Fighting for Other Folks' Wages: The Logic and Illogic of Living Wage Campaigns

Living wage campaigns have enacted ordinances/policies to raise low wages in over 100 localities. The campaigns galvanize citizens more than national economic issues and allow for pay increases fine-tuned to local realities, but cover relatively few workers. To help the low-paid broadly, the coalitions in living wage campaigns have to scale up to the state or national level while unions and national groups work to devolve labor issues from the gridlock at the federal level to states and localities.     

Wages,Housing Prices and Commutes

Whereas economic theory suggests that, all else equal, workers should be willing to accept disamenities such as higher housing costs and longer commutes only if they are compensated with higher wages, little is known about the magnitude of these compensating differentials. In this article, I address this gap in the literature by estimating an empirical model of the relationship between wages, housing prices and commutes that addresses the simultaneous determination of these variables. The results from the empirical models suggest that the wage premia associated with high housing costs and long commutes are substantial. Furthermore, results from baseline models reveal that estimates of these compensating differentials are seriously biased if endogeneity is not addressed.     

Wages, Nonwage Compensation, and Municipal Unions

This study demonstrates that union power in municipal labor markets depends upon the form of unionization within each municipal department and on municipal bargaining policies, holding constant the legal environment. Bargaining units achieve larger increases in total compensation than unrecognized organizations, which are themselves stronger than unorganized departments. Compensation levels for unorganized and organized departments are higher in cities that bargain with other departments than in cities which do not bargain. Union wage effects understate total compensation effects regardless of the degree of unionization     

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.     

员工工资、培训与跳槽:一个劳工合约模型

本文通过劳工合约模型论证了员工工资与企业培训之间的交替关系，并分析了企业向接受培训继而跳槽的员工收取罚金对该交替关系的影响。在跳槽率作为外生变量时．若企业不向跳槽的员工收取罚金．签约员工通常乐于以较低的工资换取更多的技能培训。鉴于此，为使劳动力流动更有利于提高生产力和降低通货膨胀，政府应采取培训导向型的收入政策．或通过货币政策和财政政策的传导，鼓励企业和雇主增加培训支出并取消跳槽罚金。     

Minimum Cash Wages,Tipped Restaurant Workers,and Poverty

This is the first study to examine the effect of increases in the tipped minimum cash wage—the wage employers must pay to tipped employees—on poverty. Using March Current Population Survey data (1988–2014), we find that tipped minimum cash wage increases are associated with declines in the risk of a tipped restaurant worker living in a poor family (elasticities around –0.2). However, we find little evidence of poverty‐alleviating effects when using the household rather than the family as the sharing unit. This result is consistent with evidence that a substantial share of tipped workers who live in a poor family live in a nonpoor household with persons unrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption who contribute to the household's income. Furthermore, we find that tipped minimum cash wage hikes are associated with increases in the risk of a younger, less‐educated individual living in a poor family or household. Adverse labor demand effects that redistribute income among low‐skilled individuals drive these results. We conclude that raising the tipped minimum cash wage is a poorly targeted policy to deliver income to poor restaurant workers.     

Deregulation, Business Strategy, and Wages in the Airline Industry

This study assesses empirically the relationship between business strategy and wages within the context of a significant environmental change—deregulation of the airline industry. Regression results provide limited support for the hypotheses that firms' business strategies would lead to systematic differences in average earnings levels of airline carriers, depending on whether or not the industry was regulated, and that these strategies would operate over and above firms' ability to pay higher wages. It appears that business strategies may be linked to their human resource outcomes even in a heavily unionized environment.     

Extreme Wages,Performance, and Superstars in a Market for Footballers

We study the determinants of superstar wage effects, asking whether productivity or popularity‐based explanations are more appropriate. We use longitudinal wage and performance data for workers (players) and firms (teams) from a particular market for sports talent: Major League Soccer (MLS) in the United States. We find evidence that the top earners, whose annual salaries are mostly not accounted for by their past MLS performances, when compared to other footballers, are paid more because they attract significantly higher stadium attendances and thus revenues. There is no evidence that higher residual salary spending by the teams affects their relative performance in football terms, or that the amounts the teams spend on actual talent affect attendances. Taken together, these results suggest that a popularity‐based explanation of superstar wage effects is appropriate among the top earners in this labor market.     

