Built between 1974 and 1977, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was the largest privately financed construction project in world history. The Alaskan labor market during the pipeline era provides an ideal opportunity to view labor market responses to a large, anticipated, and temporary shock to labor demand. The paper presents several theoretical models of market responses to temporary demand shocks and then assesses the ability of each model to explain the Alaskan data. Among the findings are that Alaskan wages were very flexible, labor supply was quite elastic on both the intensive (hours per worker) and extensive (number of workers) margins, and even a major short-run demand shock need not have a long-run impact.

Built between 1974 and 1977, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was the largest privately financed construction project in world history. The Alaskan labor market during the pipeline era provides an ideal opportunity to view labor market responses to a large, anticipated, and temporary shock to labor demand. The paper presents several theoretical models of market responses to temporary demand shocks and then assesses the ability of each model to explain the Alaskan data. Among the findings are that Alaskan wages were very flexible, labor supply was quite elastic on both the intensive (hours per worker) and extensive (number of workers) margins, and even a major short-run demand shock need not have a long-run impact.

This article considers the impact of nondiscrimination (ND) rules in the federal tax code. Nondiscrimination rules limit within‐firm inequality in the provision on nonwage benefits, but they place no corresponding limit on within‐firm inequality in wages. Firms can skirt ND rules by moving workers with unusual benefits into part‐time and seasonal positions because workers in such positions are excluded from some ND compliance calculations. We examine these issues empirically and find relationships consistent with the hypothesis that ND rules provide a binding constrain on within‐firms benefits inequality.

Self-employed workers are less likely to be affected by implicit contracts, efficiency wages, and other forces that mute wage cyclicality and exacerbate employment cyclicality. This observation motivates our comparison of the cyclical experience of the self-employed with "wage and salary" workers who clearly have an employer. We find negligible or small differences in annual hours cyclicality between the two groups, but hourly wages and annual earnings are much more cyclical for the self-employed. These results are consistent with efficient contracting models where employers smooth workers' income without causing inefficiencies in hours of work.

Job displacement entails a substantial wage reduction for most displaced workers. We show that the mean reduction, the tenure profile of reductions, and the experience profile of reductions all vary substantially across industries. We then link this interindustry variation to analogous variation in firm size, unionization, wage levels, and the incidence of employer-provided training. While these industry characteristics explain some of the interindustry variation in mean wage reductions, they do not explain variation in the tenure or experience profiles of wage reductions.

We study a dynamic model of labor migration in which moving costs decrease with the number of migrants already settled in the destination. This assumption is supported by sociological studies of migrant networks. With endogenous moving costs migration occurs gradually over time. Once it starts, it develops momentum, and migratory flows may increase even as wage differentials narrow. In addition, migration tends to follow geographical channels, and low-moving-cost individuals migrate first. These patterns are consistent with historical evidence from the Great Black Migration of 1915-1960, much of which cannot be reconciled with existing migration models.

This article studies interfirm racial segregation in two newly developed firm‐level databases. We find that the interfirm distribution of black and white workers is close to what would be implied by random assignment. We also find that black workers are clustered in employers where managers, owners, and customers are also black. These findings may be reconciled by the facts that (a) there are not enough black employers to generate much segregation and that (b) other forces may systematically integrate black and white workers. Finally, we find that the black/white wage gap is primarily a within‐firm phenomenon.