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The authors deploy a measure of occupational mismatch based on the discrepancy between the portfolio of skills required by an occupation and the array of abilities possessed by the worker for learning those skills. Using data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97), they report distinct gender differences in match quality and changes in match quality over the course of careers. They also show that a substantial portion of the gender wage gap stems from match quality differences among the college educated. College-educated females show a significantly greater likelihood of mismatch than do males. Moreover, individuals with children and those in more flexible occupations tend to experience a larger degree of mismatch. Cohort effects are also evident in the data: College-educated males of the younger cohort (NLSY97) are worse off in terms of match quality compared to the older cohort (NLSY79), even as the younger cohort of women is doing better on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article updates the 1995 study by Macpherson and Hirsch that used monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data from 1973 to 1993 to examine the effects of occupational gender composition on earnings. In the updating process, the authors correct for biases in this data set that are attributable to the inclusion of imputed earners and the misreporting of occupation. They use CPS data from 1996 to 2010 to provide cross-sectional estimates of the impact of the feminization of occupations on wages, as well as its contribution to the gender wage gap. Longitudinal CPS data indicate that the negative effects of gender composition on earnings observed in cross-sectional data are lessened when researchers control for observed heterogeneity and are much reduced when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. These findings are confirmed using much longer panels from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Finally, the use of synthetic panels of aging cohorts suggests that wage penalties are largest for younger cohorts in predominantly female occupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pacts for employment and competitiveness are an integral component of the ongoing process of decentralization of collective bargaining in Germany, a phenomenon that has been hailed as key to that nation's economic resurgence. Yet little is known about the effects of pacts on firm performance. The evidence largely pertains to employment and is decidedly mixed. This article investigates the association between pacts and six outcome indicators using a framework in which the controls comprise establishments that negotiated over pacts but failed to reach agreement on their implementation. An extensive set of robustness checks are run to test the sensitivity of the key findings of the model. There is no suggestion of pacts negatively impacting any of the selected measures of establishment performance. Rather, the evidence points to some positive short- and medium-run effects on firm average wages and possibly employment and innovation as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides updated evidence on the union contract differential in Germany using establishment-wide wage data and two estimation strategies. It provides pairwise estimates of the union differential based on separate samples of collective bargaining leavers and joiners vis-à-vis the corresponding counterfactual groups. We report that average wages increase by 3 to 3.5 percent after entering into a collective agreement and decrease by 3 to 4 percent after abandoning a collective agreement. Excluding establishments that experience mass layoffs does not significantly influence these net findings, although such establishments record wage losses-statistically insignificant for joiners but up to 10 percent in the case of leavers, as compared with the counterfactuals. The backdrop to these new indicative estimates, which are properly conditioned on establishment size and industry affiliation, inter alia, is one of wage stagnation and continuing union decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the decline in collective bargaining coverage in Germany. Using repeat cross-section and longitudinal data from the IAB Establishment Panel, it indicates the overwhelming importance of behavioural as opposed to compositional change in this process. Further, in the first use of survival analysis for the purpose, it also charts workplace transitions into and out of collective bargaining. In addition to providing new estimates of the median duration of coverage, the paper reports on the factors generating entry into and exit from collective bargaining. These influences are found to be distinct but symmetric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses matched employee–employer LIAB data to provide panel estimates of the structure of labor demand in western Germany, 1993–2002, distinguishing between highly skilled, skilled, and unskilled labor and between the manufacturing and service sectors. Reflecting current preoccupations, our demand analysis seeks also to accommodate the impact of technology and trade in addition to wages. The bottom-line interests are to provide elasticities of the demand for unskilled (and other) labor that should assist in short-run policy design and to identify the extent of skill biases or otherwise in trade and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical review of the impact of technical change on the structure of relative wages and employment, and considers some alternative explanations for the immiseration of low skilled workers. In the absence of any clear and distinguishing policy blueprint, the paper also seeks to clarify the major issues raised by our discussion for employment policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the vexed question of the respective roles of market and spillover forces in transmitting inflationary impulses across the labour market. Despite a wealth of journal literature[1], this controversy remains unresolved and the debate as divisive as ever. The fundamental reason for this impasse is that empirical studies have failed convincingly to identify the relative importance of the two forces. Our purpose is to demonstrate why this particular debate has remained so inconclusive, and thereby to highlight the problems that need to be confronted if further progress is to be made in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much debate in the new micro-economics as to the rle of information-acquisition and adjustment activity in the wage determination process, but it remains the case that we know very little about the empirical circumstances in which information is acquired and utilized. Moreover, it can be argued that the search-quit paradigm situation employed by the new micro-economics ignores a number of other
information-acquisition and adjustment possibilities (Addison and Burton, 1975). The aim of the present article is, however, of more modest dimension. One aspect of the information-acquisition process, namely employer wage survey material, is examined. Such information-acquisition activity we would term 'monitoring' and whilst this would appear to open up another element of information activity (wage search as opposed to job search) we are content at this stage to confine ourselves to a largely descriptive approach -- in effect an empirical study of a component part of the more general model. Our findings are thus to be regarded as suggestive rather than definitive. It is to be hoped that the analysis will encourage further research with a view to providing a much needed empirical testing of the new micro-economics.
