R ECENT theoretical and empirical analysis of unemployment has emphasized its dynamic character: flows into and out of unemployment are very substantial in relation to the stock of unemployed individuals,' and groups with high unemployment rates tend to be those whose members experience short but frequent spells of joblessness (Hall, 1970). This view of unemployment has afforded important new insights into the question of why average unemployment rates differ so markedly across certain labor force groups, and has led to major shifts in the focus of labor market policy. For example, the discovery that the higher unemployment rates of blacks are due almost entirely to the higher frequency of jobless spells they experience (Perry, 1972) has shifted emphasis away from policies that stimulate demand toward policies that will help to reduce job turnover. Existing studies have focused almost exclusively on differences in the average values of the duration and frequency of spells of unemployment between certain labor market groups; none has examined systematically the variation in unemployment spell lengths and frequencies across individuals. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining the relative contributions of unemployment frequency and unemployment duration to the distribution of total hours of unemployment across individuals within each of several important labor force groups. Dispersion in the distribution of unemployment across individuals results when either the length or frequency of unemployment spells is unevenly distributed across individuals. This dispersion is reinforced when the length and frequency of spells are positively correlated, i.e., when those individuals who have the greatest difficulty finding jobs (the last hired) tend to be the same individuals who experience the greatest difficulty keeping them (the first fired). The principal contribution of our study is that it enables the variations in individual unemployment experience to be linked explicitly to individual variations in the length and frequency of unemployment spells. Section II below outlines a probabilistic model of individual labor market transitions that serves as the basis for our empirical estimation procedures. In section III we then describe the data employed in our study (the National Longitudinal Survey) and present our estimates of the distributions of individual transition probabilities for each of four demographic groups. Section IV examines the effect of a business cycle downturn on the unemployment experienced by individuals in these groups.

This paper examines the effect of trade unionism on the exit behavior of workers in the context of Hirschman's exit-voice dichotomy. Unionism is expected to reduce quits and permanent separations and raise job tenure by providing a "voice " alternative to exit when workers are dissatisfied with conditions. Empirical evidence supports this contention, showing significantly lower exit for unionists in several large data tapes. It is argued that the grievance system plays a major role in the reduction in exit and that the reduction lowers cost and raises productivity. In the exit-voice model of the social system [Hirschman, 1970, 1976] individuals react to discrepancies between desired and actual social phenomena in one of two ways: by the traditional free market mechanism of "exiting " from undesirable situations; or by directly expressing their discomfort to decision-makers through "voice. " While little attention is paid to the labor market in Hirschman's book [1970], the exit-voice dichotomy provides a potentially fruitful framework for analyzing the major employee institution of capitalist economies—the trade union. From the perspective of the dichotomy, voice is embodied in unionism and the collective bargaining system by which workers elect union leaders to represent them in negotiations with management, while exit consists primarily of quits. A major feature of the model is a predicted tradeoff between the two adjustment mechanisms: when workers have a voice institution for expressing discontent, they should use the exit option less frequently and thus exhibit lower quit rates and longer spells of job tenure with firms. Is unionism associated with lower quit rates and higher job tenure of workers, as predicted by the model? Po what extent can any reduction in quits due to unionism he attributed to union "voice " as opposed to other routes of union effects, notably wage gains? Despite a sizeable literature on labor turnover and on the economic effects of unions, extant empirical evidence provides no clear answer to these questions. The turnover literature has focused on quit rates for aggregated manufacturing industries, which provides only

THE market for new law school graduates has undergone considerable change in recent years, with starting salaries increasing rapidly following the enormous increase in rates of the major New York firms in 1968' and enrollments into law programs skyrocketing in the late 1960's. What explains these and earlier developments in the market for new lawyers? Does the influx of students reflect economically responsive supply behavior with respect to salary and other labor market incentives? What factors underly changes in the salaries of starting lawyers? This paper investigates these questions with a variant of the recursive model of the market for highly-trained workers originally used to analyze engineering shortages and surpluses (Freeman, 1971). Application of the model to a profession which differs substantially from engineering and related sciences but has a similar fixed time delay in producing new specialists provides a test of its general validity, as well as insight into the operation of the legal labor and education markets. This paper begins with a brief description of the empirical phenomenon under study -patterns of change in the number of law students, legal salaries, and activity in the profession. Section II develops a recursive cobweb-type model to explain these developments. Section III presents estimates of the supply and salary equations of the model. The final section examines the endogenous cyclic fluctuations in the market and summarizes the major findings.

JOB skills and human capital are acquired by a variety of activities in diverse institutional settings, ranging from parental investment in children to on-the-job training at work places. The purchase of occupational training from for-profit 'proprietary' schools and institutes is a significant, often neglected, mode of obtaining skills.' In 1971, approximately 1.4 million students enrolled in proprietary schools to prepare for work in such areas as truckdriving, electronics, cosmetology, cooking, and floristry, to name just a few. The schools provide an important example of the competitive for-profit education of voucher and performance contract proposals. With recent concern about the allocation of educational resources between academic and vocational schooling,2 possible differences in the social rate of return to for-profit and academic training have obvious policy implications. This paper investigates proprietary school job training in the United States and its impact on the earnings and occupational position of male workers. Section I presents information about proprietary schools and their distinctive operating characteristics; Section II estimates the effect of training on the earnings and occupational status of male workers and uses these estimates to obtain private and social rates of return under various assumptions about direct and indirect (= time) costs of education. I. The Proprietary School Training Market

Fellowship Stipend Support and the Supply of Science and Engineering Students: NSF Graduate Research Fellowships by Richard B. Freeman. Published in volume 95, issue 2, pages 61-65 of American Economic Review, May 2005

New developments in development in the 1980's contravened several widely held tenets about how labor markets and other institutional arrangements affect the performance of low-income countries. If you believe that massive urban-rural earnings differentials due to bias plague Developia, new evidence will ease your concerns: urban workers suffered mightily in the lost-growth decade in many countries. If you fear that government or union interventions in labor markets impede stabilization or structural adjustment, think again: countries with diverse interventions reduced real wages under the gun of economic crisis. If you believe that clear property rules and privatization are necessary for rational economic behavior and transition to a market economy, the decade's growth success, China, should challenge your priors. If you fear that industrial policy is the road to disaster, state interventions in Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore tell a different story. Finally, if you think that military dictatorships that suppress labor necessarily produce high income inequality, the income distributions of Korea and Taiwan should give you pause. These emerging patterns and facts run so counter to conventional views on development as to raise major doubts about the depth of our knowledge and the extent to which narrow perfect competition or political economy perspectives illuminate the growth process.