Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Labor Relations Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Selected Works

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Articles 1 - 30 of 112

Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

Conclusion: Looking To The Future, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Conclusion: Looking To The Future, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] A number of important themes emerge from the chapters in Governing Academia. First, decentralization gives individual units—be they university campuses within a state system, colleges within a university, or departments within a college—an incentive to act in their own best interests, but less of an incentive to work toward the common good. As Heller points out, at the level of a state system, decentralization of control may lead to wasteful overlap between campuses. As Wilson shows, decentralized budgeting in the form of responsibility center management models may cause units not to maximize the quality of the education they are …


Evaluation Research And National Social Policy: An Academic Practitioner's Perspective, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Evaluation Research And National Social Policy: An Academic Practitioner's Perspective, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Society has limited resources and many competing uses for them. I therefore take it as being an almost obvious proposition that at any point in time policy makers should strive to maximize the social benefits produced by the available funds they have to spend. This proposition implies that evaluation research should be undertaken either by or for government agencies. Policy makers need to know what benefits are being produced by each social program and the resource costs involved. They need to know which aspects of which programs are working and which programs need to be replaced.


Dead-End Jobs And Youth Unemployment: Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Dead-End Jobs And Youth Unemployment: Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Charles Brown has very ambitiously attempted to analyze whether the existence of "dead-end jobs" contributes to the youth unemployment problem. He assumes that the average rate of wage growth of individuals initially employed in an occupation and the proportion of these individuals who remain employed in the same industry for five years are both inversely related to the probability that individuals initially employed in the occupation find themselves in dead end-jobs. His basic methodological approach involves using data from the 1/100 sample of the 1970 Census of Population to calculate both of these variables for each three-digit occupation, merging …


Who Pays For Pensions In The State And Local Sector: Workers Or Employers?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith Jul 2013

Who Pays For Pensions In The State And Local Sector: Workers Or Employers?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert S. Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In 1974 Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). This complex piece of legislation, which applies only to private-sector pension plans, contains several provisions which tend to increase employers' costs of providing pensions. These include liberalized vesting rules, stringent funding requirements, and increased fiduciary responsibility and accountability. The analysis in this paper will focus on the likely effect of these provisions if they are applied to state and local government employee retirement systems. Although a public-sector variant of ERISA has yet to be passed, public employee retirement systems have recently become subject to scrutiny by various governmental …


Work Injuries And Wage Losses For Partially Disabled California Workers: Discussion, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Work Injuries And Wage Losses For Partially Disabled California Workers: Discussion, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Wayne Vroman's paper is a modest preliminary report, which is derived from an ongoing research project concerned with permanent partial disabilities and workers' compensation. The larger project will develop and implement methods for projecting postinjury earnings losses, compare actual compensation measures to these projected losses, and draw conclusions as to the adequacy and equity of workers' compensation benefits. One cannot question the usefulness of the larger project and the profession should be indebted to Vroman and his collaborators for undertaking it. One should stress, however, that the key to the success of the project will lie in their ability …


Introduction To The Book Governing Academia, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Introduction To The Book Governing Academia, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] During recent decades tuition for undergraduate students has risen at rates substantially higher than the rate of inflation at both public and private colleges and universities in the United States. These high rates of tuition increases led Congress to establish the National Commission on the Costs of Higher Education in 1997 to conduct a comprehensive review of college costs and prices and to make recommendations on how to hold tuition increases down. Parents of college students, taxpayers, and government officials all wanted to know why academic institutions can't behave more like businesses—cut their costs, increase their efficiency, and thus …


Labor Market Data Needs Relating To Antidiscrimination Activity: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Labor Market Data Needs Relating To Antidiscrimination Activity: Comment, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Barbara Bergmann's background paper divides data needs in the antidiscrimination area into data that would be useful in the formulation of national policy and data that would be useful as an aid in enforcing the laws and executive orders against discrimination. Although the former are likely to be of greatest concern to the commission, she has performed a valuable service by discussing these interrelated needs in one place. I find much to agree with, and very little to disagree with or question, in her paper. The presentation is, in the main, an objective one and she tempers her desire …


