Knowledge that Transforms

This article studies the role of the family in determining the skill composition and labor market experiences of immigrants in the United States. Our theoretical framework, based on the assumption that family migration decisions maximize household income, shows that the family attenuates the selection characterizing the skills of the immigrant population. The empirical analysis uses the 1970 and 1980 Public Use Samples of the U.S. census and reveals that an immigrant's skills and labor market performance are greatly influenced by the composition of the household at the time of migration and by his placement in the immigration chain.

This article integrates human capital theory with a theory of information accumulation and labor mobility. A model is constructed for the determination of human capital accumulation, job matching, and mobility that accounts for heterogeneity on both sides of the labor market. The model provides explanations for observable relationships between earnings, mobility, age, and job tenure. It also provides comparative static results of how the labor market equilibrium is affected by changes in the economic environment.

This article relaxes the assumption of separability of preferences over time that, although implausible, is usually maintained in life-cycle labor-supply models. An empirically tractable rational habits model is specified and estimated on the basis of a 10-year sample of men from the Michigan Panel of Income Dynamics. The effect of past hours of work in determining current hours decisions is found to be very important and well determined, having allowed for permanent individual differences and for time effects.

This article examines the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on the allocation of labor across industries. An overlooked aspect of UI is the effect of imperfect experience rating on hiring. Firms in more stable industries generally pay more into the UI system than their workers ever receive in benefits, thus subsidizing more volatile industries. The results indicate that industry employment shares are significantly affected by UI and that there is a net shift of resources from the service industry to the construction industry. The estimates also imply that layoff unemployment is increased by about 5% because of UI-induced employment shifts.

This article examines the reasons for the observed discrepancy between workers' actual and required levels of schooling and the resulting differences in returns to schooling. "Overeducated" workers are found to be younger and to have lower amounts of on-the-job training than workers with the required level of schooling. They also have higher rates of firm and occupational mobility, characterized by movement of higher-level occupations. The findings suggest that overeducation can be explained by the trade-off between schooling and other components of human capital and by the mobility patterns of overeducated workers. Copyright 1991 by University of Chicago Press.

Previous structural models of job search behavior have been based upon the reservation wage property. This article provides estimates of a more general search model that nests models with the reservation wage property. The estimates lead to rejection of the reservation wage property. The model includes hours of work in the utility function, but other nonwage job characteristics can be included as well. An experiment based on the estimated parameters indicates that a significant proportion of job offers would be mistakenly predicted to be accepted or rejected under the restrictions implied by the reservation wage property.

Empirical models of local government unionization reveal substantial reductions in union membership due to right-to-work laws. Free riders, rather than underlying antiunion sentiments, are probably responsible because the unionization models include better measures of sentiments than right-to-work laws. Furthermore, these laws reduce the probability that bargaining unions form by more than they reduce the probability that nonbargaining associations form in three of five local government functions. These results also confirm the importance of free riders because union security clauses that prohibit free riders in states without right-to-work laws exist only in collective-bargaining contracts.

Time (hourly payoffs) and salary (the payoff does not vary with hours) account for the bulk of the payoffs on labor contracts. This article argues that the choice between time and salary centers on the presence (time) or absence (salary) of information about flows of effort or output per unit time. Without information about the flow of hourly effort or output, payoffs for time give the worker an incentive to supply hours without effort. Time can then become uninformative about output. In this situation, if the contract includes a fixed payoff, it is likely to be a salary rather than a payoff for time.

This article examines the effects of cocaine and marijuana use on the wages of young adults. The endogeneity of drug use in a wage equation is considered, and a two-stage least squares procedure is implemented. The results suggest that increased use of marijuana or cocaine is associated with higher wages. The positive relationship between drug use and the wage does not diminish with age. I also investigate whether systematic differences in the return to measures of human capital investments can explain the positive relationship between drug use and wages.

The free market may not lead to the efficient level of just-cause employment protection if workers are heterogeneous. Any firm that switches to just cause will attract a disproportionate share of workers that provide low effort yet are difficult to dismiss with cause. Thus, there is an externality concerning each firm's just-cause policy. If all firms had just-cause policies, then the efficiency gains of just cause might outweigh the burden of the undesirable workers. Nevertheless, no single firm may find it in its interest to switch to just cause. It is possible for laws that require just cause to increase efficiency.