The goal of this research is to determine how the regulatory burden represented by an entire class of laws impacts firm choice decisions. To achieve this end, a comprehensive list of 135 labor regulations that existed in at least one state between 1899 and 1924 was collected. Temporal and regional trends in the passage of labor legislation are described. Significant regional variability is found, with different parts of the nation favoring different classes of labor legislation. Evidence for the presence of regional homogeneity is found. Outlier states that do not fit the overall regional pattern are identified and discussed. Four summary variables are developed using principal components analysis. These variables represent first wave labor laws, second wave labor laws, mining laws, and anti-union laws. First wave laws were common laws passed in most states by 1909. First wave laws were general in nature and probably not binding on employers. Most states enacted second wave laws after 1909. The pattern of passage of these laws was more uniform than that of first wave laws, with most states adopting the more progressive second wave laws by 1924. Anti-union laws also experienced relatively little growth, but were most common in the Southeast. Three of the four summary variables were incorporated into a four-input translog cost function model of state manufacturing establishments over the 1899 to 1919 period. In addition, a variable representing state appropriations for labor programs and enforcement was included in the translog model. Increases in labor legislation resulted in an increase in demand for materials and salaried labor, and a decrease in demand for wage labor. Increases in the number of first wave laws led to an increase in salaried labor demand, possibly due to bureaucratic requirements associated with regulatory compliance. First wave laws had no impact on wage labor, confirming the findings of many that these early laws codified existing practice. In contrast, second wave laws significantly reduced wage labor demand, suggesting that these laws were binding.

This thesis examines the productive and reproductive experiences of discount department store workers. More specifically, I investigate how female and male Wal-Mart employees reproduce and resist their spatial, social and economic relations, both inside their paid workplace, and outside, in their homes and community. I examine the history of discount department stores and workers; the role of place in influencing workers' experiences; the spatial, social and economic divisions of labor in the paid workplace, home and community; and specific acts of reproduction and resistance on the part of my co-workers. I used covert participant observation and informal interviews in order to learn about Wal-Mart workers paid and unpaid work experiences. I was employed for eight months as a part-time salesclerk by Wal-Mart. This enabled me to observe the various spatial, social and economic relations at work within the store, and it allowed me to hear about my co-workers' experiences outside the paid workplace, in the course of everyday conversations.

<p> Renewable portfolio standards have been widely adopted by the many states due in large part to their broad political appeal. Of particular note is the significance that labor market impacts have played in the rhetoric for adopting renewable portfolio standards--they are commonly touted and perceived as net job creating policies. No robust analysis has yet been performed to assess the effectiveness of renewable portfolio standards in achieving this policy goal, however. </p><p> Through regression analysis that directly accounts for previously unconsidered selection biases, this work seeks to approach the question of labor market impacts and determine to what extent renewable portfolio standards have affected employment within the electricity industry as well as the broader economy at both the state and regional levels. </p><p> The presence of selection bias, identified via a Maddala Two-Stage Treatment Effects Model, was found to significantly impact coefficient estimates. Once these biases were econometrically factored out, RPS policies were found to be unambiguously effective at increasing the share of the electricity portfolio provided by renewable energy. The resultant expansion in renewable energy capacity was in turn found to have several statistically significant labor market impacts at both the state and regional levels. </p><p> At the state level, RPS policies are associated with ceteris paribus increases in employment in RE related fields (including installation and production), a decrease in employment in the broader electrical generation sector, and provided no statistically significant impact on overall employment within a state. At the regional level the benefits of RPS policies appear far greater. Under a regional specification an estimated ceteris paribus increase in employment in RE related fields, no statistically significant impact on overall employment in the electrical generation sector, and an increase in total region-wide employment was observed. Estimates of gains of approximately 2% in total regional employment are supported. The discrepancy between state and regional impacts was attributed to both labor and renewable energy capacity leakages across state borders, driven by economies of agglomeration; causing neighboring states to benefit from a local adoption of the RPS policy.</p>

