Knowledge that Transforms

Excessive layoffs in bad times and excessive quits in good times both stem from the same weakness in practical employment arrangements: the specific nature of worker-firm relations creates a situation of bilateral monopoly. Institutions which have arisen to avert the associated inefficiency cannot mimic the separation decisions of a perfect-information, first-best allocation rule. Simple employment rules based on predetermined or indexed wages are in many cases the most desirable among the class of feasible employment arrangements. More complicated contracts which seem to deal more effectively with turn-over issues either are infeasible because of informational requirements or create adverse incentives on some other dimension.

Contests are situations in which an individual's reward depends on his performance relative to others. Students are graded on a curve; the candidate with the most votes gets the political office; the underling who performs best is promoted to the executive position. Contests are useful in dealing with indivisible rewards, reducing monitoring costs, and minimizing risks from common uncertainties. They are employed to sort potential participants and, once they have entered, to induce appropriate effort from them. With monitoring precision and prize spreads as potential choice variables, optimal contest structures are derived for fair and unfair contests among equal and unequal participants. The converse problems of climbing-low-ability individuals enter the contest designed for high-ability candidates-and slumming are shown to be manageable.

The employment and earnings effects of the minimum wage are estimated by parameterizing a hypothesized relationship between underlying market employment and wage relationships versus observed wage and employment distributions in the presence of a legislated minimum. If there had been no minimum during the 1973-78 period, we estimate that employment among out-of-school men 16-24 would have been approximately 4% higher than it was. Among young men 16-19 employment would have been about 7% higher; among those 20-24, 2% higher. Employment among black youth 16-24 would have been almost 6% higher than it was, compared with somewhat less than 4% for white youth. Although it is sometimes argued that the adverse employment effects of the minimum are offset by increased earnings, we find virtually no earnings effect. Had the minimum not been raised over the 1973-78 period, inflation would have greatly moderated the adverse employment effects of the minimum, with approximately two-thirds of the potential employment gains from elimination of the minimum attained. The weight of our evidence is inconsistent with a general increase in youth wage rates with increases in the real minimum. Our findings support the hypothesis that the effects of the minimum are concentrated on youth with subminimum market wage rates.

This paper partially fills a theoretical void by developing an integrated model of the various branches of the medical community. A consistent and general framework is adopted to analyze equilibrium within the market for medical services under a stylized form of socialized medicine, without invoking demand shifting. The optimization problem faced by each agent is specified and the equilibrium is defined. The effect of various parameter changes on the market for medical services is analyzed. The predictions are not contradicted by the stylized facts.

Life-cycle models of training/working that allow a leisure/effort trade-off are examined. A two-stage maximization problem is proposed encompassing models previously studied. In one stage, preferences are maximized by selecting a lifetime plan of consumption, leisure, and nonleisure subject to a budget constraint involving a conditional earnings function. In the other stage, the conditional earnings function is maximized by selecting a training and working plan. A new feature is the introduction of a technology, transforming stocks of human capital into leisure/effort efficiency units. Empirical predictions and conditions disallowing a two-stage separation are discussed.

The ability of unions to raise the wages of their members above the wages of similar but nonunionized workers is well documented. This paper examines empirically the implications of that wage differential for resource allocation and economic efficiency. This is accomplished by explicitly solving a numerically specified general equilibrium system with and without the wage differential. Comparison of the two solutions yields the desired information. The findings indicate that the wage premium results in adjustments in prices and quantities of factors and commodities that vary widely across industries. These adjustments are found to carry a small deadweight loss, as measured by the Hicksian equivalent variation.

Longitudinal estimates of the variability of individual wages, hours, and weeks worked over the course of changing demand states are provided for all workers generally and for workers of varied levels of job experience. Emphasis is placed on that part of job experience represented as years on current job, a commonly used proxy for the magnitude of firm-specific skills. Interpretation of resulting estimates in the context of the labor market contracting literature is attempted. Generally significant procyclical patterns are found for real weekly wages, weekly hours, and weeks worked. The extent of weekly wage variability is much greater than is generally suggested in the literature. Furthermore, workers with greater tenure exhibit greater cyclical wage and hours variability and less weeks variability. Finally, empirical distinctions are drawn separately for white-collar and blue-collar as well as union and nonunion workers.

Our paper provides an explanation why cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) provisions and their characteristics vary widely across U.S. industries. We develop models of optimal risk sharing between a firm and union to investigate the determinants of a number of contract characteristics. These include the presence and degree of wage indexing, the magnitude of deferred noncontingent wage increases, contract duration, and the trade-off between temporary layoffs and wage indexing. Preliminary empirical tests of some of the implications of the model are described. One key finding is that the level of unemployment insurance benefits appears to influence the level of layoffs and the extent of COLA coverage simultaneously.

By combining features of rationing models and hedonic models in a novel way, this paper develops a structural model of categorical labor force behavior to help explain several puzzles in data on unemployment and discouraged workers. It traces the links among minimum wages or other rigidities, hiring and firing decisions by firms, and labor force participation decisions by individuals of differing skill levels. A key comparative static result is that a rise in an effective minimum wage increases the labor force participation of more skilled marginal workers but reduces the participation of less skilled marginal workers.

A model of the labor market is constructed in which unemployment is generated by labor turnover and the process of selecting new recruits. Firms' recruitment policies affect workers' job-finding probabilities and are known to job seekers by reputation. The value of visiting a firm thus depends on the probability of being hired as well as on the terms of employment and, in equilibrium, is equal at all firms. The principal results obtained are that the equilibrium unemployment rate is efficient and that there are no external effects of search by workers or recruitment by firms.