Collective Bargaining In American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel B. Klaff, Adam T. Kezbom, Matthew P. Nagowski Jul 2013

Collective Bargaining In American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel B. Klaff, Adam T. Kezbom, Matthew P. Nagowski

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] No discussion of governance in higher education would be complete without a consideration of the role of collective bargaining. Historically, most researchers interested in the subject have directed their attention to the unionization of faculty members. Given several recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that leave open the possibility that unionization of faculty in private colleges and universities may increase in the future, we discuss collective bargaining for faculty in the first section (Leatherman 2000, A16). Recently, however, attention has been also directed at the unionization of two other groups in the higher education workforce. Activists …


Women's Pay In Australia, Great Britain And The United States: Commentary, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jul 2013

Women's Pay In Australia, Great Britain And The United States: Commentary, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] My reaction to this paper is mixed. On the one hand, it represents one of the few serious efforts I know of to place discussions about comparable worth in a comparative perspective and to bring evidence from other countries' experiences into the debate about policy in the United States. For this the authors should be resoundingly applauded. On the other hand, I am left with the feeling that they have not pushed their empirical analyses as hard as they might have, and because of this, in places they may have drawn some inappropriate conclusions. My discussion will elaborate on …


New Minimum Wage Research: Symposium Introduction, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

New Minimum Wage Research: Symposium Introduction, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The passage of the 1989 FLSA amendments stimulated a new wave of research on the effects of minimum wage legislation, and five of the resulting papers are gathered together in this symposium. Four of these are revisions of papers that were presented at the ILR-Cornell Institute for Labor Market Policies/Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Conference, "New Minimum Wage Research," which was held at Cornell University on November 15, 1991. These papers, as well as the fifth paper, which was contributed by one of the conference participants after the conference was concluded, have all been subject to a refereeing process. …


Do Indirect Cost Rates Matter?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Jaroslava K. Mykula Jun 2013

Do Indirect Cost Rates Matter?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Jaroslava K. Mykula

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This study addresses the relationship between a university's indirect cost rate and its level of federal research funding. Both direct and indirect cost funding are examined. The data used in the analyses include unpublished institutional level data for all doctoral and research universities on funding and indirect cost rates obtained from the National Science Foundation for the fiscal years 1988 to 1997 period. Our major finding is that higher indirect cost rates are associated with higher levels of direct and indirect cost funding for institutions that initially are among the largest recipients of federal funding. In contrast, for universities initially …


Enhancing The Attractiveness Of Research To Female Faculty, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Enhancing The Attractiveness Of Research To Female Faculty, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] CSWEP has long been concerned about the underrepresentation of women in faculty positions at major research universities. I have been charged by the committee with enumerating a set of policies that might enhance the attractiveness of research universities to female faculty. After presenting some data that suggest the magnitude of the underrepresentation problem, I do so below. In each case, I sketch the pros and cons of the policy. Although the focus is on increasing the attractiveness of research universities to female faculty, many of the policies would increase the attractiveness of academic careers per se to new female …


Merit Pay For School Superintendents?, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Richard P. Chaykowski, Randy A. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

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 …


The Effect Of Tax Limitation Legislation On Public Sector Labor Markets: A Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

The Effect Of Tax Limitation Legislation On Public Sector Labor Markets: A Comment, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This brief comment presents my views about the current relative economic status of state and local government employees and the growth of collective bargaining and influence of unions in the public sector. With these remarks as background, I then discuss the likely effects of tax limitation legislation on public sector labor markets.


Review Of The Book The Davis-Bacon Act, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book The Davis-Bacon Act, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Armand J. Thieblot's monograph is not the first study of the administration and impact of the Davis-Bacon Act; however, it certainly is the most comprehensive. Successive chapters of the book consider the history of the act, definitions and interpretations of key words in the legislation, its current administrative organization and enforcement, experience under it (including improper wage determinations), and its costs and inflationary impact. A set of case studies are then presented to document the existence of improper and excessive wage determinations. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the original rationale of the Davis-Bacon Act and its …


