This dissertation investigates the effect of the worker's fallback position on the wage determination process, specifically, on the wage slowdown in the 1980s. It is argued that the failure of the traditional wage models to account for the wage slowdown in the 1980s and some other unusual wage developments is attributable to the neglect of an important dimension in the wage determination process, namely, the worker's fallback position. The dissertation also reexamines the role of the worker's fallback position on the changing cyclical variability of wages in the postwar period. It is argued in chapter 2 that the worker's fallback position occupies a central position in the labor discipline model (and in models of bargaining). The theoretical model developed is subjected to econometric estimation with the estimates of the worker's fallback position in chapter 3. It is shown that the wage change equation, when supplemented by the fallback position, provides a superior empirical explanation for the wage slowdown in the 1980s to the traditional wage equations, which are obviously under-specified. It is argued in chapter 4 that the theoretical framework of labor discipline model is inconsistent with some hypotheses that ascribe the decline in the cyclical variability of wages to the increase in the worker's fallback position. They are not empirically confirmed, either. An alternative hypothesis which links the changes in the cyclical variability of wages to the degree of cyclicity of the fallback position is proposed and it is roughly consistent with the postwar experiences. The dissertation concludes by discussing limitations with this study and normative issues as to the worker's fallback position.

No description available.

This paper finds an insignificant negative correlation between youth employment and minimum wages for the panel of U.S. states, 1976-2015. Such a correlation is not observed in earlier panels. The source of the new results is traced to the greatest decline in employment-population ratio since the 1970s emerging during the financial crisis of 2008. Moreover, I discuss the likely causes of the recent sharp decline in employment-population ratio and propose that more factors should be taken into account when examining the effect of the minimum wage policy.

This paper examines the role of labor leverage in determining cash held by companies on their balance sheets. Labor leverage is defined as an off-balance sheet intangible liability that is created by the fixed obligation for firms to pay wages to their workers. In this study, I analyze both unconstrained and constrained firms and find that the risk associated with labor leverage plays an important part on how much cash companies can hold. I find that unconstrained firms have higher levels of cash holdings to cover the labor leverage liability, while constrained firms are not able to hold cash because of their constrained nature. These results are robust to alternative specifications including and excluding industry and year dummies, as well as the use of firm fixed effects, and are mostly consistent across industries and over time.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.

<p> The current quantitative study used statistical analysis to determine if a significant relationship existed between outsourced human resource core and non-core competencies (predictor variables) and firm performance (criterion variable). A random sample of 153 human resource professionals were selected from the targeted population of 351 personnel. Cronbach&rsquo;s alpha reliability statistics were presented for the scales. Spearman rho correlation coefficient tests were conducted to address two research questions. Spearman&rsquo;s rho indicated a significant association existed between outsourced payroll and overall financial performance (<i>r</i>_s = .43, <i>p</i> &lt; .001). This finding indicated individuals who identified payroll as a core task also rated their firm&rsquo;s overall financial performance higher. Spearman&rsquo;s rho indicated significance (<i>r</i>_s = .26, <i>p</i> = .003) between outsourced information systems and overall financial performance. Four hypotheses were tested that involved the outsourcing of human resource core and non-core competencies and their effect on firm performance. The four null hypotheses were partially rejected in favor of the alternative hypotheses. In addition, results of the statistical analyses indicated that a significant association existed between payroll, information systems, overall financial performance, and overall non-financial performance.</p>

An employment relationship consists of many dimensions other than monetary compensation. Textbook economic theory implies employers and employees will agree upon an efficient level of such nonwage compensation based on an employee's preferences and the employer's cost. At the same time, most types of nonwage compensation are set in a context of substantial regulation, legal restrictions, and other interventions. This dissertation investigates how regulatory intervention and other changes to the external environment affect firms' decisions regarding two types of nonwage compensation: workplace safety and employment mobility. Chapter One investigates how media coverage of employers caught violating workplace safety and health regulations affects future compliance. Using quasi-random variation in media coverage induced by a policy change at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), I find coverage about one employer leads to significantly higher compliance among other employers likely exposed to it. The results are most consistent with employers acting defensively to avoid their own future publicity. This work contributes to a growing literature investigating how providing information to stakeholders about sellers' quality leads to quality improvements. Chapter Two examines how workplaces respond to health and safety regulatory enforcement inspections. We first analyze the effects of randomized inspections on safety and business outcomes of inspected workplaces. We find inspections lead to significantly fewer injuries and have no detectable effect on business outcomes. We then attempt to identify the types of workplaces where inspections are more or less effective. Chapter Three investigates why employers have employees sign non-compete agreements (NCAs), which contractually limit where the employee can work in the event of a job separation. NCAs may solve hold-up problems that limit incentives to invest in transferable assets (e.g. general human capital). At the same time, NCAs may impose large costs on employees who sign them. We develop a model of how labor market conditions and liquidity constraints can jointly determine the decision to include an NCA in a hiring contract. We find strong support for the model's predictions using a survey we conducted among employers in the high-end hair salon industry, one in which NCAs are a large and growing phenomenon.

