Enforcing OSHA: The Role of Labor Unions

This study examines the role of unions in implementing the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) by using a data set that provides information on regulatory enforcement. The analysis demonstrates that unionized establishments are more likely to receive safety and health inspections, face greater scrutiny in the course of those inspections, and pay higher penalties for violating health and safety standards than comparable nonunion establishments. Implementation of OSHA therefore seems highly dependent upon the presence of a union at the workplace.     

CROSSING DUPUIT'S BRIDGE AGAIN: A TRIGGER POLICY FOR EFFICIENT INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE

This paper borrows Dupuit's parable of a bridge so as to reexamine the problem of selecting and financing public investment projects in a dynamic and strategic setting. A regulator imposes a price ceiling, and a firm makes a sunk investment each period. Three simple examples reveal the connection between the non-cooperative equilibrium of this relationship and the second-best optimum. One cannot implement this "planning solution" generally since the firm and the regulator each behaves opportunistically toward the other's irreversible actions. The facility never will be built if investment in it is infinitely lumpy and if the facility is perfectly durable. Departing from this extreme case, however, one can restore proper incentives by adopting "trigger policies." The regulator responds to a deviation from a candidate path by cutting price down to operating cost, and the firm halts all investment. If capital does not depreciate too slowly and the future is not discounted too much, then one can approximate the planning solution by an equilibrium. The success of trigger policies suggests that reformers should relax many regulatory rules and procedures to support efficient investment in infrastructure.     

Production Technology and the Interindutry Wage Structure

This paper presents a model in which production technology (scale and capital-intensity) explains interindustry differences in the earnings of workers with similar skill in similarly attrative jobs. The empirical analysis shows that manufacturing industires fall into three segments with broadly similar production technologies, and that prodcut market and employment characteristics vary as expected across these segments. Capital intensity and job-skill requirements are found to have positive wage effects for the full set of industries, but the resluts by segment suggest that the capital-intensity effect increases, and the skill effects decreases, with the capital-intensity of prodcution.     

The Effect of Taxes on the Relative Valuation of Dividends and Capital Gains: Evidence from Dual-Class British Investment Trusts

We provide evidence that taxes affect equity valuation by studying British investment trusts having otherwise identical classes of cash- and stock-dividend-paying shares outstanding. We study 1969–1982, a period in which there were two dramatic changes in tax policy. We find that stock-dividend shares, which are convertible into cash-dividend shares, sell at premiums when the tax system favors capital gains and at discounts when the tax advantage of capital gains is reduced. After the 1975 elimination of the tax advantage to stock-dividend shares, we observe that investors convert virtually all stock-dividend shares into cash-dividend shares.     

A QUALITY POLICY FOR AMERICA

This paper describes Total Quality Management (TQM) and its benefits. It then outlines a three-point proposal for a national quality policy: (i) implementing TQM throughout the U.S. government, (ii) creating a set of nationally recognized certifications for employees' quality skills, (Hi) creating a set of nationally recognized supplier quality certifications.