We design an experiment to study how agents make use of different pieces of information in the lab, depending on how many others have access to them and the strategic nature of interaction. Agents receive signals about a payoff relevant parameter, and the information structure is represented by a non directed network, whose nodes are agents and whose links represent sharing agreements. We compa...

This paper develops a model of wage distribution and wage dynamics based on assignment and Pareto learning. The model matches a large number of key facts about wage distribution and wage dynamics. The tractability of Pareto learning allows us to derive joint implications on the wage distribution and wage dynamics as assignment becomes more important. Our model also provides a natural framework ...

Revisiting Inter-Industry Wage Differentials and the Gender Wage Gap: An Identification Problem We propose a measure of the industrial gender wage gap which is free from an identification problem by using inter-industry wage differentials, or industrial wage premia. We draw on a recent literature showing that a normalized regression equation can be used to resolve the identification problem in ...

What Do Labor Market Institutions Do? The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in research on various labor market institutions. This paper offers a brief overview and discussion of research on the labor market impacts of minimum wages (MW), unemployment insurance (UI), and employment protection legislation (EPL). It is argued that research on UI is largely a success story, involvin...

Over the past decade, economists have developed efficiency wage models to explain the presence of wage rigidity and thus of involuntary unemployment. In these models, workers' productivity depends positively on the wage or firms' costs depend negatively on the wage, giving firms an incentive to pay wages above the market-clearing level. One type of efficiency wage model is the turnover cost mod...

Union Wages and the Minimum Wage Henry S. Farber Massachusetts Institute of Technology It is argued that a change in the minimum wage may affect the outcomes of collective bargaining through its effect on a hypothetical "reference wage" which the union rank-and-file use as a basis of comparison in formulating their wage demand. It is further argued that the importance of the minimum wage in the...

Are Wage and Employment Effects Robust to Alternative Minimum Wage Variables? A national minimum wage cannot explain variation in wages or employment across regions. Identification of the effect of the minimum wage separately from the effect of other variables on wages or employment requires regional variation. Many minimum wage variables with regional variation have been suggested in the liter...