Unobserved Ability, Efficiency Wages, and Interindustry Wage Differentials

Unobserved Ability, Efficiency Wages, and Interindustry Wage Differentials PDF

Author: McKinley L. Blackburn

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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Interindustry wage differentials in wage regressions estimated for individuals have been interpreted as evidence consistent with efficiency wage models. A principal competing explanation is that these differentials are generated by differences across workers in unobserved ability. This paper tests the unobserved ability hypothesis .by incorporating test scores into standard wage regressions as error-ridden indicators of unobserved ability. The results indicate that differences in unobserved ability explain relatively little of interindustry or interoccupation wage differentials.

Efforts and Wages

Efforts and Wages PDF

Author: Edward E. Leamer

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13:

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We provide evidence that US workers face a wage-effort offer curve with the high-wage high-effort jobs occurring in the capital intensive sectors. We find that real wage offers rose at every level of effort during the 1960's, a shift which is consistent with a decline in the rental cost of capital. During the 1970's, when relative prices of labor-intensive goods declined, the wage-effort offer curve twisted, offering lower pay for the low-paid jobs in the labor-intensive sectors but higher pay for the high-paid jobs in the capital-intensive sectors. In the 1980's, workers at every wage level began to work more hours for the same weekly wage. This we loosely attribute either to the increasing cost of non-wage benefits, especially health care, or to the introduction of new equipment. In studying the wage-effort offer curve rate of unionization, education, and rent sharing.

Advances in the Theory and Measurement of Unemployment

Advances in the Theory and Measurement of Unemployment PDF

Author: Yoram Weiss

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1989-06-18

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1349106887

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A collection of papers which analyzes and measures unemployment as a search activity, discusses efficiency wage models and which considers the impact of government and unions on employment and unemployment.

Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure

Updated Notes on the Interindustry Wage Structure PDF

Author: Steven G. Allen

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13:

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This paper documents and analyzes changes in the wage structure across manufacturing industries over the last one hundred years. Inter-industry differentials in wages are highly stable for production workers, but autocorrelation patterns for nonproduction workers are considerably weaker. Industry wage patterns are very similar for production and nonproduction workers today, but this has been true only since 1958. Dispersion of wages across industries has shown varying trends over the last one hundred years, but has never in this century been higher than it is today. The variables that are most strongly correlated with wage growth are productivity growth, rising union density, rising capital intensity, and profit growth.