Brookings Papers on Economic Activity - 2007, 2
Behavioral Genetics and School Readiness (2005)
The Future of Children - Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2005
Near-Rational Wage and Price Setting and the Long-Run Phillips Curve (2000)
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity - 2000, 1
Cutler, David M., Dickens, William T.
Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs - 2000
Diss. phil. Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1997.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1997.
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
Inflation can “grease” the wheels of economic adjustment in the labor market by relieving the constraint imposed by downward nominal wage rigidity, but not if there is also substantial downward...
Racial Discrimination in Labor Markets with Posted Wage Offers
Kevin Lang, Michael Manove, William T. Dickens
We analyze race discrimination in labor markets in which wage offers are posted. If employers with job vacancies receive multiple applicants, they choose the most qualified but may choose arbitrarily...
How wages change : micro evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing...
Are Asset Demand Functions Determined by CAPM?
Jeffrey A. Frankel, William T. Dickens
The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPH) says that the responsiveness of asset-demands to expected returns depends (inversely) on the variance-covariance matrix of returns, rather than being an...
Accounting For The Decline in Union Membership
William T. Dickens, Jonathan S. Leonard
Since the early 50s, the percent of the workforce organized by unions has declined considerably. In the most recent decade that rate of decline has accelerated sharply. In an attempt to discover what...
A Test of Dual Labor Market Theory
William T. Dickens, Kevin Lang
Despite substantial differences in their views of the appropriate policy response to the existence of poverty, neither the proponents of dual market theory nor its critics have proposed potentially...
Neoclassical and Sociological Perspectives on Segmented Labor Markets
Kevin Lang, William T. Dickens
Neoclassical theory has been misrepresented in the segmented economy literature. Consequently, most tests of "structural" vs. "neoclassical" models are inadequate. Moreover, segmented economy...
Interindustry Wage Differences and Industry Characteristics
William T. Dickens, Lawrence F. Katz
This paper examines the extent of interindustry wage differences for nonunion workers and finds that even after controlling for a wide range of individual characteristics and geographic location a...
The Impact of the Runaway Office on Union Certification Elections in Clerical Units
Beatrice J. Freiberg, William T. Dickens
The law prohibits firms from moving work to avoid unionization. Still, many employees fear that joining a union may cost them their jobs. This paper assesses the impact of that fear on how clerical...
Employee Crime, Monitoring, and the Efficiency Wage Hypothesis
William T. Dickens, Lawrence F. Katz, Kevin Lang, Lawrence H. Summers
This paper offers some observations on employee crime, economic theories of crime, limits on bonding, and the efficiency wage hypothesis. We demonstrate that the simplest economic theories of crime...
Labor Market Segmentation and the Union Wage Premium
William T. Dickens, Kevin Lang
Studies of the earnings of union workers have consistently shown that they earn considerably more than nonunion workers. This paper considers whether part of this observed union/nonunion differential...
Structural Changes in Unionization: 1973-1981
William T. Dickens, Jonathan S. Leonard
This paper presents a decomposition of the decline in union density into structural and within sector components using CPS data for private sector workers. We find that 58 to 68 percent of the...
Crime and Punishment Again: The Economic Approach with a Psychological Twist
Akerlof and Dickens (1982) suggested that in a model of criminal behavior which considered the effects of cognitive dissonance, increasing the severity of punishment could increase the crime rate....
Does It Matter What We Trade? Trade and Industrial Policies When Labor Markets Don't Clear
In efficiency wage models firms set employment so that the value of the marginal revenue product of labor (VMRPL) equals the wage. If the payment of efficiency wages results in inter-industry wage...
Labor Market Segmentation, Wage Dispersion and Unemployment
Kevin Lang, William T. Dickens
This paper briefly reviews the empirical evidence on labor market segmentation and presents some new results on the similarity of the pattern of segmentation across 66 different countries. The paper...
Labor Market Segmentation Theory: Reconsidering the Evidence
William T. Dickens, Kevin Lang
We argue that Labor Market Segmentation theory is a good alternative to standard views of the labor market. Since it is sometimes argued that labor market segmentation theory is untestable, we first...
Wages, Employment and the Threat of Collective Action by Workers
For many reasons a group of workers may have sufficient bargaining power to claim for themselves some share of any monopoly surplus earned by an enterprise and (in the short run) a share of the...
How wages change: micro evidence from the international wage flexibility project
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing...
Hours Restrictions and Labor Supply
William T. Dickens, Shelly J. Lundberg
This study presents a model of labor supply in which individuals may face constraints on their choice of work hours, and analyzes the sensitivity of parameter estimates and policy conclusions to the...
George A. Akerlof, William T. Dickens
macroeconomics, low inflation, George Perry, William Brainard, BPEA, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Brookings Panel on Economic Activity
Near-Rational Wage and Price Setting and the Long-Run Phillips Curve
George A. Akerlof, William T. Dickens, George L. Perry
macroeconomics, Near-Rational Wage, Price Setting, Long-Run Phillips Curve
Near-Rational Wage and Price Setting and the Long-Run Phillips Curve
George A. Akerlof, William T. Dickens, George L. Perry
macroeconomics, Near-Rational Wage, Price Setting, Long-Run Phillips Curve
How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
Workers' wages are not set in a spot market. Instead, the wages of most workers—at least those who do not switch jobs—typically change only annually and are mediated by a complex set of...
