We have used a proprietary data set of newly hired semi-skilled production workers at one location of a large unionized firm to investigate several issues in labor economics. This data set is unique in several respects: the workers in our sample faced the same wage schedules, had the same...

This paper develops an econometric model of the effects of R&D effort on the magnitude and characteristics of technical change in the Bell system. We estimate simultaneously a vintage capital production function, embodying several distinct types of capital, and various factor demand functions...

One-step efficient GMM estimation has been developed in the recent papers of Back and Brown (1990), Imbens (1993) and Qin and Lawless (1994). These papers emphasized methods that correspond to using Owen's (1988) method of empirical likelihood to reweight the data so that the reweighted sample...

This paper is concerned with three types of incentive programs. First, individual wage incentives that cause a worker's efforts to have a major effect on his pay. Second, group incentives in which the pay of an individual is determined by the output of a group of workers-a group can be as small...

This paper analyzes a sorting model of labor contracts when workers have private information about their own productivities, and firms can test (monitor) workers. We show that sorting considerations alone generate steep wage-tenure profiles, high turnover rates of newly hired workers, and...

We construct a model in which firms use workers' productivities in determining their job assignments. A worker's productivity must exceed some lower bound to satisfy the minimum qualifications for a particular job. If the worker's productivity exceeds some upper bound he is promoted. Under these...

In this paper we investigate the macro-economic equilibria of an economy in which credit contracts have both adverse selection and incentive effects. The terms of credit contracts include both an interest rate and a collateral requirement. We show that in this richer model all types of borrowers...

Usinga detailed sample of semi-skilled production workers we find that holding a wide range of personal and job-related characteristics constant, workers assigned to more complex jobs seem to be more likely to quit than are workers assigned to simpler jobs. Job complexity has no discernible...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and a proprietary sample of semi-skilled production workers, this paper investigates the reasons for the discontinuous increase in wages associated with graduation from high school. Associated with graduation from high school, we find a...

This paper presents and alternative perspective on the role of banks. We emphasize the ways in which banks act as social accountants and screening devices. In this view monetary disturbances have their effects through the disturbances which they induce in society's accounting system and in the...