Proponents claim that a statutory overtime premium, by raising the relative cost of overtime, may encourage firms to substitute employment for overtime hours. I argue that there will be no real effects if firms reduce straight-time wages so as to offer the same package of weekly compensation and hours of work that was acceptable initially. Empirical analysis suggests that wage differentials do arise to mitigate the purely demand-driven effects predicted by previous models, but these differentials are not large enough to neutralize overtime pay regulation completely.

This article analyzes the effect of labor unions on overtime compensation and overtime hours. Estimates from May 1985 Current Population Survey data indicate that unionization increases the prevalence of premium pay for overtime and reduces the incidence and extent of overtime hours. Along with the finding of previous research that unionized workers are more susceptible to temporary layoffs, these results are consistent with a model in which unions use overtime pay to stabilize working hours and expand membership.

Proponents claim that a statutory overtime premium, by raising the relative cost of overtime, may encourage firms to substitute employment for overtime hours. The author argues that there will be no real effects if firms reduce straight-time wages so as to offer the same package of weekly compensation and hours of work that was acceptable initially. Empirical analysis suggests that wage differentials do arise to mitigate the purely demand-driven effects predicted by previous models, but these differentials are not large enough to neutralize overtime pay regulation completely.

Using Current Population Survey data from November 1979 and 1989, I find that Mexican Americans earn low wages primarily because they possess less human capital than other workers, not because they receive smaller labor market rewards for their skills. Among third‐and higher‐generation men in 1989, Mexicans averaged 21 percent lower wages than non‐Hispanic whites, which is roughly similar to the wage deficit for blacks. For Mexicans, more than three‐quarters of the wage gap is attributable to their relative youth, English language deficiencies, and especially their lower educational attainment. By contrast, these variables explain less than a third of the black‐white wage gap.

We investigate whether selective intermarriage and endogenous ethnic identification interact to hide some of the intergenerational progress achieved by the Mexican-origin population in the United States. In part, we do this by comparing an “objective” indicator of Mexican descent (based on the countries of birth of the respondent and his parents and grandparents) with the standard “subjective” measure of Mexican self-identification (based on the respondent’s answer to the Hispanic-origin question). For third-generation Mexican American youth, we show that ethnic attrition is substantial and could produce significant downward bias in standard measures of attainment that rely on ethnic self-identification.

California's longstanding requirement that most women receive time-and-a-half pay for workhours beyond eight in one day was extended to men in 1980. Analyzing Current Population Survey data from 1973, 1985, and 1991, we find that this overtime penalty substantially reduced the amount of daily overtime worked by California men relative to men in other states. Comparisons that use women to control for California-specific shocks show even stronger effects. The estimates imply a price elasticity of demand for overtime hours of at least 20.5.

Using microdata from the 2000 Census, we analyze how the employment rates of foreign-born and US-born men vary with education. After a period of adjustment during the first few years upon arrival, the overall employment rate of immigrant men quickly approaches that of US natives. Among those with the lowest education levels, immigrants exhibit substantially higher rates of employment than comparable natives. This pattern is consistent with a simple theoretical model of migrant selectivity that jointly considers a potential migrant's decisions regarding where to locate and whether to work.

In tracking the later-generation descendants of immigrants, measurement biases can arise from “ethnic attrition” (e.g., US-born individuals who do not self-identify as Mexican despite having ancestors who immigrated from Mexico). We present evidence that such ethnic attrition is sizeable and selective for the third-generation populations of key Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups. In addition, our results suggest that ethnic attrition generates biases that vary across national origin groups in direction as well as magnitude, and that correcting for these biases will raise the socioeconomic standing of the US-born descendants of most Hispanic immigrants relative to their Asian counterparts.

This paper investigates if young internal migrants in the United States experience economic assimilation as they adapt to their new residential location. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors examine how the hourly earnings of interstate migrants are affected by the number of years they have spent in their destination state. Their study indicates that internal migrants initially earn less than natives but that this wage differential disappears within a few years. Moreover, the initial wage disadvantage of internal migrants depends upon the distance moved and economic conditions in the destination labor market.

Numerous studies find that U.S.-born Hispanics differ significantly from non-Hispanic whites on important measures of human capital, including health. Nevertheless, almost all studies rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification to identify immigrants' U.S.-born descendants. This can lead to bias due to “ethnic attrition,” which occurs whenever a U.S.-born descendant of a Hispanic immigrant fails to self-identify as Hispanic. This paper shows that Mexican American ethnic attritors are generally more likely to display health outcomes closer to those of non-Hispanic whites. This biases conventional estimates of Mexican American health away from suggesting patterns of assimilation and convergence with non-Hispanic whites.