This paper estimates employment equations based on the traditional labour demand model and modern efficient bargain theory using data drawn from wage contracts signed in the Canadian private unionized sector between 1978 and 1984. Contrary to the labour demand model predictions, the alternative...

This paper studies the determinants of real wage rates using data on Canadian labour contracts signed between 1978 and 1984. Its results are consistent with Dunlop's neglected (1944) hypothesis that real pay movements are shaped by product price changes (contrary to the predictions of implicit...

We examine the changing relationship between unionization and wage inequality in Canada and the United States. Our study is motivated by profound recent changes in the composition of the unionized workforce. Historically, union jobs were concentrated among low-skilled men in private sector...

This paper compares trends in male and female hourly wage inequality in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1979 and 1998. Our main finding is that the extent and pattern of wage inequality became increasingly similar in the two countries during this period. We attribute this...

Over most of the 20th century successive generations of U.S. children had higher enrollment rates and rising levels of completed education. This trend reversed with the baby boom cohorts who attended school in the 1970s, and only resumed in the mid-1980s. Even today, the college entry rate of...

In Regression Discontinuity (RD) designs for evaluating causal effects of interventions, assignment to a treatment is determined at least partly by the value of an observed covariate lying on either side of a fixed threshold. These designs were first introduced in the evaluation literature by...

Although the college-high school wage gap for younger men has doubled over the past 30 years, the gap for older men has remained nearly constant. We argue that these shifts reflect changes in the relative supply of highly-educated workers across age groups. Cohorts born in the first half of the...

This paper presents a semiparametric procedure to analyze the effects of institutional and labor market factors on recent changes in the U.S. distribution of wages. The effects of these factors are estimated by applying kernel density methods to appropriately 'reweighted' samples. The procedure...

In this paper we study the connections between product .market conditions. negotiated wage settlements. and union employment in the presence of foreign competition shocks. We exploit the fact that in a small open economy such as Canada the price of imports and exports should represent pure...

This paper presents results from a 1971 natural experiment carried out by the Canadian government on the unemployment insurance system. At that time, they dramatically increased the generosity of the system. We find that the propensity to collect UI increases with a first time exposure to the...