A textbook consequence of competitive markets is that an industry-wide increase in the price of inputs will be passed on to consumers through an increase in prices. This fundamental implication has been explored by researchers interested in who bears the burden of taxation and exchange rate...

We use administrative data from the unemployment insurance system State of Washington to study the magnitude of the wage differential associated with work in the temporary services industry. We find that temp wage rates are 15% to 20% below the levels that might have been expected based on...

This study investigates the reliability of using short-term averages of earnings as a proxy for permanent earnings in empirical research. An earnings dynamics model is estimated on a large sample of men covering the period from 1983 to 1997 following the cohort-based methodology of Baker and...

Problems with measurement error have led many researchers to criticize panel data studies of intertemporal labor supply. In this study I address the measurement error problems explicitly. I estimate the properties of measurement error in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Validation Study. I...

We consider a sequence of random length M of independent absolutely continuous observations Xi, 1 = i = M, where M is geometric, X1 has cdf G, and Xi, i = 2, have cdf F. Let N be the number of upper records and Rn, n = 1, be the nth record value. We show that N is free of F if and only if G(x) =...

This paper illustrates a particular limited information strategy for assessing the empirical plausibility of alternative quantitative general equilibrium business cycle models. The basic strategy is to test whether a model economy can account for the response of actual economy to an exogenous...

We calibrate a model of labor demand to infer the employment response to a change in the minimum wage in the food away from home industry. Assuming a perfectly competitive labor market, the model predicts a 2.5 to 3.5 percent fall in employment in response to a 10 percent minimum wage change. We...

Using both store-level and aggregated price data from the food away from home component of the Consumer Price Index survey, we show that restaurant prices rise in response to an increase in the minimum wage. These results hold up when using several different sources of variation in the data. We...

This paper extends a standard intertemporal labor supply model to account for progressive taxation as well as the joint determination of hourly wages and hours worked. We show, qualitatively and quantitatively, that these two factors have important implications for estimating the intertemporal...