Labor Market Analysis and Concerted Behavior

In the first part of this paper, the importance of concerted behavior by workers emerges from examination of some prominent theories which set out to explain wage rigidity in the face of declining demand or excess supply without abandoning key elements of competitive theory. In the second part, the imoportance of certain Keynesian and satificing behavioral postulates in motivating concerted worker behavior is suggested by the shortcomings of some contemporary econmic models of the trade union which assume expected utility maximization and accurate knowledge of market conditions under ordinary circumstances.     

Hispanic Immigration and Labor Market Segmentation

This paper investigates the wage and employment effects of Hispanic immigration on native-born, low-skilled urban workers. The study develops a multiquation model to counter simultaneity bias, isolates the impact of recent illegal aliens from that of settled immigrants and of native interstate movers, calculates separate estimates for female and male employees, subdivided by race and Spanish origin, and tests both conventional and dual labor market theories. The results indicate that recent immigration has not had substantial adverse wage or employment effects.     

Direct Labor Market Effects of Unemployment Insurance

It has been established that relatively high income families receive a disproportionately large share of UI benefits. Little information on the distribution of costs by income class is available, but it is quite possible that the upper income groups may also bear a disproportionately large share of the costs. More empirical research is needed before the redistributive effects of UI can be known with any degree of confidence. There is little argument about the desirability on income mainlenance grounds of extending Unemployment insurance benefits in a recessionary period, all other things being equal. U1 is quite efficient as an income maintenance tool for covered workers. With respect to the unemployment problem, though, it is feared by some that the program goes too far in maintaining the incomes of covered workers, and as a result any extension of UI benefits will aggravate the unemployment problem. The evidence presented here suggests that fears of a major increase in unemployment as a result of such changes are largely unwarranted. However, extended UI benefits would appear to have some small, nontrivial adverse impact on unemployment. Finally, it seems that UI's income distributional impact has been portrayed unjustly as pro-rich. It may be that income is transferred through the UI system from the relatively well-to-do to the relatively poor. There is no scientific way of bringing these considerations to bear in deciding whether or not to restructure the unemployment insurance system. This question can be answered only by invoking fundamental value judgments to decide how sociely would be better off, and I would not presume here to offer my own. This paper will have served its purpose if it has provided the basis for a more informed decision.     

Bricks and Behavior: The Repair and Maintenance Costs of Housing for Persons with Mental Illness

Comprehensive data on 153 properties offering independent living for persons with mental illness are used to examine the effects on repair and maintenance (RM) costs of building quality, neighborhood quality, building size, proportion of tenants with mental illness, and management experience with mentally ill tenants. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the proportion of mentally ill tenants in a building and its RM costs, which suggests favorable behavioral effects on mentally ill tenants of living in the same building with others who are mentally ill. We also find amenity features are associated with higher RM costs in properties where more tenants are mentally ill.     

大学生就业的人力资源市场分析

大学生就业是当前社会关注的热点问题。为促进大学生就业,文章立足社会调查数据,采用描述性实证分析的方法,挖掘出大学生就业难的劳动力市场深层次原因,提出提高大学生人力资源配置和使用效率的路径选择。     

劳动力市场发展模式的国际比较

失业是全球关注的热点问题。为完善我国劳动力市场,促进就业,文章采用比较分析方法,汲取国外劳动力市场发展精髓,并与我国实际相结合,提出促进就业的路径选择,为就业政策的制定提供了理论依据。     

Job Characteristics and Labor Market Discrimination in Promotions

We extend promotion signaling theory to generate new testable implications concerning racial differences in promotions. In our model, promotions signal worker ability. When tasks differ substantially across job levels, the opportunity cost of not promoting qualified non‐whites/non‐Asians is large, so employers are less likely to inefficiently withhold their promotions. Thus, given prepromotion performance, the extent to which non‐whites/non‐Asians have lower promotion probabilities decreases when tasks vary more across levels. Racial differences in wage increases at promotion diminish when tasks vary more across levels. Evidence from a single firm's personnel records supports the model's predictions concerning promotion probabilities.