<p>Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Current Population Survey, this work will examine under-reporting of nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses in construction for Hispanics from 1976-2008 at the national level. Previous research implemented different methods and techniques to examine the reasons behind under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses, concluding that the current surveillance system suffers from a problem of chronic under-reporting. By focusing on Hispanics working in construction, and by using different methods to examine to what degree the presence of Hispanics at the worksite contributes to the under-reporting of nonfatal occupational injuries and illness, our findings suggest that the presence of Hispanic construction workers significantly reduces the number of reported injuries. </p><p> A lagged fixed effect model will be used to investigate the under-reporting issue in construction with regard to Hispanics. Usage of this model constituted the first departure from previous research that studied under-reporting in which capture-recapture and face-to-face interviews were used. The second departure was implementing this method in the construction industry. This is the first time a lagged fixed effect model has been used to study this phenomenon (under-reporting in construction), while most literature about under-reporting has been restricted to manufacturing with some covering the overall economy. Lastly, this work is different in its duration and scope: It covers the years from 1976 up to 2008 and includes all 50 states and the District of Columbia. </p><p> From a base model (without inclusion of Hispanics) we can see that the real workers&rsquo; compensation rate negatively impacted all types of injury reporting except light-duty, while union rates, unemployment, wages, and firm size correlate negatively with all types of injuries. When Hispanics and their interactions with union rate and workers&rsquo; compensation rates were included and summed as independent variables, we see that the presence of Hispanics leads to a decrease in the incident rate for all types of injuries except for light-duty. In other words, the presence of Hispanics leads to lower reporting and, therefore, the appearance of lower rates of all types of injury rates except for light duty which indicates that Hispanics are under-reported. </p>

<p> Discrimination against immigrants based on country of origin, gender, or race is known to contribute to wage inequality, lower morale, and decrease worker satisfaction. Healthcare leaders are just beginning to study the impact of gender and race on the wages of internationally educated nurses (IENs). Grounded in Becker's theory of discrimination, this cross-sectional study examined nursing wages for evidence of wage inequality among IENs working in the United States using secondary data collected in the 2008 quadrennial National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses. Ordinary least square regression coupled with the Blinder-Oaxaca wage decomposition was used to analyze the wages of 757 IENs working in the U.S. healthcare system. <i>T</i> tests with effect size were calculated to find the impact of gender, race, and country of education on wage. The study found that white male IENs earned higher wages than all other immigrant groups, followed by nonwhite males and nonwhite females (R² = .143; <i>F</i>(8,748) = 15.60; <i> p</i> =.000;). White female IENs earned the least, at 80%, 88%, and 91% of wages earned by white male, nonwhite male, and nonwhite female IENs, respectively (<i>p</i> &lt; <i>.005</i>). The relationship between hourly wage and being a white female was negative and statistically significant (<i>p</i> = .006) and white females earned 19.6% less per hour than white male IENs. Working in tertiary care contributed 21.60% of wages for white IENs and 10.30% of wages for nonwhite IENs. Inequality in nursing wages was related to an interaction between race and gender for wages of white female IENs but not in wages for nonwhite female IENs. Results of this study promote positive social change by motivating nursing departments to equalize wages and policymakers to strengthen equal pay statutes.</p>

Johnson and Ash (1986) proposed a new model for developing compensation systems which is designed to systematically and simultaneously reconcile differences between internal and external pay equity criteria without necessarily including market based gender biases. Central to their model is the development of a labor market variable (LMV) which is designed to be sensitive to the dynamic affects of supply and demand on occupational wages over time, and which is to be used as a compensible factor in the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ) based job component/policy capturing approach to job evaluation. The present research is designed to examine three issues regarding Johnson and Ash's (1986) model and research: (1) determine if their results can be replicated using actual organizational data regarding relatively heterogeneous sets of jobs; (2) examine the operational adequacy of their LMV; and (3) examine possible differences in outcomes between the application of their method and the more traditional PAQ points driven method. In order to investigate these issues, PAQ based job evaluation data and archival labor market data were obtained for jobs from two organizations (Organizations A and B). The results regarding Organization A tended to support the viability of Johnson and Ash's (1986) model. Regardless, of how the LMV was operationalized, its inclusion in the policy capturing equation caused a significant reduction in the discrepancies between the internal and external equity criteria. Also, the LMV was not related to a measure of the gender dominance of these jobs and the measure of gender dominance did not add, incrementally to the prediction of organizational wages in the policy capturing equations. The results obtained using this method also compared quite favorably with those obtained using the traditional PAQ points method. The results regarding Organization B were less promising. Here, regardless of how it was operationalized, the LMV failed to significantly reduce the discrepancies between the internal and external equity criteria. Further, some evidence was found indicating that the LMV is related to the gender dominance of these jobs, and only minor differences were found between the outcomes of the new method and the traditional PAQ points method.