Review Of The Book Nonmonetary Eligibility In State Unemployment Insurance Programs: Law And Practice, Ronald Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Nonmonetary Eligibility In State Unemployment Insurance Programs: Law And Practice, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This monograph focuses on a relatively under-researched topic, namely, the effects of nonmonetary eligibility rules for both initial receipt of benefits and continued receipt once benefits are granted on the rates at which UI benefits are denied to applicants. The authors very competently employ both econometric and case study research methods to address these issues. Their econometric work utilizes quarterly state-level data between 1964 and 1981 and a fixed-effects framework to isolate those parameters of state unemployment insurance laws that influence denial rates. To supplement these analyses, they conduct interviews with key state and local program officials in six …


Review Of The Book An Incentives Approach To Improving The Unemployment Compensation System, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book An Incentives Approach To Improving The Unemployment Compensation System, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This volume is the result of over two decades of research by the author on the unemployment insurance (UI) system. It focuses on the overpayment of UI benefits: payments to individuals that are larger than they should be because of miscalculations of benefit levels by administrative agencies or the failure of individuals to meet initial or continuing eligibility requirements for the receipt of benefits.


Review Of The Book Unemployment Insurance: The Second Half-Century, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Unemployment Insurance: The Second Half-Century, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This extraordinary volume is one that all people interested in the unemployment insurance (Ul) system will want to read. Although research on a wide variety of aspects of the Ul system has been published in many articles and monographs in recent years, this volume represents an attempt to summarize what is known about many aspects of the subject in one place, to provide some new findings, and to speculate about future research and policy directions. The thirteen included papers, written by a mix of scholars and practitioners, are revisions of a set of papers that were originally presented at …


Review Of The Book In Pursuit Of The Ph.D., Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book In Pursuit Of The Ph.D., Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] When William Bowen, the President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (formerly the President of Princeton University), and Neil Rudenstine, the President of Harvard University (formerly Executive Vice President of Mellon), combine to write a book on doctoral study in the arts and sciences, the academic profession must take notice. And well it should. Building on Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa's (1989) predictions of forthcoming shortages of Ph.D.'s in the arts and sciences, In Pursuit of the Ph.D. provides a detailed analysis of the propensity of American college graduates to enter doctoral programs in the arts and sciences and …


Review Of The Book Essays In Labor Market Analysis, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Essays In Labor Market Analysis, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Yochan Peter Comay was an Israeli economist who received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1969. His career was tragically cut short in October 1973 when he was killed during the Yom Kippur War. Comay's research focused on bargaining models, investment in human capital, and analyses of migration. To honor him, Orley Ashenfelter and Wallace Oates have gathered together a collection of eleven essays written by his former colleagues and friends in both the United States and Israel, which faithfully reflect these interests. Included are two essays on aspects of bargaining theory, four relating to job satisfaction, work effort and …


Review Of The Book The Economic Analysis Of Unions: New Approaches And Evidence, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book The Economic Analysis Of Unions: New Approaches And Evidence, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] This book surveys, synthesizes, and critically analyzes the rapidly growing theoretical and empirical literature on unions and dispute resolution. The focus is primarily on the United States literature, although references to studies from Canada and the United Kingdom are also included. That the survey is complete and up-to-date is suggested by the thirty pages of references at the end of the book; a number of these are to papers that are still awaiting publication. The authors present a remarkably balanced treatment and, for the most part, do not allow their own ideological orientation toward unions to influence their analyses.


Review Of The Book Minimum Wage Regulation In The United States, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Minimum Wage Regulation In The United States, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Why yet another book on minimum wages in the United States, especially one that follows so closely on the heels of the 1981 Report of the Minimum Wage Study Commission and parallel studies (including another one by Fleisher) sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute? The author's goal here is to evaluate minimum-wage regulation in light of its benefits and costs as an antipoverty device; and most of his book is based on his interpretation and evaluation of the existing literature, including the large body of recent research. The book is written in a nontechnical fashion for nonspecialists (frustrated econometricians …


Review Of The Book Incentives, Cooperation And Risk Sharing: Economic And Psychological Perspectives On Employment Contracts, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Incentives, Cooperation And Risk Sharing: Economic And Psychological Perspectives On Employment Contracts, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The current volume, which grew out of a two-day conference held at New York University in 1984, is an excellent introduction to compensation policy research and practice. A unique aspect of the volume is its interdisciplinary orientation; the contributors include academic economists and industrial psychologists, as well as practicing compensation and personnel and human resource specialists. A very readable introductory essay by the editor provides general discussion of analytical issues in compensation policy research and whets the reader's appetite for the papers that follow.


