Previous research has generally shown a very small although statistically significant economic benefit from attending high-quality colleges. This small effect was at odds with what students' college choices and various social theories would seem to suggest. This study sought to reconcile the empirical evidence and theories. The effort was in two directions. First, the economic effect of college quality was reexamined--not only for an "average" student, but also for different students. Second, the effect of college quality was expanded from examining only the economic benefit to considering other student outcomes, including job satisfaction and graduate degree accomplishment. A new perspective regarding the social role of college quality was offered in conclusion.

Workers' compensation insurance in the United States began in the early twentieth century when states rapidly enacted their own versions to protect workers and limit the liability of employers. Premiums account for two percent of payrolls, and substantially more in dangerous industries, and therefore represent an important portion of the modern employment compensation package. The introductory section provides an overview of worker's compensation insurance. The second chapter outlines the crucial issues relevant to workers' compensation programs between 1930 and 2000. It also explains how the program has evolved over the past seventy years. The third chapter delves into the political economy of workers' compensation benefits. States passed workers' compensation laws in the early twentieth century and continue to frequently update important aspects of these statutes. The trend has been for state legislatures to mandate more generous benefits; however, these changes seldom occur simultaneously in all states. A panel dataset is used to explain why states mandate unequal benefits. These benefits differ in several ways, including wage replacement rates, maximum weekly benefits, and the duration of payments. To take into account the important variation, state-level information is used to construct an index that describes the expected net present value of benefits an average worker might expect to receive in each state for each year. The results suggest that federal and state governments, employment characteristics, and unionization each influence overall benefits. Then, the interaction between the wages that workers earn and their state-mandated workers' compensation benefits is explored. Economic theory implies that, all else equal, higher expected benefits will be offset by lower wages. A new strategy is developed to reduce the biases inherent in the earlier estimation techniques. I apply a two-step procedure that divides the sample and uses separate measures of benefits to understand the impact on workers' wages. The results suggest that wage offsets are largely avoided by high-wage workers and offsets for workers in hazardous occupations vary over time.

Inequalities in the commodification of labor are constitutive for economic activities that span political borders. Increasing global economic integration at the end of the twentieth century is motivated part by new opportunities to exploit such inequalities. Despite this fundamental characteristic of global economic relations, the twentieth century has also witnessed the evolution of an institutional framework of international labor regulation, produced and monitored by the International Labor Organization (ILO), that aims at reducing inequalities in working conditions and protecting workers from the extremes of economic competition, i.e. decommodifying labor. What factors account for the formation of a world labor regime in the twentieth century? And, given the apparent contradiction between the purpose of the ILO's world labor regime and the roots of economic globalization in inequalities in labor commodification, what effects has the world labor regime had for workers on the ground? This study explores the formation and effects of the world labor regime in the twentieth century. Neo-institutionalist theories of an emergent world culture and world polity provide a useful framework for understanding the diffusion of symbolic constructs and institutional forms on a world scale, but they tend to de-emphasize questions of agency, power and conflict. Global class conflict approaches (world systems theory, dependent development theory, dependency theory) help to situate the formation of the ILO's global labor regime in the context of global patterns of exploitation, stratification, dependence and conflict. Three dimensions of world labor regime formation are examined: the historical roots of the world labor regime in the nineteenth century, the articulation of international labor standards by the ILO, and the ratification of those standards by ILO member countries, between 1919-1999. This study examines the impact of member countries' integration in the world labor regime on labor protest, and on workers' rights. The most important findings concern the dynamic relationships between labor protest and world labor regime formation, and the significant effects of countries' labor regime integration on the protection of workers' rights. The formation and integration of the world labor regime is in part a co-optive response to the threat posed by working class mobilization; nevertheless, integration in the world labor regime does appear to benefit workers on the ground.

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In times of shifting cultural and institutional priorities, the acquisition and preservation of private records by large publicly funded archival institutions is becoming increasingly problematic. Repositories are looking for new ways of meeting their cultural mandates while also dealing with reduced budgets and staffing levels. This thesis examines the issue from the perspective of who is to be responsible for the preservation of labour union records and where are they to be preserved. After putting the issue in context with an literature review and then by examining the juridical and social framework within which unions operate the thesis studies the question from two traditional perspectives: preservation solely by an archival institution and preservation solely by the organization or union. The thesis concludes by recommending a third option, a mixed or shared responsibility approach between the union and the institution, specifically, a cost-shared / partnership arrangement between the union and archival repository regarding the acquisition and preservation of labour union records.

Title: Integration of unemployed immigrants into the labor market in Gävle Authors: Ibrahim Adan Issack and Ekaterina Ivanova The aim of this study was to investigate unemployed immigrant’s description of how they perceive the labor market in Gävle. Qualitative method face-to-face interviews were used to gather data. The results of this study shows that an unemployed immigrant seems to encounter hinders and opportunities in the labor market. The following five issues were described as being most important in influencing immigrants’ employment opportunities in Gävle: Swedish language knowledge, previous education, discrimination, social network and family situation. Ecological system theory and previous research were used to analyze the gathered results.  Key words: integration, immigrant, labor market.

The study finds evidence of a cohort effect in female to male wage differentials caused by a greater earnings growth across generations. This imply a steeper female wage profile than is commonly accepted in the literature. The results presented in this paper also support the findings of Gold and Vella (1991) and Vella (1991). There is a significant impact from correcting for endogeneity of experience and education in the estimation of the wage equation. This finding is important since it implies that ignoring the correction for endogeneity will lead to problems of inconsistency in the estimation of the parameters. Our results show that this inconsistency leads to underestimation of the impact of experience in the wage equation.

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