Henry Farber

First name
Henry
Last name
Farber
Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of nearly a dozen new papers presented at the Sundance Conference on Monopsony in Labor Markets held in October 2018.  These papers, to be published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Resources, study various aspects of monopsony and failures of competition in labor markets. It also reports on the new developments in public policies associated with widespread concerns about labor market competition and efforts to ameliorate competitive failures. The conference papers range from studies of the labor supply elasticity individual firms face to studies of local labor market concentration to studies of explicit covenants suppressing labor market competition. New policies range from private and public antitrust litigation to concerns about the effect of mergers and inter-firm agreements on labor market competition. We provide a detailed discussion of the mechanics of the Silicon Valley High Tech Worker conspiracy to suppress competition based on Court documents in the case. Non-compete agreements, which are not enforceable in three states already, have also come under scrutiny.  

Year of Publication
2021
Number
652
Date Published
10/2021
Ashenfelter, O., Card, D., Farber, H., & Ransom, M. R. (2021). Monopsony in the Labor Market New Empirical Results and New Public Policies. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp016m311s43b (Original work published October 2021)
Working Papers
Author
Year of Publication
1977
Number
99
Date Published
08/1977
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
Journal of Political Economy, October, 1978
Farber, H. (1977). Individual Preferences and Union Wage Determination: The Case of the United Mine Workers. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01rv042t055 (Original work published August 1977)
Working Papers
Abstract

After documenting the long decline in private sector unionism over the last 50 years, we examine data on NLRB representation elections to determine if changes in the administration of the NLRA during the 1980s reduced the level
of organizing activity and success. While organizing activity sharply declined in
1981 (just before President Reagan's showdown with the air traffic controllers'
union, PATCO), we find little evidence that the changes in the administration of the NLRA later in the decade adversely affected the level of union organizing activity. We then present an accounting framework that decomposes the sharp
decline in the private-sector union membership rate into components due to 1) differential growth rates in employment between the union and nonunion sectors and 2) changes in the union new organization rate (through NLRB-supervised
representation elections). We find that most of the decline in the union membership rate is due to differential employment growth rates and that changes in union organizing activity had relatively little effect. Given that the differential employment growth rates are due largely to broader market and regulatory
forces, we conclude that the prospects are dim for a reversal of the downward
spiral of labor unions based on increased organizing activity.

Year of Publication
2000
Number
437
Date Published
04/2000
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
8176
Western, B., & Farber, H. (2000). Round Up The Usual Suspects: The Decline of Unions in The Private Sector, 1973-1998. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01pv63g025h (Original work published April 2000)
Working Papers
Abstract

We use a resume audit study to better understand the role of employment and unemployment histories in affecting callbacks to job applications. We focus on how the effect of career history varies by age, partly in an attempt to reconcile disparate findings in prior studies. While we cannot reconcile earlier findings on the effect of unemployment duration, the findings solidify an emerging consensus on the role of age and employment on callback. First, among applicants across a broad age range, we find that applicants with 52 weeks of unemployment have a lower callback rate than do applicants with shorter unemployment spells. However, regardless of an applicant's age, there is no relationship between spell length and callback among applicants with shorter spells. Second, we find a hump-shaped relationship between age and callback, with both younger and older applicants having a lower probability of callback relative to prime-aged applicants. Finally, we find that those applicants who are employed at the time of application have a lower callback rate than do unemployed applicants, regardless of whether the interim job is of lower or comparable quality relative to the
applied-for job. This may reflect a perception among employers that it is harder or more expensive to attract an applicant who is currently employed.

Year of Publication
2018
Number
619
Date Published
05/2018
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
10511
Farber, H., Silverman, D., Von Wachter, T., & Herbst, C. (2018). Whom Do Employers Want? The Role of Recent Employment and Unemployment Status and Age. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01mp48sg464 (Original work published May 2018)
Working Papers
Author
Abstract

I examine the extent to which workers who lose jobs find work in alterna-
tive employment arrangements such as temporary work, part-time work, and independent
contracting rather than as conventional full-time “regular” employees. The analysis is
based on data from two sources. First, I use matched data from the Displaced Worker
Supplement (DWS) to the February 1994 Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Con-
tingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements Supplement (CAEAS) to the February
1995 DWS. Second, I use data from the seven DWS’s conducted between 1984 and 1996.
The results are clear. Using the matched DWS-CAEAS, I find that job losers are signif-
icantly more likely than non-losers to be in temporary jobs (including on-call work and
contract work). There is also some evidence from the matched data that the likelihood
of temporary employment falls with time since job loss while the likelihood of “regular”
employment increases with time since job loss. Using the combined DWS data. where
unfortunately I cannot identify workers in temporary jobs, I find that job losers are less
likely than non-losers to be either in regular jobs or self-employed subsequent to job loss.
But job losers are more likely than non-losers to be employed part-time subsequent to job
loss. The time-series pattern in the DWS data shows that the part-time alternative to
regular employment for job losers was less important in the tight labor market of the late
1980’s than in the looser labor markets of the early 1980’s and early 1990’s. There is also
evidence that the likelihood of part-time employment falls with time since job loss while
the likelihood of “regular” employment increases with time since job loss. Thus, it appears
that temporary and part-time jobs are taken by workers subsequent to job loss, but these
alternative employment arrangements are often part of a transitional process leading to
regular full-time permanent employment.

