It has long been suggested that trade unions take actions and favor public policies that reduce the quantity of labor so that union members might enjoy greater labor incomes. Can this explain the prevalence of generous public pension programs inducing retirement? I formalize the monopoly...

This study of the determinants of earnings among adult foreign-born men using the 1990 Census of Population focuses on the effects of the respondent's own English language skills, the effects of living in a linguistic concentration area, and the effects of the stage of the business cycle at...

This paper analyzes the effects of language practice on earnings among adult male immigrants in Canada using the 1991 Census. Three languages groups are considered: those unable to conduct a conversation in an official language; those who can but who usually speak a non-official language at home;...

This paper uses a cost-of-time framework to link two seamingly unrelated trends. First, greater aggregate income inequality has been accompanied by greater geographic income specialization. Second, compensation costs (relative to sales) of suburban retail stores have risen, compared to city...

Our analysis shows that Pareto's instincts were right, for under certain assumptions, personal distributions of income tend to be similar even when the underlying functional determinants are quite different. We prove that if the initial functional income distribution is sufficiently "compact" -...