期刊-NBER美国国民经济研究局-Summer1982_48页_1mb

NBER Labor Studies Program Summary (Summer 1982)

Core Content

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Labor Studies Program focuses on analyzing labor market problems across several key areas, including compensation, employment and unemployment, labor supply behavior, unionism, and social insurance programs. The Program has evolved along three main dimensions: data development, theoretical analysis, and econometric tool enhancement.

Main Research Themes and Findings

1. Minimum Wage and Labor Supply

• Adverse Effects on Youth Employment: Research indicates that the minimum wage has negative effects on the employment of young workers, but these effects are generally moderate or modest.
• Methodological Innovations: David Wise and Robert Meyer developed new methods to infer the impact of minimum wage on youth employment and earnings using entire earnings distributions. Daniel Hamermesh analyzed time-series data, while Jacob Mincer provided a general analysis of wage floors.
• Subminimum Wage for Students: Freeman, Gray, and Ichniowski constructed a new data set to study the subminimum wage for full-time students.
• Industry and Demographic Differences: Boschen and Grossman examined the minimum wage's effects on various industries and demographic groups. Brown, Gilroy, and Kohen summarized these findings in a survey of the minimum wage literature.

2. Retirement Decisions and Social Insurance

• Partial Retirement: Gustman and Steinmeier explored how individuals choose between full-time work, part-time work, and retirement, estimating models of retirement behavior.
• Pensions and Earnings: Mitchell and Fields analyzed the impact of pensions and earnings on retirement using data from major pension programs. Burtless and Hausman found that financial and nonfinancial incentives influence retirement decisions of federal civil servants.
• Health and Self-Employment: Fuchs emphasized the role of ill health in the labor force behavior of older men and noted that self-employed individuals are more likely to continue working.

3. Econometric Methodology

• Longitudinal Data Analysis: Researchers have pioneered the use of longitudinal or panel data to study career patterns, overtime, and labor supply responses to economic conditions.
• Modeling Individual Effects: Chamberlain showed that individual effects can generate observed lags and trends in data, not necessarily time dependence.
• Dynamic Labor Supply Models: Heckman and Flinn developed methods to analyze individual career patterns, considering unobserved individual effects and duration dependence. Hausman examined the impact of nonlinear budget constraints on labor supply analysis.

4. Unionism and Labor Market Outcomes

• Wage Effects: Freeman found lower wage dispersion in unionized establishments, while Johnson documented a rise in the union wage premium over time. Researchers are using panel data to study wage effects.
• Nonwage Effects: Seniority influences within-firm mobility more under unionism. Training volume is lower, and union workers are more stable. Black workers have a stronger desire to join unions.
• Union Operations and Policies: Pencavel studied the trade-off between wages and employment in union objectives, showing that substitution elasticity is below unity. Farber and Freeman analyzed the decline in private sector unionization, while Ellwood and Fine found that Right-to-Work laws impact unionization more than previously thought.
• Public Sector Unionism: Ehrenberg and Schwarz studied union effects on public sector productivity, and Ichniowski found that compulsory arbitration reduces strike propensities. His work also suggests that overall union strength in a state affects police wages more than municipal unionization.

5. Troubled Workers: Minorities and Youth

• Minority Economic Status: Studies show that while some minority workers have improved, others, especially inner-city youth, have not. Factors like religion and family success influence youth labor market outcomes.
• Unemployment Patterns: Holzer found that inner-city youth have high reservation wages and limited job search effort. Ballen showed that job tenure does not reduce unemployment chances as much for inner-city black youth as for other groups.
• Antidiscrimination Policies: Brown and Leonard found that federal antidiscrimination policies have improved black/white earnings ratios, with federal contractors showing greater black employment growth.

6. Wages and Human Capital

• Human Capital and Education: Freeman analyzed the economic value of higher education, finding that returns have declined in the U.S. and other OECD countries. Venti and Wise emphasized the role of test scores in college attendance decisions.
• Vocational Training: Gustman and Steinmeier found that high school vocational training has limited effects on male students but may have provided valuable skills for women in the early 1970s.
• Piece-Rate Pay: Seiler showed that piece-rate pay leads to higher dispersion and level of earnings compared to time-rate pay, attributing this to performance incentives and risk premiums.

7. Macroeconomics of the Labor Market

• Stagflation Impact: The 1970s stagflation led researchers to focus on macroeconomic developments affecting labor markets.
• Unemployment and Rational Expectations: Altonji concluded that most unemployment cannot be explained by intertemporal leisure substitution. Drazen, Hamermesh, and Obst found that labor demand elasticity decreases during economic downturns.
• Labor Contracts and Macroeconomics: Hall and Lazear linked labor market macrodynamics to labor contract theories, arguing that no single contract can address business cycle fluctuations in labor demand.

Conclusion

The NBER Labor Studies Program has made significant contributions to understanding labor market dynamics, the impact of social insurance programs, and the role of unionism. Through a combination of data development, theoretical analysis, and econometric method innovation, the Program has advanced knowledge on how labor markets function and how major institutions affect market outcomes. The findings suggest that while minimum wage policies have some adverse effects on youth employment, these are not uniformly severe. Additionally, the macroeconomic complexities of wage determination and labor allocation require more sophisticated models than previously assumed.