Temporary Help Work: Earnings,Wages, and Multiple Job Holding*

Temporary help services (THS) employment has been growing in size, particularly among disadvantaged workers. An extended policy debate focuses on the low earnings, limited benefits, and insecurity that such jobs appear to provide. We investigate the earnings and wage differentials observed between THS and other jobs in a sample of disadvantaged workers. We find lower quarterly earnings at THS jobs but a $1 per hour wage premium. We reconcile these findings in terms of the shorter duration and lower hours worked at THS jobs. We interpret the premium as a compensating wage differential.     

The Heterogeneous Effects of Workforce Diversity on Productivity,Wages, and Profits

We estimate the impact of workforce diversity on productivity, wages, and productivity–wage gaps (i.e., profits) using detailed Belgian linked employer–employee panel data. Findings show that educational (age) diversity is beneficial (harmful) for firm productivity and wages. While gender diversity is found to generate significant gains in high‐tech/knowledge‐intensive sectors, the opposite result is obtained in more traditional industries. Estimates neither vary substantially with firm size nor point to sizeable productivity–wage gaps except for age diversity.     

On-the-Job Training, Immigration Reform, and the True Wages of Native Male Workers

This study measures the Immigration Reform and Control Act's (IRCA) impact on the "true" earnings of native workers. True earnings include observed wages and compensation received in the form of on-the-job training (OJT). Using 1983–1992 NLSY data, we present evidence suggesting IRCA reduced the true wages of male natives most likely to be mistaken as unauthorized. Our findings suggest that Mexican Americans suffered the largest decline in post-IRCA OJT. It appears then that antidiscrimination policies following recent immigration reform have not fully protected some U.S. natives against unintended IRCA-related employment discrimination.     

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.     

Immigration, Race, and Labor: Unionization and Wages in the Canadian Labor Market

In Canada, most racial minorities have lower rates of unionization than do members of the majority workforce. Data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics ( N = 32,634) show that racial minority immigrants assimilate into unionization over time. However, unionization reduces net minority wage disadvantages only slightly. Union race relations policies should place more emphasis on collective bargaining as well as on unionization.     

Wage Discrimination, Segregation, and Sex Differences in Wages and Productivity Within and Between Plants

We use panel data on Israeli manufacturing plants to test two explanations of lower wages and lower productivity in plants with a higher percentage of females: (1) within plants women are paid less and are less productive, consistent with no discrimination, and (2) women are segregated into lower-wage and lower-productivity plants. Although the variation in productivity across plants appears to stem from differences in productivity between men and women, the estimates suggest no within-plant wage differential between men and women.     

Sexual Orientation,Income, and Stress at Work

I present a model explaining recent findings that partnered gay men earn less than partnered straight men while partnered lesbian women earn more than partnered straight women. In an environment with compensating differentials and a gender gap in potential income, an income effect leads partnered gay men to choose jobs with lower income and higher amenities than partnered straight men. The same mechanism generates similarly reasoned predictions about income and amenities for women and single people. Canadian data on stressfulness of one's working environment support these predictions.     

城镇化、收入分配与进口贸易

城镇化是中国经济持续发展的重要战略平台,影响着个人收入水平的变动及收入分配差距的变化,从而对进口贸易规模及结构产生影响。本文通过VAR模型的构建、Granger因果检验和脉冲图,对城镇化发展影响个人收入分配差距、个人收入分配差距影响中国进口贸易进行分析。研究结果表明：城镇化发展对个人收入分配差距具有长期、相互的影响作用,个人收入分配差距变化对进口贸易增长具有正态效应。应采取相应措施,通过个人收入分配媒介,发挥城镇化对进口贸易的刺激效能。     

政治资源、经济资源与收入差距

在制衡机制缺位的前提下,政治资源和经济资源的扭曲结合恶化了资源分配的不平等,它是居民收入差距和地区收入差距扩大的重要原因。文章认为,解决政治资源分配不均以及由其导致的经济资源分配不均,即实现政治资源和经济资源的合理结合,对缩小收入差距有积极作用,也是进一步值得研究的重要课题。