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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Merit Pay For School Superintendents?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy A. Ehrenberg
Merit Pay For School Superintendents?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy A. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Given the important role that school district administrators play in the educational process, one might expect their 'performance" to be of fundamental importance in determining both how much students learn and the cost of public education to taxpayers. Yet, while public debate has considered the issue of merit pay plans for teachers, virtually no attention has been directed to the methods by which school administrators are compensated. This paper provides evidence on whether school superintendents are explicitly or implicitly rewarded for their "performance" by higher compensation and/or greater opportunities for mobility. We analyze panel data from over 700 school districts …
Adverse Selection And Incentives In An Early Retirement Program, Kenneth T. Whelan, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Kevin F. Hallock, Ronald L. Seeber
Adverse Selection And Incentives In An Early Retirement Program, Kenneth T. Whelan, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Kevin F. Hallock, Ronald L. Seeber
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
We evaluate potential determinants of enrollment in an early retirement incentive program for non-tenure-track employees of a large university. Using administrative record on the eligible population of employees not covered by collective bargaining agreements, historical employee count and layoff data by budget units, and public information on unit budgets, we find dips in per-employee finance in a budget unit during the application year and higher recent per employee layoffs were associated with increased probabilities of eligible employee program enrollment. Our results also suggest, on average, that employees whose salaries are lower than we would predict given their personal characteristics and …
Paying Our Presidents: What Do Trustees Value?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, John J. Cheslock, Julia Epifantseva
Paying Our Presidents: What Do Trustees Value?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, John J. Cheslock, Julia Epifantseva
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Our study makes use of data from a panel of over 400 private colleges and universities on their presidents’ salaries and benefits. These data, reported annually to the Internal Revenue Service on Form 990, have been collected by and reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education for academic years 1992–1993 through 1997–1998. We merge these data with those from other sources including the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, Who’s Who in America, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, the Council on Aid to Education, and the National Science Foundation’s CASPAR system. This …
Estimating Wage-Fringe Trade-Offs: Some Data Problems, Robert Smith, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Estimating Wage-Fringe Trade-Offs: Some Data Problems, Robert Smith, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] This paper represents an inquiry into some of the data related difficulties inherent in estimating wage-fringe trade-offs, and it explores the usefulness of a particular source of data in meeting these difficulties.
Compensating Wage Differentials For Mandatory Overtime, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Paul L. Schumann
Compensating Wage Differentials For Mandatory Overtime, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Paul L. Schumann
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Our paper estimates the extent to which employees are compensated for an unfavorable job characteristic, being required to accept mandatory assignment of overtime, by receiving higher straight—time wages. Our estimating equations are derived from a model in which wage rates and the existence of mandatory assignment of overtime are jointly determined in the market by the interaction of employee and employer preferences. While on average, we do not observe the existence of a compensating wage differential for mandatory overtime, we do observe the existence of such differentials for unionized workers and workers with only a few years experience at a …
Executive Compensation In Municipalities, Gerald S. Goldstein, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Executive Compensation In Municipalities, Gerald S. Goldstein, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] In this paper we are concerned with the salaries of three important municipal officials; city-managers, police chiefs, and fire chiefs. We present a model that relates the salaries of these officials to a set of explanatory variables, the most important being measures associated with job performance. Two of these measures of performance are developed in the study. Further, the influence of the city-manager form of government on the incentive structure facing police chiefs and fire chiefs, and the interdependence betwen the salaries of police chiefs and fire chiefs is investigated. The model is tested using cross-section data for 1967.
Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith
Comparable Worth In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] At the theoretical level, we conclude that the case for comparable worth rests on the argument that the current distribution of female employees is based on discriminatory barriers which existing legislation have not broken down. If this argument is valid, the desirability of comparable worth depends upon one's perceptions of how the benefits it provides contrasts with the efficiency losses it induces. Given the trade-offs involved, ultimately one's position on comparable worth must depend on value judgments.
Officer Performance And Compensation In Local Building Trades Unions, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Officer Performance And Compensation In Local Building Trades Unions, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] This paper presents estimates of the relationship between the performance and compensation of local building trades union leaders. A growing literature has revived the common-sense notion that organizations should structure the compensation of both their employees and their executives so as to encourage them to take actions consistent with the goals of the organizations. One way to minimize the probability that executives will take actions contrary to the organization's goals is to tie their compensation to measures of their organization's performance.
Retirement System Characteristics And Compensating Wage Differentials In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Retirement System Characteristics And Compensating Wage Differentials In The Public Sector, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
This paper presents evidence that a trade-off exists between wages and certain characteristics of retirement systems in the public sector. Cross-section econometric estimates for uniformed municipal employees, based upon data from two national surveys of municipalities, suggest that, other things equal, an increase in the contribution made by uniformed employees to their retirement system leads to a compensating increase in their salaries, while retirement systems with more "generous" characteristics are associated to some extent with lower salaries. The estimates also indicate that the extent of retirement system underfunding is related to employers' and employees' perceptions of the probability that promised …
Introduction: Do Compensation Policies Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg
Introduction: Do Compensation Policies Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] The papers in this volume should give the reader a sense of the exciting empirical research that has recently taken place on compensation-related issues. As a set, these papers considerably expand our empirical evidence on the effects of compensation policies. Several papers show that executive compensation is structured in a way that at least implicitly ties executive compensation changes to measures of corporate performance, and —crucially—that doing so leads to improved corporate performance (Leonard, Murphy/Gibbons, Abowd). Others show that compensation systems that pay workers for performance, in the sense of providing explicit or implicit incentives for high levels of …
Determinants Of The Compensation And Mobility Of School Superintendents, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy Ehrenberg
Determinants Of The Compensation And Mobility Of School Superintendents, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Analyzing 197-83 panel data from more than 700 New York State school districts, the authors find evidence that school superintendents were rewarded, both by higher salary increases and by enhanced opportunities to move to belter-paying jobs, for having low school tax rates and high educational achievement within their districts, relative to the values of those variables in comparable school districts in the state. The rewards were, however, quite small. The analysis also suggests that the superintendents themselves did not significantly influence either school tax rates or educational test scores in their districts.