Changes in the Relative Economic Performance of Immigrants to Great Britain and the United States, 1980–2000

We compare the relative labour market performance of immigrants in the USA and in Britain over the period 1980–2000, when the stocks of immigrants were rising in both countries alongside differential shifts in demand and changes to labour market institutions. We find that the average relative employment prospects of immigrants are generally better in the USA than in Britain, particularly for non‐white immigrants, while the average relative wage prospects for immigrants are generally better in Britain, particularly for men. Over time, relative wage and employment prospects for immigrants to the USA appear to have deteriorated, particularly among women, in a way that is not as apparent in Britain.     

Skilled Immigration,Innovation, and the Wages of Native‐Born Americans

The paper examines the effects of skilled immigration on wages that can be credited to immigrants’ contribution to innovation. Using both individual and state‐level datasets from the United States, we find a significant and positive effect of immigration on wages that is attributable to skilled immigrants’ contribution to innovation. Our results confirm previous findings that immigrants contribute substantially to the host economy's innovation, which is a major driver of technological progress and productivity growth. When we augment the analysis to an immigration–innovation–wages nexus, the results suggest that as the share of skilled immigrants in a particular skill group increases, the wages of both natives and immigrants in that group also get a positive boost. We also identify evidence in favor of a positive spillover effect of skilled immigrants on a state's wage level of all workers, including those who do not directly contribute to innovation.     

The Effects of Minimum Wages on Low‐Skilled Immigrants’ Wages,Employment, and Poverty

Raising the minimum wage has been advanced as complementary policy to comprehensive immigration reform to improve low‐skilled immigrants’ economic well‐being. While adverse labor demand effects could undermine this goal, existing studies do not detect evidence of negative employment effects. We re‐investigate this question using data from the 1994 to 2016 Current Population Survey and conclude that minimum wage increases reduced employment of less‐educated Hispanic immigrants, with estimated elasticities of around –0.1. However, we also find that the wage and employment effects of minimum wages on low‐skilled immigrants diminished over the last decade. This finding is consistent with more restrictive state immigration policies and the Great Recession inducing outmigration of low‐skilled immigrants, as well as immigrants moving into the informal sector. Finally, our results show that raising the minimum wage is an ineffective policy tool for reducing poverty among immigrants.     

Training and the Growth of Wage Inequality

Shifts in the incidence of training over the 1980s favored more-educated, more-experienced workers. These shifts, coupled with increases in returns to skill, suggest that training may have contributed to the growth of between-group wage inequality in this period. However, because 1) the shifts in training were too small, and 2) the returns to training did not rise, only small fractions of the increases in returns to schooling and experience over this period can be explained by changes in the distribution of or returns to training.     

Wage Effects of On‐the‐Job Training: A Meta‐Analysis

A meta‐analysis is used to study the average wage effects of on‐the‐job training. This study shows that the average reported wage effect of on‐the‐job training, corrected for publication bias, is 2.6 per cent per course. The analyses reveal a substantial heterogeneity between training courses, while wage effects reported in studies based on instrumental variables and panel estimators are substantially lower than estimates based on techniques that do not correct for selectivity issues. Appropriate methodology and the quality of the data turn out to be crucial to determine the wage returns.     

Union Wage Gap in the U.S. Construction Sector: 1983–2007

Wage gap decomposition shows that declining union power was the principal force behind the shrinking union wage premium in the U.S. construction industry between the 1980s and the 2000s. This decline was largely offset by changes in returns to workforce attributes and workforce compositions. Without these moderating effects, the decline in the wage gap would have been twice as large (in log points). The patterns were similar in the basic and mechanical trades, but magnitudes of change were larger in the latter.     

Individual Wage Growth: The Role of Industry Experience

This paper focuses on the effect of experience within an industry on wages. I use a correlated random effects simultaneous equation model that allows individual and match heterogeneity to affect wages, job tenure, and industry experience. I estimate my model separately for men and women using a large panel of young Italian workers for the years 1986–2004. Results show that wage returns to industry experience are much higher than wage returns to job seniority. The hypotheses of exogeneity of job seniority and industry experience in the wage equation are rejected: high‐wage workers and high‐wage matches last longer.     

