Ethel B. Jones

College Grades and Labor Market Rewards

The paper analyzes the Grade Point Average (GPA) of more than 5,000 undergraduates at the University of California, San Diego. Personal background strongly affects GPA. Graduates of different high schools obtain significantly different GPAs, even after ...

Private sector union decline and structural employment change, 1970–1988

Studies of the large decline in private sector unionism during the 1970s and 1980s focus on explanations particular to those decades and attribute an inconsequential role to the employment shift from goods-producing to service-producing industries. Using an adapted version of the Ashenfelter-Pencavel model, this research finds stable parameter estimates between the two decades and the earlier post-Wagner Act years. Not only are decade-specific explanations found to be unnecessary in understanding membership decline, but the pivotal relationship in the decline is the relative shift in the employment distribution away from the traditionally strongly unionized industries.

Unemployment and Occupational Wage Changes in Local Labor Markets

Investigates the Phillips curve at the level of the local labor market in the United States, employing occupational wage rates as a measure of the price of labor. Occupations that were selected; Results of regression analysis; Variations in the relationship between unemployment and wage changes by occupation. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Unemployment, union density, and wages

We investigate, both theoretically and empirically, whether long-run industry unemployment rates modify the wage impact of union density on the earnings of members. Our theory suggests that the density effect increases as unemployment increases. Our empirical estimates use wage equations exclusive and inclusive of unemployment and of the interactive effect of unemployment and density in influencing wages. Based on a 1985 sample of manufacturing production workers, our findings indicate that the wage effect of union density for union workers as usually measured is only 41 percent as large as the effect when unemployment is in the model.

Gender differences in business school graduates' opportunity to advance

Abstract Survey data concerning the early worklife of a homogeneous sample of college of business graduates are used to examine the gender difference in promoting opportunities during the 1980s. Estimates of a promotion model using trichotomous probit analysis serve to obtain a Blinder-type decomposition between endowment and coefficient effects of the gender difference. Further analysis of the coefficient effect by categorizing variables into those reflecting personal choice and discrimination suggests that the lower opportunities reported by women relate to the personal choice variables and, in particular, weekly hours of work.

The decline of annual hours worked in the United States since 1947

of time allocation, which is productivity in the labor market (measured by earnings) relative to that in the home. The chapter on crime analyzes self-reported rates of crime and their relationships to employment outcomes. Among the interesting findings here are that self-reported crime rates are not higher for minorities or the poor (though this fact may be negated by higher rates of underreporting for these groups) and that the link between crime and employment outcomes appears to be tenuous, at best. The difficult issue of sorting out causation between employment and crime becomes less compelling, since the correlations are so weak to begin with. The authors of this volume have uncovered some interesting findings in their analyses of an important new set of data concerning youth employment. They have focused on a few broadly defined issues, such as education and non-market activities of youth. The book should be recommended reading for those with an interest in the youth employment problem and required reading for those who intend to do further research on these issues.

Book Review: Labor Economics: Hours of WorkHours of Work. Edited by DankertClyde E., MannFloyd C., and NorthrupHerbert R.. Industrial Relations Research Association Publication No. 32. New York: Harper and Row, 1965. x, 208 pp.

the occupational and the geographic allocation of labor (Chapters VII and VIII). Exceptions, however, are recognized. For example, the findings uggest that an expanding industry in a remote region or with low earnings may be compelled to raise its relative wages. In a short foreword to the volume, de Wolff draws three major implications of the study for incomes policy: (1) the limited need for exceptions to general wage guidelines for purposes of allocative efficiency; (2) the necessity of reducing labor market imperfections which impede the adaptation of labor supply to changes in the demand for labor, and (3) the importance of price and profits guidelines as well as wage guidelines in a successful incomes policy (in view of the evidence adduced by the study showing a strong relationship between changes in profits and changes in wages). It is difficult in a brief review to capture the flavor of careful analysis which pervades the report. The authors are continuously mindful of the limitations of their statistical techniques and of the varying economic explanations which can be offered for a given statistical finding. In short, the report deals skillfully and with scholarly reserve with complex issues which cannot fully be resolved by empirical evidence. And, in this reviewers judgment, its conclusions are sound. Herbert S. Parnes Professor Department of Economics The Ohio State University