Knowledge that Transforms

This paper presents a model that generates procyclical search, procyclical labor productivity, and countercyclical unemployment broadly consistent with the actual behavior of these time series. Concretely, the model introduces an aggregate shock into the sectoral demand-shift model of the type analyzed by Lucas and Prescott. If aggregate shocks operate multiplicatively and are autocorrelated, the payoff to unemployed search can be procyclical to an extent large enough to offset the productive losses associated with search that also are procyclical.

Full-information maximum likelihood is used to estimate union wage, hours, and earnings markups. Construction union wage markups are positive (58.2% at the sample means). Since union hours markups are negative (-4.0%) for most demographic groups, union earnings markups (51.1%) are smaller than the wage markups. All exogenous variables are allowed to interact with the endogenous union dummy variable, which allows us to test whether markups vary across demographic groups, whether increased local unionization has a positive spillover effect in the nonunion sector, and whether increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in the two sectors.

Estimates of the effect of strikes on the production, price, and purchases of North American automobiles are provided over the period 1966-79. The estimates are based on a model that reflects the decisions of both consumers and producers and that captures important intertemporal adjustments before, during, and after the strike to allow for inventory buildup in anticipation of the strike as well as inventory depletion during the strike and replacement afterward. The results generally indicated that both consumers and producers rationally responded to the expected and the actual event of the strike through a variety of related intertemporal adjustments; and, while the initial effects are in some instances quite pronounced, the long-run effects are usually minimal.

Labor market intermediaries play an important role in turnover in many labor markets. This paper analyzes one class of such intermediaries, namely, search firms. We first model the hiring decision of the firm in both succession and replacement planning. We show that employers will, in equilibrium, use search firms to find new hires even where the search firms have no technological advantage in search. This can be interpreted as being due to the search firms' ability to diversify away sampling risk.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a two-part compensation system composed of a rigid base salary and a flexible bonus can reduce turnover. It is shown that bonus pay is an effective retention device if it is risk reducing and is correlated with outside contract offers. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a model of bonus payments is tested with U.S. instead of Japanese data. The empirical results are suggestive of the conditions that give bonuses an important, even dominant, role in worker retention.

In the market for lawyers, observable data on promotion and turnover can be explained by reference to the idea that there is positive assortative mating of lawyers and legal claims. There is a scale-of-resources effect, under which it is optimal to assign larger claims to lawyers of higher quality. In a law firm the institution of "tenure" performs a sorting function. Lawyers found to be of high quality are given tenured positions, and the rest leave. The value of legal claims handled by a firm determines its sorting problem, which in turn determines its promotion ladder and turnover.

The aggregate probability of ending a career interruption that begins at childbirth is shown to diminish rapidly with the length of the interruption. The empirical models estimated suggest that the decline can be explained by a combination of structural duration dependence, unobserved heterogeneity, and differences in observed characteristics. The probability of returning to employment for a group of women with identical observed characteristics is found to have an L-shaped distribution for the majority of the sample, suggesting that many women have a very low probability of returning.

According to Lazear, workers and firms enter into long-term implicit contracts that discourage shirking and malfeasance by shifting compensation to the end of the contract. Such "delayed payment" contracts are less likely to occur in jobs in which it is comparatively simple to monitor worker effort. This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles to test that hypothesis. In particular, it tests whether jobs that involve repetitive tasks tend to be characterized by an absence of pensions, mandatory retirement, long job tenures, and high wages for older workers.

The efficiency wage model (EWM) has been advanced as an explanation for large and persistent wage differentials. The shirking version of the EWM assumes a trade-off between self-supervision and external supervision. The turnover version assumes turnover is costly to the firm. Variation across firms in the cost of monitoring/shirking or turnover then is hypothesized to account for wage variations across firms for homogeneous workers. Using a new sample of firm data, this paper presents empirical evidence of the trade-off of wage premiums for supervisory intensity and turnover. Little evidence is found to support either version of the EWM.

Recent developments in the theory of strategic bargaining demonstrate how informational asymmetries can lead to prolonged and costly bargaining. These models can be applied to contract negotiations, yielding an economic theory of strikes. To date, however, few empirical tests of these models have been carried out. In this paper, a set of predictions concerning the incidence and unconditional duration of strikes is derived from a simple bargaining model in which the union is uncertain about the firm's future profitability. These predictions are then tested on a micro data set of major U.S. contract negotiations that took place from 1973 to 1977.