they are collecting workers’ compensation benefits.

This paper summarizes trends in labor market policy since the 1960s, trends in research in labor
economics since the 1960s, and the intersection between the two. Labor policy has moved strongly
in the direction of regulating many more aspects of the labor market since the 1960s. Legislation
that expanded the scale and scope of labor market regulation includes the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Coal Mine
Safety and Health Act, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, and the Family and
Medical Leave Act. The number of Department of Labor (DOL) employees in regulatory agencies
increased by almost 300 percent between 1969 and 1979. The number of employees involved in
regulation decreased since 1979, despite continued expansion of labor market regulations, raising
questions about the extent of enforcement of many labor standards. Another policy shift is that the
job training budget has declined considerably since the late 1970s.
To gauge trends in labor economics research, the number of articles published on various topics is
presented. Results of a survey of labor economists’ views about several key parameters are also
analyzed. Although widespread disagreement exists, the median labor economist expects fairly
modest labor supply elasticities, and fairly modest effects of job training on participants’ earnings.
Labor-related social experiments are becoming more prevalent in part because of DOL’s support,
and labor economists report that they put much stock in such experiments. A case study suggests
that research in labor economics has contributed to some of the recent changes in the allocation of
the federal job training budget. Finally, hypotheses for the shifts in labor policy since the 1960s are
offered.

Data: Tables 3.8 & 3.9

In this paper we study the role of covenants in franchise contracts that restrict the recruitment and hiring of employees from other units within the same franchise chain in suppressing competition for workers. Based on an analysis of 2016 Franchise Disclosure Documents, we find that "no- poaching of workers agreements" are included in a surprising 58 percent of major franchisors' contracts, including McDonald's, Burger King, Jiffy Lube and H&R Block. The implications of these no-poaching agreements for models of oligopsony are also discussed. No-poaching agreements are more common for franchises in low-wage and high-turnover industries.

This paper examines the effect of technological change and other factors on the relative demand
for workers with different education levels and on the recent growth of U.S. educational wage
differentials. A simple supply-demand framework is used to interpret changes in the relative quantities,
wages, and wage bill shares of workers by education in the aggregate U.S. labor market in each decade
since 1940 and over the 1990 to 1995 period. The results suggest that the relative demand for college
graduates grew more rapidly on average during the past twenty-five years (1970-95) than during the
previous three decades (1940-70). The increased rate of growth of relative demand for college graduates
beginning in the 1970s did not lead to an increase in the college/high school wage differential until the
1980s because the growth in the supply of college graduates increased even more sharply in the 1970s
before returning to historical levels in the 1980s. The acceleration in demand shifts for more-skilled
workers in the 1970s and 1980s relative to the 1960s is entirely accounted for by an increase in within-
industry changes in skill utilization rather than between-industry employment shifts. Industries with large
increases in the rate of skill upgrading in the 1970s and 1980s versus the 1960s are those with greater
growth in employee computer usage, more computer capital per worker, and larger shares of computer
investment as a share of total investment. The results suggest that the spread of computer technology
may "explain" as much as 30 to 50 percent of the increase in the rate of growth of the relative demand
for more-skilled workers since 1970.

We estimate the monetary return to attending a highly selective college using the College and Beyond (C&B) Survey linked to Detailed Earnings Records from the Social Security Administration (SSA). This paper extends earlier work by Dale and Krueger (2002) that examined the relationship between the college that students attended in 1976 and the earnings they self-reported reported in 1995 on the C&B follow-up survey. In this analysis, we use administrative earnings data to estimate the return to various measures of college selectivity for a more recent cohort of students: those who entered college in 1989. We also estimate the return to college selectivity for the 1976 cohort of students, but over a longer time horizon (from 1983 through 2007) using administrative data.
We find that the return to college selectivity is sizeable for both cohorts in regression models that control for variables commonly observed by researchers, such as student high school GPA and SAT scores. However, when we adjust for unobserved student ability by controlling for the average SAT score of the colleges that students applied to, our estimates of the return to college selectivity fall substantially and are generally indistinguishable from zero. There were notable exceptions for certain subgroups. For black and Hispanic students and for students who come from less-educated families (in terms of their parents’ education), the estimates of the return to college selectivity remain large, even in models that adjust for unobserved student characteristics.

This paper presents findings from a survey of 6,025 unemployed workers who were interviewed every week for up to 24 weeks in the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010. Our main findings are: (1) the amount of time devoted to job search declines sharply over the spell of unemployment; (2) the self-reported reservation wage predicts whether a job offer is accepted or rejected; (3) the reservation wage is remarkably stable over the course of unemployment for most workers, with the notable exception of workers who are over age 50 and those who had nontrivial savings at the start of the study; (4) many workers who seek full-time work will accept a part-time job that offers a wage below their reservation wage; and (5) the amount of time devoted to job search and the reservation wage help predict early exits from Unemployment Insurance (UI).