Near-Rational Wage and Price Setting and the Long-Run Phillips Curve
George A. Akerlof, William T. Dickens, George L. Perry
macroeconomics, Near-Rational Wage, Price Setting, Long-Run Phillips Curve
How wages change - micro evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Götte, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julián Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing...
The effect of company campaigns on certification elections: "Law and Reality" once again.
Recent studies have challenged the conclusion Getman, Goldberg, and Herman reached in their 1976 study that company campaigns have little if any effect on how workers vote in union certification...
Accounting for the decline in union membership, 1950û1980.
William T. Dickens, Jonathan S. Leonard
This study analyzes the components of the post-1950 trends in the share of the private work force organized by unions, which rose from 1950 to 1954 and then fell steadily to 1980. The authors...
The effect of company campaigns on certification elections: "Law and Reality" once again.
Recent studies have challenged the conclusion Getman, Goldberg, and Herman reached in their 1976 study that company campaigns have little if any effect on how workers vote in union certification...
Accounting for the decline in union membership, 1950û1980.
William T. Dickens, Jonathan S. Leonard
This study analyzes the components of the post-1950 trends in the share of the private work force organized by unions, which rose from 1950 to 1954 and then fell steadily to 1980. The authors...
How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julián Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing...
Hours Restrictions and Labor Supply.
Dickens, William T, Lundberg, Shelly J
The authors estimate a labor-supply model that permits hours restrictions of a simple but general form. Each individual chooses from among a finite set of jobs drawn at random f rom a market...
How wages change: micro evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project
William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica L. Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark E. Schweitzer, ...
How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing...
Inflation and Unemployment in the U.S. and Canada: A Common Framework
Pierre Fortin, George A. Akerlof, William T. Dickens, George L. Perry
This paper summarizes the results of our efforts to broaden the theory of the Phillips curve and to explain the joint evolution of inflation and unemployment in the United States and Canada since...
A new method to estimate time variation in the NAIRU
NAIRU estimates are obtained from estimates of the Phillips curve – the relationship between the inflation rate on the one hand, and the unemployment rate, measures of inflationary expectations and...
Testing Dual Labor Market Theory: A Reconsideration of the Evidence
William T. Dickens, Kevin Lang
This paper replicates and extends our earlier analysis of dual market theory. We use a technique which estimates for each worker a probability of being in the primary sector on the basis of his...
William T. Dickens, Douglas R. Wholey, James C. Robinson
This paper investigates the correlates of union success in NLRB certification and decertification elections. The analysis includes a wide variety of bargaining unit, union, industry, and geographic...
Are Efficiency Wages Efficient?
William T. Dickens, Lawrence F. Katz, Kevin Lang
Efficiency wage models have been criticized because worker malfeasance can be prevented in a pareto efficient manner by requiring workers to post a bond which they lose if they are caught cheating....
Inter-Industry Wage Differences and Theories of Wage Determination
William T. Dickens, Lawrence F. Katz
Numerous studies have shown large differences in wages for apparently similar workers across industries. These findings pose a challenge to standard model s of labor market behavior. A problem with...
A Goodness of Fit Test of Dual Labor Market Theory
William T. Dickens, Kevin Lang
We subject our dual labor market model to a goodness of test fit and compare the results with those obtained using a single equation model with a complex error structure. The dual labor market does...
Assuming The Can Opener: Hedonic Wage Estimates and the Value of Life
Although intuitively appealing, the use of hedonic wage estimates to determine people's willingness to pay to avoid the risk of fatal hazards is fraught with problems. The theoretical basis for such...
An Analysis of the Nature of Unemployment in Sri Lanka
William T. Dickens, Kevin Lang
Sri Lanka has a significant chronic unemployment problem. Depending on time period and the definition of unemployment it varies from the low teens to over twenty percent. Nearly all of this...
Bilateral Search as an Explanation for Labor Market Segmentation and Other Anomalies
Kevin Lang, William T. Dickens
Since applying for jobs is costly, workers prefer applying where their employment probability is high and, therefore, to jobs attracting fewer higher quality applicants. Since creating vacancies is...
Do Labor Rents Justify Strategic Trade and Industrial Policy?
Several efficiency wage theories of wage determination have the property that identical workers are more productive in high wage industries and that the promotion of employment in high wage...
Consistent Estimation Using Data From More Than One Sample
William T. Dickens, Brian A. Ross
This paper considers the estimation of linear models when group average data from more than one sample is used. Conditions under which OL8 coefficient estimates are consistent are identified. The...
Error Components in Grouped Data: Why It's Never Worth Weighting
When estimating linear models using grouped data researchers typically weight each observation by the group size. Under the assumption that the regression errors for the underlying micro data have...