This paper tests for the existence of wage premiums based on geographic and industry unemployment differences. These differences are broken down into permanent and transitory components in equations controlling for variation in state generosity of unemployment insurance benefits. Findings indicate that wage premiums arise for long-run unemployment differences, but that negative short-run shocks to industries generate wage cuts, while positive shocks generate wage hikes. Therefore, labor contracts accommodate long-term anticipated unemployment, and entail sharing of short-term unemployment risks.

A theory of personal wealth transfers is developed which implies that components given to a recipient, such as education and bequests, are perfect substitutes. Therefore, components whose marginal cost rises more rapidly than average reveal wealth elasticities that are smaller than average. For related reasons, time series elasticities are expected to fall short of cross-sectional elasticities. An empirical investigation estimates cross-sectional wealth elasticities of gifts and bequests and time series wealth elasticities of bequest. The estimates are ranked in the order that is anticipated from the theory.