Labor economists have persistently observed a “gap” in the earnings of men and women. In this paper, I attempt to offer a partial explanation for the gender wage gap by analyzing the gender wage gap across male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-neutral occupations. Using data from the Current Population Survey (2010-2012), I perform three Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions across the entire sample. I then perform decompositions across male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-neutral occupations separately using the first specification. I find that occupations of different gender concentrations (male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-neutral) have different gender gaps. In particular, male-dominated and gender neutral occupations have a much larger gender wage gap than female-dominated occupations, even after controlling for human capital and demographic variables. Combined with previous research and summary statistics, these results seem to suggest that certain workplace factors that might contribute to a higher gender wage gap, such as workplace inflexibility and gender discrimination, could be higher among male-dominated and gender-neutral occupations than they are among female-dominated occupations; however, further research into the precise characteristics of male-dominated, gender-neutral, and female-dominated occupations is necessary to confirm this analysis.

The first chapter studies mass layoff decisions. Firms in the SP 500 often announce layoffs within days of one another, despite the fact that the average SP 500 constituent announces layoffs once every 5 years. By contrast, similar-sized privately-held firms do not behave in this way. This paper provides a theoretical model and empirical evidence illustrating that such clustering behavior is largely due to CEOs managing their reputation in financial markets. The model's predictions are tested using two novel datasets of layoff announcements and actual mass layoffs. I compare the layoff behavior of publicly-listed and privately-held firms to estimate the impact of reputation-based incentives on cyclicality of layoffs. I find that relative to private firms, public firms are twice as likely to conduct mass layoffs in a recession month. In addition, I find that the firms that cluster layoff announcements at high frequencies are also the ones that are more likely to engage in mass layoffs during recessions. My findings suggest that reputation management is an important driver of layoff policies both at daily frequencies and over the business cycle, and can have significant macroeconomic consequences. In the second chapter I present a theory of the safe assets market and make three central points. First, the quantity of safe assets has a strong influence on equilibrium risk premium and households’ willingness to hold risky assets. Second, the banking system and its regulation largely determine the quantity of safe assets (money-like claims) available to households. Lastly, by regulating banks’ safe asset creation, central bank policy influences risk premium even in a flexible-price world. I show that the optimal central banking policy involves managing risk in the economy, which sometimes calls for large interventions. The third chapter studies the asset allocation decisions of investors and central banks. This chapter identifies the fundamental drivers for these decisions and determines whether their influence has been altered by the global financial crisis and subsequent low interest rate environment in advanced economies. The fourth chapter analyzes the welfare losses of taxation in a simple dynamic moral hazard model under symmetric information. / Economics

<p> This dissertation continues the tradition of identifying the unintended consequences of the US health insurance system. Its main contribution is to estimate the size of the distortions caused by the employer-based system and regulations intended to fix it, while using methods that are more novel and appropriate than those of previous work. </p><p> Chapter 1 examines the effect of state-level health insurance mandates, which are regulations intended to expand access to health insurance. It finds that these regulations have the unintended consequence of increasing insurance premiums, and that these regulations have been responsible for 9&ndash;23% of premium increases since 1996. The main contribution of the chapter is that its results are more general than previous work, since it considers many more years of data, and it studies the employer-based plans that cover most Americans rather than the much less common individual plans. </p><p> Whereas Chapter 1 estimates the effect of the average mandate on premiums, Chapter 2 focuses on a specific mandate, one that requires insurers to cover prostate cancer screenings. The focus on a single mandate allows a broader and more careful analysis that demonstrates how health policies spill over to affect the labor market. I find that the mandate has a significant negative effect on the labor market outcomes of the very group it was intended to help. The mandate expands the treatments health insurance covers for men over age 50, but by doing so it makes them more expensive to insure and employ. Employers respond to this added expense by lowering wages and hiring fewer men over age 50. According to the theoretical model put forward in the chapter, this suggests the mandate reduces total welfare. </p><p> Chapter 3 shows that the employer-based health insurance system has deterred entrepreneurship. It takes advantage of the natural experiment provided by the Affordable Care Act's dependent coverage mandate, which de-linked insurance from employment for many 19&ndash;25 year olds. Difference-in-difference estimates show that the mandate increased self-employment among the treated group by 13&ndash;24%. Instrumental variables estimates show that those who actually received parental health insurance as a result of the mandate were drastically more likely to start their own business. This suggest that concerns over health insurance are a major barrier to entrepreneurship in the United States.</p>