The aging of the U.S. population, combined with an increasing probability that any given older individual will work, means that the importance of older workers to the labor force is rising. One possible solution to the solvency problems facing the Social Security System is increasing the labor supply of older workers. Understanding how policy levers can affect the labor supply of the elderly th...

Paying More to Hire the Best? Foreign Firms, Wages and Worker Mobility In the context of the debate on the labour-market consequences of globalisation, we examine worker mobility in order to identify the wage differences between foreign and domestic firms. Using matched employer-employee panel data for Portugal, we consider virtually all spells of interfirm mobility over a period of ten years. ...

ABSTRACT The analysis of the links between trade policy and labor market outcomes has developed in recent decades, prompt up by the concerns about the effects of the increasing globalization process in which trade plays a major role. In this work we analyze the impact of the increase in trade liberalization, as a consequence of Mercosur's creation on employment, income and wage dispersion at th...

This paper provides a systematic empirical analysis of the effect of union membership on job satisfaction and wages, and shows how the interaction between these effects leads to empirically observable relations between unionization and individual quit probabilities. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Men, several empirical results were obtained. First, union members, on average, r...

In a laboratory experiment we show that minimum wages have significant and lasting effects on subjects' reservation wages. The temporary introduction of a minimum wage leads to a rise in subjects' reservation wages which persists even after the minimum wage has been removed. Firms are therefore forced to pay higher wages after the removal of the minimum wage than before its introduction. As a c...

The reservation wage is an integral part of most theories of involuntary unemployment. We use panel data to examine the empirical determinants of the reservation wage — in particular the inßuence of previous wages — and consider what this implies for the evolution of the natural rate of unemployment. We Þnd that previous wages have a signiÞcant but relatively small effect on reservation wages (...

The prevailing labor market models assume that minimum wages do not affect the labor supply schedule. We challenge this view in this paper by showing experimentally that minimum wages have significant and lasting effects on subjects’ reservation wages. The temporary introduction of a minimum wage leads to a rise in subjects’ reservation wages which persists even after the minimum wage has been ...

Recent work on the economic effects of minimum wages has stressed that the standard economic model, where increases in minimum wages depress employment, is not supported by empirical work in some labor markets. We present a general theoretical model whereby employers have some degree of monopsony power, which allows minimum wages to have the conventional negative impact on employment but which ...

This study uses data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and employs all basic traits from the Five Factor Personality Inventory – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – to examine the relationship between individuals’ personality and wages in the UK. The results indicate a negative linear relationship between wages and agreeableness a...