Review Of The Book Labor Relations And The Litigation Explosion, Ronald Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Labor Relations And The Litigation Explosion, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Labor Relations and the Litigation Explosion is a very readable book that is easily accessible to nonspecialists. (The author has presented more technical treatments of the material elsewhere; see Flanagan 1986a, 1986b.) The early chapters begin with a discussion of federal policy towards labor relations in the United States under the National Labor Relations Act, a documentation of the growth of unfair labor practice charges that occurred over the 1950-1980 period and then a demonstration that this growth can be only partially "explained" by the changing industrial and regional distribution of employment in the United States. Quite interestingly, he …


Review Of The Book The Cost Of Talent: How Executives And Professionals Are Paid And How It Affects America, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book The Cost Of Talent: How Executives And Professionals Are Paid And How It Affects America, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Why should the former President of Harvard University be concerned that during the 1970s and 1980s the earnings of doctors, lawyers in private practice, and top corporate executives grew substantially relative to the earnings of professors, teachers, and high level federal civil servants? Why should he care that physicians with specialized hospital-based practices, such as neurosurgeons, have seen their earnings rise substantially relative to physicians practicing family medicine during the same period? In each case, the answer is that Bok believes that occupational choices are determined, at least at the margin, by the pecuniary and nonpecuniary benefits that the …


Editor’S Introduction To The Review Symposium On The Book Myth And Measurement: The New Economics Of The Minimum Wage, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Editor’S Introduction To The Review Symposium On The Book Myth And Measurement: The New Economics Of The Minimum Wage, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Why has Myth and Measurement engendered so much controversy? In part, because it deals with the minimum wage. The minimum wage was the first piece of protective labor legislation adopted at the national level, and proposals to increase the minimum wage invariably lead to heated debate between labor and business interests. When a book co-authored by the then chief economist in the Clinton Labor Department purports to show that, contrary to received wisdom, minimum wage increases do not appear to have any diverse effects on employment, it is predictable that conservative critics will attack its findings.


Review Of The Book Prospects For Faculty In The Arts And Sciences, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Prospects For Faculty In The Arts And Sciences, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Very few books by economists are announced to the world in a front page story in the New York Times. However, Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences by William G. Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa was (see Fiske) and this honor is well deserved. Prospects may well be the most important analysis of the academic labor market to appear since Alan Cartter's pioneering work in the mid-1970s.


Review Of The Book Wage Indexation In The United States: Cola Or Uncola?, Ronald Ehrenberg Jun 2013

Review Of The Book Wage Indexation In The United States: Cola Or Uncola?, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Hendricks and Kahn's book is a major contribution to the literature on wage indexation. The authors, together with a team of graduate assistants, have painstakingly put together a data file from Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of National Affairs sources that covers over 10,000 individual contract negotiations during the 1967-82 period. A major portion of their book is devoted to econometric analyses of these data; specifically, analyses of the determinants of COLA incidence, the determinants of COLA strength, the effect of COLAs on wage inflation, and the effect of COLAs on strike activity. Earlier versions of some of …


Adverse Selection And Incentives In An Early Retirement Program, Kenneth T. Whelan, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Kevin F. Hallock, Ronald L. Seeber Jan 2013

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 …


Economic And Statistical Analysis Of Discrimination In Hiring, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith Jan 2013

Economic And Statistical Analysis Of Discrimination In Hiring, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Robert Smith

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Legal and administrative determinations of employers' compliance with "equal employment opportunity" (EEO) requirements often hinge on the Issue of the availability of protected class members to employers. That is, courts and affirmative action review agencies compare the hire rates of protected class members (the ratio of the number of protected class members hired to the number who applied or who were potentially available) to the comparable ratio for other applicants, in assessing whether an employer's hiring policies meet the standards required of them by equal opportunity regulations. The purpose of this paper is to review what economic theory suggests affects …