Mathematical models of urban spatial structure in cities with decentralized employment involve the interaction between a minimum of three markets: land, labor and capital. I study the interaction between the land and the labor markets carefully. Standard theory assumes that when firms decentralize, firms located away from the Central Business District (CBD) offer lower wages to their workers. The continuous downward adjustment in wages as firms move further from the CBD is characterized as the wage gradient. By this approach, following firm decentralization, the adjustment in wages is sufficient to leave everyone indifferent between the monocentric city and the latter case. Consequently, no one relocates and the city is left essentially unchanged. I refute this argument on the grounds that it does not hold in a model with a full labor market. First, I consider the wage gradient approach, where labor demand is infinitely elastic. Next, I look at the case where labor demand becomes vertical. I consider several special cases, and find that when proportionally more employment moves further out, everyone in the city is better off. Finally, I include a labor market where firm movements take place due to movement of capital, a complimentary factor of production. I show that the wage gradient posited by standard urban theory breaks down. Instead, as firms decentralize in a city with fixed population, an upward sloping utility gradient appears as firms move further out. Finally, I consider a case where there are a fixed number of high skilled and low skilled workers in the city with a full labor market. I study where they live, given the proximity and strength of the employment subcenter. When the CBD and the subcenter locate close to each other, the two groups stay segregated, all low skilled workers living close to the center and all high skilled workers occupying a low density suburban area. As more jobs move further out, this pattern changes, and low skilled residential areas and high skilled living areas intermingle. In all, I find five possible patterns of residential location.

My dissertation consists of two unrelated essays. In the first essay, "Wage Subsidy in an Optimal Redistribution Program", I analyze the efficiency of income transfers and wage subsidies as instruments of income redistribution in an optimal taxation framework. I extend the Mirrlees model (1971) of income inequality by specifying a model in which individuals' productivity and wages depend on investment in skill acquisition in addition to ability. The principal result of the research is that a wage subsidy has an important role to play in an optimal system of income maintenance. In the second essay, "Bundling Hardware and Software", a class of simple models is analyzed to explain prevailing bundling practices in computer markets. A profit-maximizing monopolist may over-provide hardware-software bundles, practice "pure bundling" when preferences are symmetric with respect to software, and under-bundle and under-produce software when preferences are asymmetric.

This thesis contains three essays in which the formation of coalitions affects players' bargaining power in input markets. The first essay considers two independent bilateral monopoly markets. It shows that integrating two players on the same side of these independent bilateral monopoly markets may increase their bargaining power. The exposition focuses on multiple cable system operators, which may have a bargaining advantage over unintegrated cable system operators when negotiating with broadcasters. The second essay extends the bargaining theory developed in the first essay to multiple (interconnected) bilateral negotiations between producers and distributors. Using a bargaining theoretic framework, it studies the effects of integration among local distributors on the incentives for producers' entry. The essay shows that concentration in the distributor industry may increase distributors' bargaining power vis-a-vis producers and thereby reduce incentives for producers to enter the upstream industry. The third essay investigates the effects of coalition formation across two bilateral negotiations in which the downstream players compete with each other on the product market. As an illustrative example, it analyzes the effects of industry unions and employers' associations in a duopolistic industry. Using an "efficient bargaining" model, it shows that industry unions can enforce monopolistic product market outcomes---regardless of whether bargaining is centralized or not. In response to an industry union, firms form an employers' association to increase their bargaining power and this may further reduce welfare.

<p>My dissertation examines human capital investments and their role in individual's labor market outcomes. Chapter 2 analyzes how public school teachers decide to make human capital investments and the effects that these decisions have on their future labor market outcomes. In particular, I look at the decisions of employed teachers to obtain an advanced degree. Teachers' education and career decisions are modeled via a dynamic framework in the presence of teacher-specific unobserved heterogeneity. I find that teachers' decisions to obtain master's degrees are motivated by more than just an increase in salary. In particular, I observe teachers with master's degrees receiving a better draw on job characteristics, as measured by school quality, and that teachers are willing to pay between $1,500 and $20,000 to to move up one quartile in school quality. I also find that teachers value having broad access to online degree programs more than they dislike tuition costs. Counterfactual simulations by unobserved ability are consistent with a story that high-type teachers value both the salary increase and a better draw in career prospects, whereas low-type teachers are mostly interested in the salary increase.</p><p>Chapter 3 investigates the evolution over the last two decades in the wage returns to schooling and early work experience. Using data from the 1979 and 1997 panels of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we isolate changes in skill prices from changes in composition by estimating a dynamic model of schooling and work decisions. Importantly, this allows us to account for the endogenous nature of the changes in educational and accumulated work experience over this time period. We find an increase over this period in the returns to working in high school, but a decrease in the returns to working while in college. We also find an increase in the incidence of working in college, but that any detrimental impact of in-college work experience is offset by changes in other observable characteristics. Overall, our decomposition of the evolution in skill premia suggests that both price and composition effects play an important role. The role of unobserved ability is also important.</p> / Dissertation