Rising Wage Inequality, Returns to Education and Labour Market Institutions: Evidence from Ireland

Institutional factors and increased supply of skilled labour have been advanced in an effort to explain why some countries have experienced smaller increases in earnings dispersion and in returns to education than the USA and the UK. Ireland has had a highly centralized wage bargaining structure and the supply of skilled labour has increased sharply in recent years; hence, relatively little change in earnings dispersion might be expected. We compare the distribution of earnings in Ireland in 1987 and 1994 and find a surprisingly large growth in earnings dispersion. In addition, using a decomposition technique, we find that much of this is accounted for by increasing returns to measured.     

A Note on Job Mobility Among Workers with Disabilities

This article uses data from the 1990 and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to analyze relationships between disability status and job mobility. We identify individuals who experienced voluntary or involuntary job separations over a 20-month period and examine the effect of disability status on rates of job change and wage growth following a job change. The results show that disabled workers are more likely to experience involuntary job changes than are nondisabled workers, but there is little difference in the wage effects of job changes by disability status.     

The Postmilitary Earnings of Female Veterans

The role of women in the military has grown rapidly. Using standard datasets and a special survey of reservists, female veterans are found to have better earnings endowments than nonveterans. Although female veterans have higher unadjusted earnings than nonveterans, a wage disadvantage is found for white but not nonwhite veterans following control for measured and unmeasured skills. Low returns to military service may result from historically limited military opportunities for women and difficulty in transferring skills to civilian jobs.     

The Immigrant Earnings Disadvantage across the Earnings and Skills Distributions: The Case of Immigrants from the EU's New Member States

We analyse the earnings of immigrants from the EU's new member states (NMS) using a large‐scale dataset with information on employees in Ireland. We find that the average earnings difference between these immigrants and natives is between 10 and 18 per cent, depending on the controls used. However, the difference is found to be lower for people at the lower end of the earnings distribution. It is also generally lower for people at the lower end of the education distribution. We find mixed evidence on whether unions have an impact on the wages of immigrants from the NMS, although such immigrants appear to suffer a wage penalty as a result of being in firms that provided training to a significant proportion of their workforce.     

Estimating the Wage Premium of Collective Wage Contracts: Evidence from Longitudinal Linked Employer–Employee Data

Using a large‐scale linked employer–employee dataset from western Germany, this paper presents new evidence on the wage premium of collective bargaining contracts. In contrast to previous studies, we seek to assess the extent to which differences in wages between workers in covered and uncovered firms arise from the nonrandom selection of workers and firms into collective bargaining coverage. By measuring the relative wage changes of workers employed in firms that change contract status, we obtain estimates that depart considerably from previous results relying on cross‐sectional data. Results from analyzing separate transitions show that leaving industry‐level contracts is associated with subsequent wage losses. However, the results from a trend‐adjusted difference‐in‐difference approach indicate that particularly the transitions to no coverage appear to be associated with negative shocks. Overall, our findings provide no evidence of a “true” wage effect of leaving wage bargaining, once we account for differences in pretransition wage growth.     

Tipped Wage Effects on Earnings and Employment in Full‐Service Restaurants

We exploit more than 20 years of changes in state‐level tipped wage policy and estimate earnings and employment effects of the tipped wage using county‐level panel data on full‐service restaurants (FSR). We extend earlier work by Dube, Lester, and Reich ( 2010 ) and compare outcomes between contiguous counties that straddle a state border. We find a 10‐percent increase in the tipped wage increases earnings in FSRs about 0.4 percent. Employment elasticities are sensitive to the inclusion of controls for unobserved spatial heterogeneity. In our preferred models, we find small, insignificant effects of the tipped wage on FSR employment.     

