This paper examines the importance of cost-of-living escalator clauses as a link between price changes and money wage changes. It surveys the possible kinds of price-wage linkages and estimates the importance of COLAs in overall wage changes in the economy. The author concludes that despite...

This study investigates the hypothesis that the increase in the median earnings of black men relative to those of white men after 1964 in the United States largely reflects the labor force withdrawal of high proportions of low-wage black men who availed themselves of government transfers....