This chapter presents a framework for understanding changes in the wage structure and overall earnings inequality. The framework emphasizes the role of supply and demand factors and the interaction of market forces and labor market institutions. Recent changes in the US wage structure are analyzed in detail to highlight crucial measurement issues that arise in studying wage structure changes and to illustrate the operation of the supply-demand-institution framework. The roles of skill-biased technological change, globalization forces, changes in demographics and relative skill supplies, industry labor rents, unions, and the minimum wage in the evolution of the US wage structure are examined. Recent wage structure changes are placed in a longer-term historical perspective, and differences and similarities in wage structure changes among OECD nations are assessed. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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Changes in the Wage Structure and Earnings Inequality

This paper analyzes the impact of automatic enrollment on 401(k) savings behavior. We have two key e ndings. First, 401(k) participation is signie cantly higher under automatic enrollment. Second, a substantial fraction of 401(k) participants hired under automatic enrollment retain both the default contribution rate and fund allocation even though few employees hired before automatic enrollment picked this particular outcome. This “ default” behavior appears to result from participant inertia and from employee perceptions of the default as investment advice. These e ndings have implications for the design of 401(k) savings plans as well as for any type of Social Security reform that includes personal accounts over which individuals have control. They also shed light more generally on the importance of both economic and noneconomic (behavioral) factors in the determination of individual savings behavior.

/pdf/the-power-of-suggestion-inertia-in-401-k-participation-and-10l20e4e9q.pdf

The Power of Suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) Participation and Savings Behavior

Economics Of Discrimination

What is the optimal number of entrants in a race, or the optimal number of teams in a baseball league? What is the optimal structure of prizes for a golf tournament, or degree of revenue sharing for a football championship? How evenly balanced should the competing teams be in the NASCAR or Formula One championships? What is the maximum number of entrants per nation to the Olympic Games that should be permitted? What quota of qualifying teams to the soccer World Cup should be allocated to the developing nations?

https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/_file/Sports%20Law%20Policy%20and%20Research%20Institute/Szymanski%20Economic%20Design%20of%20Sports%20Contests_JEL%20published%20version.pdf

The Economic Design of Sporting Contests

This paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas. For our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods... and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure....I shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children...[and] I restrict attention largely to Western societies. (EXCERPT)

Children and Household Economic Behavior

Between 1973 and 1988, private-sector unionism fell by 9.5 percentage points more for men than women, and the gender wage gap (one minus the ratio of female to male wages) decreased by.09. These trends support two findings: First, unionism fell more slowly for women primarily because the probability of unionism fell most rapidly in jobs dominated by males. Second, the greater decline in unionism among males is responsible for approximately one-seventh of the.09 decline in the gender wage gap.

The Decline of Private-Sector Unionism and the Gender Wage Gap.

Plant size and the decline of unionism

The well-documented lower labor turnover in large firms than in smaller firms has been cited as evidence that large firms pay workers above their opportunity wage This study investigates whether t

Employer Size and Labor Turnover: The Role of Pensions

The aggregate probability of ending a career interruption that begins at childbirth is shown to diminish rapidly with the length of the interruption. The empirical models estimated suggest that the decline can be explained by a combination of structural duration dependence, unobserved heterogeneity, and differences in observed characteristics. The probability of returning to employment for a group of women with identical observed characteristics is found to have an L-shaped distribution for the majority of the sample, suggesting that many women have a very low probability of returning.

Career Interruptions Following Childbirth

This study provides rationale for the underrepresentation of women in the pension sector and examines the consequences for the gender wage gap. For a given set of observed characteristics, a woman is 11-19 percent less likely than a man to have a pension. Of the unexplained portion of the gender wage gap, 10-38 percent is due to unexplained differences in pension coverage. Finally, consistent with a screening effect of pensions, women are paid more equally in the pension sector. Copyright 1990 by MIT Press.

William E. Even

Papers

The Decline of Private-Sector Unionism and the Gender Wage Gap.

Plant size and the decline of unionism

Employer Size and Labor Turnover: The Role of Pensions

Career Interruptions Following Childbirth

The Gender Gap in Pensions and Wages