I examine the extent to which workers who lose jobs obtain work in alternative employment arrangements, including temporary work and independent contracting, and obtain voluntary or involuntary part‐time work. I find that job losers are significantly more likely than nonlosers to be in both temporary jobs (including on‐call work and contract work) and involuntarily part‐time jobs. I also find evidence that temporary and involuntary part‐time jobs are part of a transitional process subsequent to job loss leading to regular full‐time employment.

This article develops and tests a simple dynamic model of statistical discrimination. The model improves on earlier static models both by allowing ex ante uncertainty about worker productivity to be resolved as on-the-job performance is observed and by generating several testable empirical implications. These predictions are tested using a sample of young men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, producing mixed evidence for the model. The main empirical result is that no black-white wage gap exists at labor force entry but that one develops as experience accumulates, mainly because blacks reap smaller gains from job mobility.

I use a large sample of jobs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine job mobility patterns and to evaluate theories of interfirm worker mobility There are three main findings. First, the monthly hazard of job ending is not monotonically decreasing in tenure as most earlier work using annual data has found, but it increases to a maximum at 3 months and declines thereafter. Second, mobility is strongly positively related to the frequency of job change prior to the start of the job. Finally, job change in the most recent year prior to the start of the job is more strongly related than earlier job change to mobility on the current job. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.

The dramatic decline in unionization over the last decade is investigated in the context of a supply/demand model of union status determination using data from surveys of workers conducted in 1977 and 1984 along with data from the National Labor Relations Board on representation elections. It is concluded that the decline in unionization since 1977 is accounted for largely by (1) an increase in employer resistance to unionization, probably due to increased product market competitiveness and (2) a decrease in demand for union representation by nonunion workers due to an increase in the satisfaction of nonunion workers with their jobs and a decline in nonunion workers' beliefs that unions are able to improve wages and working conditions.

The efficiency wage model (EWM) has been advanced as an explanation for large and persistent wage differentials. The shirking version of the EWM assumes a trade-off between self-supervision and external supervision. The turnover version assumes turnover is costly to the firm. Variation across firms in the cost of monitoring/shirking or turnover then is hypothesized to account for wage variations across firms for homogeneous workers. Using a new sample of firm data, this paper presents empirical evidence of the trade-off of wage premiums for supervisory intensity and turnover. Little evidence is found to support either version of the EWM.

Recent developments in the theory of strategic bargaining demonstrate how informational asymmetries can lead to prolonged and costly bargaining. These models can be applied to contract negotiations, yielding an economic theory of strikes. To date, however, few empirical tests of these models have been carried out. In this paper, a set of predictions concerning the incidence and unconditional duration of strikes is derived from a simple bargaining model in which the union is uncertain about the firm's future profitability. These predictions are then tested on a micro data set of major U.S. contract negotiations that took place from 1973 to 1977.