We explain the substantial decline in work hours over the 20th century by the joint influence of the employees’ “pecuniary emulation” of the “conspicuous consumption” of top income earners and the balance of political power of employers and employees in the presence of conflicts of...

This paper provides a simple model and an empirical test of the effect of interpersonal income comparisons on labor supply. By focusing on the relative income of a full-time working man and its effect on the wife’s labor supply decision, we examine the role of relative income in labor supply...

This article uses data from the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finances to determine if banks ration credit more severely to black-owned firms. Our results reveal this is the case. Using the Heckman two-step procedure, we determined that black- and white-owned firms have a comparable demand for...