We examine the possible sources of the larger racial and ethnic wage gaps for men than for women in the U.S. Specifically, using a newly created employer-employee matched data set containing workers in essentially all occupations, industries, and regions, we examine whether these wage...

Icelandic university teachers, the Ministry of Finance and the University of Iceland have been conducting an interesting experiment by changing the form of remuneration of university teachers in a fundamental way. This paper accounts for the development of university teachers salaries the last...

We analyze labor market models where the law of one price does not hold; i.e., models with equilibrium wage dispersion. We begin assuming workers are ex ante heterogeneous, and highlight a flaw with this approach: if search is costly, the market shuts down. We then assume workers are homogeneous...

I construct a model of equilibrium unemployment where workers and firms enter into dynamic labor contracts. The model is in the spirit of the models of efficiency wages (e.g. Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984) in that I rely on moral hazard to give rise to involuntary unemployment. Compared the...

The paper contributes to the growing literature on wage determination within academia. The data arise from a pay-equity study carried out in a single Midwestern U.S. university over the 1996-7 academic year. The focus is upon understanding differences between male-female pay, and in particular...

Starting from the approach proposed by Schluter and Trede (2003) we develop a continuous and alternative measure of mobility which first, allows to identify mobility over different parts of the earnings distribution and second, to distinguish between mobility that tends to reduce or increase the...

This paper examines the relationship between performance of English public sector hospitals (NHS trusts) and the quality of their nursing staff. Performance ratings of NHS trusts published in 2001 and 2002 indicate a clear regional divide. This divide is not explained by lower medical need. The...

Using incentive pay to improve public sector efficiency is an important component of the UK Government's public service modernisation agenda. In this paper, we review the important issues in performance pay in the public sector, and summarise the evidence on its effects. We consider how optimal...

This paper analyses the impact of cost competitiveness and technology on export performance using a very rich panel dataset of 12 manufacturing industries in 14 OECD countries for the period between 1970 and 1992. Consistent with standard models, we find that changes in relative unit labour...