Daniel S. Hamermesh

An Economic Theory of Suicide

Although sociologists have developed and tested numerous theories about suicide, economists have not analyzed this phenomenon. We derive an economic theory of suicide and test its implications using: (1) data by age in many developed countries; (2) a time series, 1947-67, by age group in the United States; (3) a cross section by state and age group in 1960. Most of our predictions are verified. Particularly striking are the response to unemployment, as strong in the postwar period as in the Depression and stronger among older individuals, and the negative effect of increased permanent incomes among all but the youngest age group, a result found in both the time series and the cross section.

The economics of work and pay

*Labour Force, Hours of Work and Hours of Effort *Supply of Skill *The Demand for Labour *Extensions of Labour Demand *Supply and Demand Together *Migration and Turnover *Vacancies *Effort, Wages and Job Structure *Job Amenities and Employee Benefits *Unions *Union Methods *Effects of Employment and Turnover *Effects of Race and Gender on Earnings *Inequality of Earnings and Income *The Labour Market over the Business Cycle

Sleep and the Allocation of Time

Using aggregated data for 12 countries, a cross section of microeconomic data, and a panel of households, we demonstrate that increases in time in the labor market reduce sleep. Our theory of the demand for sleep differs from standard models of time use by assuming that sleep affects wages by affecting labor market productivity. Estimates of a system of demand equations demonstrate that higher wage rates reduce sleep time among men but increase their waking nonmarket time by an equal amount. Among women the wage effect on sleep is negative but very small.

Beauty, Productivity, and Discrimination: Lawyers' Looks and Lucre

We propose models with an ascriptive characteristic generating earnings differentials and causing sectoral sorting, allowing us to distinguish among sources producing such differentials. We use longitudinal data on a large sample of graduates from one law school and measure beauty by rating matriculation photographs. (1) Betterlooking attorneys who graduated in the 1970s earned more than others after 5 years of practice, an effect that grew with experience. (2) Attorneys in the private sector are better‐looking than those in the public sector, differences that rise with age. These results support theories of dynamic sorting and customer behavior.

Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?

Social commentators have pointed to problems of workers who face time stressan absence of sufficient time to accomplish all their tasks. An economic theory views time stress as reflecting how tightly the time constraint binds households. Time stress will be more prevalent in households with higher full earnings and whose members work longer in the market or on required homework. Evidence from Australia (2001), Germany (2002), the United States (2003), and Korea (1999) corroborates the theory. Adults in households with higher earnings perceive more time stress for the same amount of time spent in market work and household work. The importance of higher full earnings in generating time stress is not small, particularly in the United Statesmuch is yuppie kvetch.

The Timing of Work Over Time

The incidence of evening and night work declined sharply in the United States between the early 1970s and the early 1990s, while the fraction of work performed at the fringes of the traditional regular working day grew. This secular decline did not result from industrial shifts or demographic changes. It was greatest at the upper end of the wage distribution, slowest among workers in the lowest quartile of wages. The observed changes are explained by a model that views evening/night work as a disamenity, with rising real earnings leading workers to shift away from such work in the presence of technical change.

Data Watch: The American Time Use Survey

We discuss the new American Time Use Survey (ATUS), an on-going household survey of roughly 1,200 Americans per month (1,800 per month in the first year, 2003) that collects time diaries as well as demographic interview information from respondents who had recently been in the Current Population Survey. The characteristics of the data are presented, as are caveats and concerns that one might have about them. A number of novel uses of the ATUS in economic research, including in the areas of macroeconomics, national income accounting, labor economics, and others, are proposed to illustrate the magnitude of this new surveys possible applications.

Changing Inequality in Markets for Workplace Amenities

We know that earnings inequality has increased sharply in the United States since the late 1970s, but there has been no evidence on the changing inequality of nonmonetary aspects of work nor on how any such changes are related to changes in earnings. I begin by studying patterns of interindustry differences in occupational injuries during 1979-95, breaking the total burden of injuries into its components, risk of injury and injury duration. In those industries where earnings rose relatively, we observed a relative drop in injury rates and in the total burden of injuries. Obversely, during the 1960s interindustry wage differentials narrowed, a decline that was associated with an increase in the relative risk of injury in high-wage industries. Evidence for large sectors of Dutch industry from 1974-92 suggests that injury rates there fell most in sectors where wages grew most rapidly. Examination of another workplace disamenity, working evenings or nights, shows analogous results for the period 1973-91: This disamenity was increasingly borne by low-wage male workers. Changes in earnings inequality thus have understated absolute changes in inequality in the returns to work. All the outcomes are readily explicable as income effects of exogenous shocks to the distribution of full earnings in the presence of skill-neutral changes in the cost of reducing workplace disamenities. Under reasonable assumptions we can infer from the estimates that the demand for the amenities, workplace safety and desirable work times, is highly income-elastic.

Labor Market Competition Among Youths, White Women, and Others

We estimate substitution possibilities among a set of age-race-sex groups in the labor force. The estimates are based on cross-section data from SMSAs in 1969,and they allow us to consider how substitutable adult women are for young women or young men. The estimates are used, along with assumptions about the extent of wage rigidity and elasticities of labor supply, to simulate the direct and indirect effects of the growth of the female labor force on job opportunities for youth, assuming rigid wages for young workers, and on the wage rates of adult males, assuming these wages are flexible.

Compensating Wage Differentials and the Duration of Wage Loss

A formal model of occupational choice is developed that shows the extent to which the compensation for increased duration exceeds that for increased risk. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked to industry data on injuries and unemployment, we find nearly all the compensating wage differential for losses due to workplace injuries is for increases in the duration of loss and similarly for losses due to cyclical unemployment. The compensating differentials for risk of injury are larger for union than for nonunion workers, while those for cyclical unemployment are smaller for union workers.