In the late 1930s, the NAACP launched a campaign to equalize Black and white teacher salaries in the de jure segregated schools of the American South. Using newly collected county panel data spanning three decades, this paper first documents heterogeneous within-state impacts of the campaign on...

The recent experience of Washington State provides a natural setting to examine the effects of the unemployment insurance payroll tax on wages, employment, claims and denials. During the 13 year period from 1972 through 1984, all employers in Washington paid the same unemployment insurance (UI)...

Using data for 1995, the authors estimate union wage premia of about 20% for African workers and 10% for white workers - roughly similar to estimates reported for other countries, including the United States. African nonunion workers who were covered by industrial council agreements received a...

The recent experience of Washington State provides a natural setting to examine the effects of the unemployment insurance payroll tax on wages, employment, claims and denials. During the 13 year period from 1972 through 1984, all employers in Washington paid the same unemployment insurance (UI)...

Do union workers earn higher wages than nonunion workers in South Africa? (Yes, but less so than previous estimates would suggest.) And do industrial council agreements extend these premia to nonunion workers? (On the surface, yes, but the effects are too small to be the primary reason for South...

In South Africa, unions which played a crucial in the country's transition from apartheid, are coming under fire. Some argue that a high union wage premium, and the industrial council system are important causes of inflexibility in South Africa's labor market. The authors analyze unions' direct...