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Essays on wages and employment over the life cycle and the business cycle

This dissertation contains two essays. The first essay conducts three empirical tests of the training/turnover theory of deferred compensation, which attempts to explain why wages rise with job tenure in the firm, all else held constant. The first test is generated from a theoretical model which predicts that the returns to job tenure should be lower in jobs in which the risk of permanent layoff is larger. The second test is direct: job tenure is related to the (predicted) degree of wage tilt in the worker's job. The final test examines whether the returns to tenure have increased over 1979-1993, a period in which the returns to skill (training), measured by formal schooling, have increased. The evidence is supportive of the theory in the first and third empirical tests, and contradicts the theory in the second empirical test. / The second essay examines the relative cyclicality of union and nonunion wages and employment over the business cycle, using a large panel data set culled from the Current Population Survey. The evidence indicates that real wages in the union sector are not responsive to cyclical shifts in labor demand (proxied by the unemployment rate), while nonunion wages are procyclical. On the other hand, union real wages are more sensitive to price shocks than nonunion wages are, in the short run. Union hours (employment) are more responsive to both price shocks and real shocks than nonunion hours are, which is consistent with the evidence for wages. This evidence is consistent with a greater degree of nominal or implicit wage contracting in the union sector. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-03, Section: A, page: 1067. / Major Professor: Barry T. Hirsch. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77382
ContributorsGrant, Darren., Florida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText
Format155 p.
RightsOn campus use only.
RelationDissertation Abstracts International

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