The analysis proceeds in the following manner. Firstly, the nature and scope of employer wage survey material is examined. Secondly, an attempt is made to establish the accuracy of that material. Thirdly, the wage impact of a sub-sample of surveys is tentatively evaluated. The data input, which relates to manual worker categories, represents a spin-off from a wider study investigating the impact of productivity bargaining upon the local labour market inter-firm wages structure (Addison, 1971 and 1974). Some 28 surveys conducted by nine firms or employers' associations within the Southampton local labour market, 1960-70, are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on key findings according to whether labor market earnings dispersion identified is respectively either of short term or longer term form. Wages and labor mobility; Difficulties and the associated problems of temporal specification; Short run wage differentials; Range of theory of the indeterminacy; Changes in wage dispersion through time.

This article examines wage adjustment processes in Great Britain. The observation of the economic and institutionalist approaches to the analysis of wage determination can become conformable once an economic theory step outside the confining assumptions of the neo-Walrasian paradigm. Thus, it lead the author of this article to formulate an alternative analysis of wage adjustment processes in terms of alternative production and employee adjustment activities in non-tâtonnement labor market. In neo-Walrasian economies, the labor market is assumed to be atomistic, with all market participants acting as wage-takers.

This article reviews certain empirical results arising from the first phase of an investigation into the manual worker industrial wages structure. The major study will in part draw upon the material presented here in attempting a detailed analysis of earnings determination at the broad industry level. The aim of the present paper is, however, of more modest dimension. It is concerned with wage composition and the principal focus of attention will relate to the 'importance' of basic pay in weekly earning, 1968-74. The study proceeds as follows: first, the wider context of the major study is introduced simply to locate the largely descriptive approach here adopted; secondly, the nature of basic rate data is considered; thirdly, the principal data input of the present study, namely New Earnings Survey (N.E.S.) material, is introduced and analyzed, and, fourthly, certain tentative 'explanations' of the observed relationships are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Union endogeneity in relative wage equations has been long recognized. Recently, a new specification test, parsimonious in its computational requirements, has been advocated. This paper investigates the suitability of the test in a switching regression framework and critiques its most widely cited application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of wage patterns is often cited as evidence that the labor market is affected by institutional forces outside the purview of economic theory. In this paper, it is argued that such patterns can be understood as the result of an information-acquiring activity of labor market participants that enhances their chance of survival. Wage comparisons are selected, sometimes mistakenly, in an effort to cope with the uncertainty of the environment. This evolutionary analysis denies a distinction between market forces and spillovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the difficulties encountered in incorporating necessary institutional features of the labor market in wage change analysis. A simple 'institutional' model is advanced to clarify the method and implications of the incorporation of the relevant institutional detail. Certain lacunae of the research literature are identified and the need for relations supplemental to those already identified in that literature emphasized. Further process in applied work necessitates, inter al., recognition of the endogeneity of contract length and mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]