Year of Publication
1997
Number
391
Date Published
10/1997
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
Journal of Labor Economics, 1999, vol.17, no.4, pt.2
Farber, H. (1997). Alternative Employment Arrangements as a Response to Job Loss. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01vm40xr575 (Original work published October 1997)
Working Papers
Author
Abstract

Long-term employment relationships have long been an important feature of
the labor market in the United States. However, increased international competition
and the wave of corporate downsizing in the 1990s raised concerns that
long-term employment relationships in the United States were disappearing. I
present evidence in this study, based on data from the Current Population Survey
(CPS) from 1973-2006, that long-term employment relationships have, in fact,
become much less common for men in the private sector. Mirroring this decline
in tenure and long-term employment relationships, there has been an increase
in “churning” (defined as the proportion of workers in jobs with less than one
year of tenure) for males in the private sector as they enter their thirties and
later. In contrast, women have seen no systematic change in job durations or
the incidence of long-term employment relationships in the private sector. There
has been an increase in job durations and the incidence of long-term employment
relationships in the public sector, with the increase more pronounced for women.
I conclude that 1) the structure of jobs in the private sector has moved away
from long-term relationships, 2) this decline has been offset for females by their
increased attachment to the labor force, and 3) the public sector has been less
susceptible to the competitive forces that are likely causing the changes in the
private sector. It seems clear that more recent cohorts of workers are less likely
than their parents to have a career characterized by a “life-time” job with a single
employer.

Year of Publication
2008
Number
530
Date Published
07/2008
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
8179
Farber, H. (2008). Employment Insecurity: The Decline in Worker-Firm Attachment in the United States. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp019k41zd50q (Original work published July 2008)
Working Papers
Author
Abstract

Job tenure and the incidence of long-term employment have declined sharply in the United
States However, rates of job loss as measured by the Displaced Workers Survey (DWS), while
cyclical, have not shown a trend increase that would account for the decline in job tenure
and long-term employment. This presents a puzzle that has several potential solutions. One
is that, while overall rates of job loss have not increased, rates of job loss for high-tenure
workers have increased relative to those for lower-tenure workers. Another is that there has
been an increase in rates of job change that is not captured in the limited questions asked
in the DWS. Some of this seemingly voluntary job change (e.g., the taking of an o ered
buy-out) may re
ect the kind of worker displacement that the DWS was meant to capture
but is not reported as such by workers.
In this study, I address these issues by 1) documenting the decline in job tenure and long-
term employment using data from various supplements to the Current Population Survey
(CPS) from 1973-2008, 2) documenting the lack of secular change in rates of job loss using
data from the DWS from 1984-2008, and 3) exploring the extent to which the observed
patterns result from a relative increase in rates of job loss among high-tenure workers. I
nd that the decline in job tenure and long-term employment is restricted to the private
sector and that there has been some increase in job tenure and long-term employment in
the public sector. I nd no secular changes in relative rates of job loss in either sector that
could account for these trends. Reconciliation of the trends in the tenure and displacement
data must lie with a failure to identify all relevant displacement in the DWS.

Year of Publication
2007
Number
520
Date Published
09/2007
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
8329
Farber, H. (2007). Job Loss and the Decline in Job Security in the United States. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01xk81jk38d (Original work published September 2007)
Working Papers
Abstract

It is well-documented that, since at least the early twentieth century, U.S. income inequality has varied inversely with union density. But moving beyond this aggregate relationship has proven difficult, in part because of the absence of micro-level data on union membership prior to 1973. We develop a new source of micro-data on union membership, opinion polls primarily from Gallup (N ≈ 980,000), to look at the effects
of unions on inequality from 1936 to the present. First, we present a new time series of household union membership from this period. Second, we use these data to show that, throughout this period, union density is inversely correlated with the relative skill of union members. When density was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, union members were relatively less-skilled, whereas today and in the pre-World War II period,
union members are equally skilled as non-members. Third, we estimate union household income premiums over this same period, finding that despite large changes in union density and selection, the premium holds steady, at roughly 15-20 log points, over the past eighty years. Finally, we present a number of direct results that, across a variety of identifying assumptions, suggest unions have had a significant, equalizing effect on
the income distribution over our long sample period.

Year of Publication
2018
Number
620
Date Published
05/2018
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
10516
Naidu, S., Farber, H., Kuziemko, I., & Herbst, D. (2018). Unions and Inequality Over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01gx41mm54w (Original work published May 2018)
Working Papers
Abstract

We report preliminary results of an analysis of the reaction of stock prices to
announcements of reductions in force (RIFs) using a large sample of such announcements
during the 1970-1997 period collected from the Wall Street Journal index. We find some
evidence that the stock market reaction to the announcement of RIFs has become less
negative over this period. While a complete understanding of the underlying causes of
this finding awaits further research, one possible interpretation is that, over the last three
decades, RIF s designed to improve efiiciency have become more common relative to RIFs
designed to cope with reductions in product demand.

Year of Publication
1999
Number
414
Date Published
01/1999
Publication Language
eng
Citation Key
7976
Hallock, K., & Farber, H. (1999). Changing Stock Market Response to Announcement of Job Loss: Evidence from 1970-1997. Retrieved from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01j6731377t (Original work published January 1999)
Working Papers