A prominent theoretical controversy in the compensating differentials literature concerns unobservable individual productivity. Competing models yield opposite predictions depending on whether the unobservable productivity is safety-related skill or productivity generally. Using five panel waves and several new measures of worker fatality risks, first-difference estimates imply that omitting in...

This paper addresses a multi-objective mixed-model two-sided assembly line balancing and worker assignment with bottleneck analysis when the task times are dependent on the worker’s skill. This problem is known as NP-hard class, thus, a hybrid cyclic-hierarchical algorithm is presented for solving it. The algorithm is based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Theory of Constraints (TOC) an...

Three central observations motivate this paper. First, there is little variation in the fraction of unskilled workers between rich and middle income countries. This occurs despite well-known, large differences in output per worker. Among a set of rich countries, unskilled workers 25 and older, defined as those with at most high school education, averaged 82 percent. Meanwhile, for a set of midd...

A competitive search model of the labor market is embedded into a small open economy with firm and worker heterogeneity. Search frictions generate equilibrium unemployment and income inequality between identical workers, in addition to income differences between skill groups. Numerical simulations of the model reveal that an increase in trade is likely to increase within-group inequality and de...

Flows of US immigrants are concentrated at the extremes of the skill distribution. We develop a dynamic political economy model consistent with these observations. Individuals care about wages and the welfare of their children. Skill types are complementary in production. Voter support for immigration requires that the children of median-voter natives and of immigrants have suffi ciently dissim...

Previous research documents how stereotypes discourage young women from choosing and attaining technology jobs. We build off this research and ask whether (and how) stereotypes continue to affect men and women once they enter the technology workforce. Using a novel survey of technical employees from seven Silicon Valley firms and new measures of what we call “cultural” and “skill” alignment, we...

Why Do Part-Time Workers Earn Less? The Role of Worker and Job Skills The wages of part-time workers are considerably lower than are those of full-time workers. Measurable worker and job characteristics, including occupational skill requirements, account for much of the part-time penalty. Longitudinal analysis indicates that much of the remaining gap reflects worker heterogeneity, evidenced by ...

We consider the integrated workforce planning and allocation problem for a high volume manufacturing facility that operates in two non-overlapping shifts of twelve hours each day, with twenty eight shifts for a two week planing period. In such facilities, operational workforce planning is typically carried out in two steps consisting of the multishift assignments and the single-shift allocation...