Knowledge that Transforms

Although much research has focused on recent increases in annual earnings inequality in the United States, the increases could have come from either of two sources: the distribution of lifetime earnings could have become more unequal or the receipt of lifetime earnings could have become more unstable. Based on an analysis of the 1968–92 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that lifetime earnings inequality increased during the early 1980s and that earnings instability increased during the 1970s. We also examine how these trends are related to changes in the distribution of wages and hours and the returns to education.

In February 1995 Continental Airlines introduced an incentive scheme that promised monthly bonuses to all 35,000 hourly employees if the company achieved a firm-wide performance goal. Conventional wisdom suggests that free riding will render such schemes ineffective. We present evidence indicating that the incentive scheme raised employee performance despite the apparent threat of free riding. To explain why the scheme may have been effective we argue that the organization of employees into autonomous work groups enabled Continental to induce mutual monitoring among employees within each work group. Copyright 2001 by University of Chicago Press.

This article uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the employment patterns of workers aged 50 and above who have experienced an involuntary job loss. Hazard models for returning to work and for exiting postdisplacement employment are estimated and used to examine work patterns for 10 years following a job loss. Our findings show that a job loss results in large and lasting effects on future employment probabilities. Four years after job losses at age 55, the employment rate of displaced workers remains 20 percentage points below the employment rate of similar nondisplaced workers.

This article develops a model of noncompetitive labor markets in which high-wage (good) and low-wage (bad) jobs coexist. Minimum wages and unemployment benefits shift the composition of employment toward high-wage jobs. Because the composition of jobs in the laissez-faire equilibrium is inefficiently biased toward low-wage jobs, these labor market regulations increase average labor productivity and may improve welfare. Copyright 2001 by University of Chicago Press.

Workers in cities earn 33% more than their nonurban counterparts. A large amount of evidence suggests that this premium is not just the result of higher ability workers living in cities, which means that cities make workers more productive. Evidence on migrants and the cross effect between urban status and experience implies that a significant fraction of the urban wage premium accrues to workers over time and stays with them when they leave cities. Therefore, a portion of the urban wage premium is a wage growth, not a wage level, effect. This evidence suggests that cities speed the accumulation of human capital. Copyright 2001 by University of Chicago Press.

This article uses 1990 census data to study the effects of immigrant inflows on occupation-specific labor market outcomes. I find that intercity mobility rates of natives and earlier immigrants are insensitive to immigrant inflows. However, occupation-specific wages and employment rates are systematically lower in cities with higher relative supplies of workers in a given occupation. The results imply that immigrant inflows over the 1980s reduced wages and employment rates of low-skilled natives in traditional gateway cities like Miami and Los Angeles by 1-3 percentage points. Copyright 2001 by University of Chicago Press.