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Full-Text Articles in Business
"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s, Ileen A. Devault
"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s, Ileen A. Devault
Ileen A DeVault
[Excerpt] It seems redundant (but is unfortunately not unnecessary) to say that this response emphasizes the gendered nature of the famed "manliness" of turn-of-the-century skilled workers. Davis Montgomery has described how "the workers' code celebrated individual self-assertion, but for the collective good, rather than for self-advancement." The process by which these skilled workers chose their jobs suggests an intermediate step: between the "collective good" of the union and the "self-advancement' of the individual stood the smaller collective unit of the male-headed household. The sense of what it meant to "be a man" thus not only holds the potential of explicating …
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.
Workers’ Compensation, Wages, And The Risk Of Injury, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Workers’ Compensation, Wages, And The Risk Of Injury, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] In many respects the structures of the workers' compensation and unemployment insurance systems are similar. Each is actually a system of individual state systems. Both are financed by a payroll tax that is imperfectly experience rated. Both provide insurance against an adverse consequence (work injury or unemployment) that leads to time away from work; the incidence and duration of these events are at least partially determined by both employer and employee behavior. Both systems provide, at least for temporary events, a structure of benefits that ties compensation to a worker's previous earnings. Because of these similarities, it is not …
The Demand For State And Local Government Employees, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
The Demand For State And Local Government Employees, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] The primary purpose of this paper is to present empirical estimates of the wage elasticities of demand for different categories of state and local government employees. The employment demand equations that are estimated are derived from a utility maximization model of state and local government behavior. After presenting this model in the first section, we next briefly discuss the data used in the study. The structural system of demand equations is then estimated using pooled time-series and cross-section information, with annual individual state data as the units of observation. A number of alternative estimation methods are used in the …
Absenteeism And The Overtime Decision, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Absenteeism And The Overtime Decision, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Upon reading the congressional hearing on the Overtime Pay Penalty Act of 1964, one cannot fail to be impressed by the emphasis that management places on absenteeism as a primary cause of overtime. The argument given is basically quite simple: Large firms, it is claimed, attempt to account for absenteeism by hiring standby workers; however because of the stochastic nature of the absentee rate, it is impossible for them to have replacements always available. Hence overtime must be worked by existing employees in order to meet production schedules. One concludes from this argument that the randomness of absenteeism is …
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 …
Unemployment Insurance, Duration Of Unemployment, And Subsequent Wage Gain, Ronald Ehrenberg, Ronald Oaxaca
Unemployment Insurance, Duration Of Unemployment, And Subsequent Wage Gain, Ronald Ehrenberg, Ronald Oaxaca
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] In order to evaluate what the "optimal" level of UI benefits is, one must therefore first estimate the magnitude of the relationships between UI benefits levels and unemployed workers' durations of unemployment and post-unemployment wages. There have been several previous studies of the impact of UI benefits on duration of spells of unemployment, however none have been completely satisfactory methodologically. To our knowledge, there have been no previous studies of the system's impact on subsequent wage rates. We attempt to fill these gaps, utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) to estimate both relationships. The plan of our …
Municipal Government Structure, Unionization, And The Wages Of Fire Fighters, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Municipal Government Structure, Unionization, And The Wages Of Fire Fighters, Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
[Excerpt] Also important to any analysis of labor costs in the public sector today is, of course, the effect of collective bargaining on wages. For reasons described in a recent article by Orley Ashenfelter, fire fighters provide an excellent test of union wage effects at the city level. This study will therefore use fire fighters as an example with which to assess and compare the effects on wages of both unionism and the structure of municipal government. This article is in many respects an extension of the excellent study by Asehenfelter, who examined the effect of the International Association of …
Labor Economics, George R. Boyer, Robert Smith
Labor Economics, George R. Boyer, Robert Smith
George R. Boyer
The authors hypothesize that most labor economists "sooner or later had to incorporate at least the appearance of institutional concerns in their papers to avoid indigestion whenever lunching with colleagues outside the field of economics" They add: "If the new interests of modern labor economics are in fact driven by the imperatives of science, then the institutionalist and the neoclassical approaches may well synthesize".
The Influence Of London On Labor Markets In Southern England, 1830-1914, George R. Boyer
The Influence Of London On Labor Markets In Southern England, 1830-1914, George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] Historians have long acknowledged that London, because of its enormous size and rapidly growing demand for labor, acted as a powerful magnet for migrants from throughout southern England. However, while there is a large literature documenting the flow of migrants to London, there have been surprisingly few attempts to determine the consequences of this migration for southern labor markets. This article attempts to redress the imbalance in the literature by examining the influence of London on agricultural labor markets during the nineteenth century. In particular, the article examines the effect of distance from London on wage rates in southern …
[Review Of The Book Labour History And The Labour Movement In Britain], George R. Boyer
[Review Of The Book Labour History And The Labour Movement In Britain], George R. Boyer
George R. Boyer
[Excerpt] While this volume contains some important pieces, it is uneven in quality, and several of the papers, in my opinion, should have been omitted. Given the very high price of the book, the fact that it omits Pollard's important papers on factory discipline and his chapter from the Cambridge Economic History of Europe, and the ready availability in journals of the best papers, I cannot recommend it to anyone but librarians who happen to have unlimited sources of money. One can only hope that in the future Ashgate or another publisher will reprint, at reasonable prices, Sidney Pollard's excellent …