Measuring the Union–Nonunion Wage Gap Using Propensity Score Matching

This paper examines the union wage effect among private sector wage and salary workers using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data. We estimate the average union premium by utilizing semi (non) parametric matching techniques, as well as by linear regression model. Our analysis reveals: (1) conditioning linearly on covariates understates the union wage effect. In addition, matching results under the alternative support conditions indicate that selection on unobservables has at most a modest impact on average. (2) Log wage estimations lead to an overstatement of the union wage effect. Solving these problems yields the union membership premium as 21.5 percent.     

The Impact of Living‐Wage Ordinances on Urban Crime

We examine the impact of living wages on crime. Past research has found that living wages appear to increase unemployment while providing greater returns to market work. The impact on crime, therefore, is unclear. Using data on annual crime rates for large cities in the United States, we find that living‐wage ordinances are associated with notable reductions in property‐related crime and no discernable impact on nonproperty crimes.     

Minimum Wage Impacts from a Prespecified Research Design: Canada 1981–1997

Neumark (2001 ) used the novel methodology of a prespecified research design to estimate the employment effect of minimum wage changes. We conducted our analysis in the “spirit” of this methodology based on Canadian data from 1981 to 1997. Our minimum wage elasticities are substantial, typically in the range of ?0.14 to ?0.44, with ?0.30 being a reasonable point estimate, and with the effects being larger after lagged adjustments.     

Wage Cyclicality Under Different Regimes of Industrial Relations

We analyze the effect of collective wage agreements and of works councils on the cyclicality of real wages. Using employer–employee data for western Germany (1995–2004), we find that wage adjustments to positive and negative shocks are generally not symmetric. Wage growth increases in all industrial relations regimes when unemployment is falling, but this inverse relationship is weaker when unemployment is rising. Moreover, in plants with individual‐level bargaining, wages do not adjust at all to rising unemployment. Works councils increase wage growth only in firms covered by sectoral agreements, but they do not affect the cyclicality of wages.     

Non‐Standard Time Wage Premiums and Employment Effects: Evidence from an Australian Natural Experiment

We examine the effect of increasing Sunday wage premiums on retail industry employment in Australia, exploiting a quasi‐experimental policy change across two neighbouring states. Using both aggregate and individual‐level data, we adopt a difference‐in‐difference regression framework to estimate the causal impact of the policy change on employment outcomes. We find no evidence of changes in the total number of employees, and no effect on hours per employee in the years following the policy implementation. However, there appeared to be a decline in hours per employee in the announcement year of the policy change. Overall, it appears that in an industry dominated by part‐time and casual employment, any adjustment to the new Sunday wage rates occurred principally through flexibility in hours, rather than in the number of employees.     

The Greek Public Sector Wage Premium before the Crisis: Size,Selection and Relative Valuation of Characteristics

We examine the Greek public–private wage differential before the debt crisis to evaluate the prospective impact of the recent public sector pay cuts. We find a large public premium which persists after controlling for individual and job characteristics. For men, much of this is accounted for by self‐selection into the sector that rewards better their characteristics, while for women it is largely driven by sectoral differences in returns. We attribute these effects to more egalitarian pay structures in the public sector and to demand problems in the private sector. The recent policy measures only partially change this situation, as wage deflation extends to the private sector, preserving public premia for the low paid.     

Does an Entrepreneurial Career Pay for Women in China?

Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project survey in 2013, our male–female pay‐gap decomposition illustrates that the gender earnings gap is larger among the self‐employed than the wage‐employed after controlling for the effect of various pay‐determining characteristics. Our self‐employed versus wage‐employed decomposition also controls for selection into self‐employment as well as those pay‐determining characteristics. We find that wage‐employed women would earn less than their current earnings if they shifted to self‐employment, while wage‐employed men would earn more than their current earnings if they became self‐employed. In essence, self‐employed women suffer from double jeopardy. They not only earn less than men in self‐employment due to lower returns for the same pay‐determining characteristics, but women in self‐employment also earn less than women in wage employment when they have the same pay‐determining characteristics.