Barry Hirsch | Georgia State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Barry Hirsch
Monthly labor review / U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
This note describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of uni... more This note describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of union density for the years 1964 through 1999. Two sources of data are combined to produce these estimates, the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of U.S. households, and the discontinued BLS publication Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, based on data reported by labor unions to the federal government. The union density measure represents the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are union members, including employees in the public sector. A more limited database, available for years since 1977 and based exclusively on the CPS, provides a measure of union coverage density, representing the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The databases will be updated annually and distributed freely via the Internet.
This study examines shareholder risk and rates of return in union and nonunion companies in 1973-... more This study examines shareholder risk and rates of return in union and nonunion companies in 1973-87. Shareholder risk declined with the extent of union coverage in the 1970s, and returns were lower among highly unionized companies than among other companies during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Union-nonunion differences in risk were small and insignificant by the mid-1980s, however, and there was no systematic relationship between union coverage and shareholder returns in the mid-1970s or mid-1980s. Finally, firms with relatively low rates of return to investors in 1977-82 tended to experience larger than average declines in firm-level union coverage between 1977 and 1987. As a partial explanation for these findings, the authors posit a relationship between shareholder risk and the differential use of COLAs across industries and time. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This study estimates earnings function parameters across alternative occupational paths, with an ... more This study estimates earnings function parameters across alternative occupational paths, with an emphasis on identifying rates of return to post-school human capital investment. Based on cross-sectional and synthetic cohort analysis using the 1973-2000 Current Population Surveys, estimates are obtained for men and women on the returns to schooling and the investment intensity, length, and returns from postschool training. Although the shapes of wage-experience profiles differ substantially across occupations and skill groups, evidence supports the theoretical prediction that rates of return are equivalent across alternative investment paths. Little evidence is found for an increase in returns to post-school training over time. By the 1990s, returns to schooling had risen to a level similar to the returns from post-school training.
Zeitschrift für Palliativmedizin, 2008
Journal of Collective Negotiations in the Public Sector, 1983
It has long been acknowledged that the;4'f1positiol1. of fmandal costs on bargaining parties, who... more It has long been acknowledged that the;4'f1positiol1. of fmandal costs on bargaining parties, who request an arbitrator to .resolve their disputes, will encourage parties to settle without the use of arbitration. This article outlines a proposal to charge parties using conventional arbitration a fee based on both the magnitude of the difference in their positions and on the size of the bargaining unit in question. The procedure, called "cost-formula arbitration," has three advantages over alternative costimposition techniques. First, the imposed costs will provide a more substantial incentive to settle than would be the case with most other schemes. Second, the parties will have incentives to maintain their genuine offers at the stage at which arbitration is invoked. Finally, the inducements to settle voluntarily are not dissipated when the size of bargaining units is large. 21 @ 1983, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc. I Reference [7] provides a view in which the likelihood of a negotiated outcome need not be a direct function of the size of the contract zone.
Research in Labor Economics, 1999
The directive of the Postal Reorganization Act is to maintain compensation similar to that awarde... more The directive of the Postal Reorganization Act is to maintain compensation similar to that awarded for comparable levels of work in the private sector. This paper examines a wide array of recent evidence to assess the comparability of postal and private sector compensation. The evidence points to a substantial postal premium. Cross-sectional analysis controlling for worker characteristics indicates that bargaining unit postal employees receive wages 28% higher than similar private sector workers. A premium estimate of 34% is obtained following an accounting for occupational skill requirements and working conditions, while inclusion of fringe benefits increases further the size of the premium. Longitudinal evidence from the Postal New Hire Survey, matched CPS panels, and Displaced Worker Surveys indicate wage gains of 30%-40% among postal entrants. Data on quit rates and applicant queues reinforce the conclusion that postal workers receive substantial rents. We explore in depth methodological issues, with particular attention given to the choice of the comparison group with whom postal workers are most directly compared. Many of the issues analyzed here have general applicability to studies of wage comparability.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of un... more This paper describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of union density for the years 1964 through 2000. Two sources of data are combined to produce these estimates, the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of U.S. households, and the discontinued BLS publication Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, based on data reported by labor unions to the government. The union density measure represents the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are union members, including employees in the public sector. A more limited database, available for years since 1977 and based exclusively on the CPS, provides a measure of union coverage density, representing the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The databases will be updated annually and distributed freely via the Internet.
Regulatory Reform and Labor Markets, 1998
The effect of motor carrier deregulation on the employment and earnings of truck drivers is exami... more The effect of motor carrier deregulation on the employment and earnings of truck drivers is examined, using data for the period 1973-95. The use of a quasi-experimental design is made possible through the comparison of wages before and after deregulation among drivers in the previously regulated for-hire sector, drivers in unregulated private carriage, and an economy-wide group of male non-driver nonprofessionals. Deregulation is associated with approximately a 15 percent relative wage decline among drivers employed in the for-hire sector, resulting primarily from decreases in union wages and a shift from high-wage union to low-wage nonunion employment. In contrast to wage losses among for-hire union drivers, losses among nonunion drivers relative to workers economy-wide are small. The decline in wages among both union and nonunion drivers in the unregulated private carriage sector largely mirrors wage changes among the male non-driver control group. Our results indicate that there was little rent sharing during the regulatory period among drivers in unregulated private carriage or among nonunion drivers in the regulated sector. Sizable wage advantages among for-hire drivers and among union drivers in both the forhire and private sectors have been maintained throughout the deregulation period.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The economic impact of the 2007-2009 increases in the federal minimum wage (MW) is analyzed using... more The economic impact of the 2007-2009 increases in the federal minimum wage (MW) is analyzed using a sample of quick-service restaurants in Georgia and Alabama. Store-level biweekly payroll records for individual employees are used, allowing us to precisely measure the MW compliance cost for each restaurant. We examine a broad range of adjustment channels in addition to employment, including hours, prices, turnover, training, performance standards, and non-labor costs. Exploiting variation in the cost impact of the MW across restaurants, we find no significant effect of the MW increases on employment or hours over the three years. Cost increases were instead absorbed through other channels of adjustment, including higher prices, lower profit margins, wage compression, reduced turnover, and higher performance standards. These findings are compared with MW predictions from competitive, monopsony, and institutional/behavioral models; the latter appears to fit best in the short run.
The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1986
The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1993
The Box-Cox transformation is used to compare alternative functional forms of market value equati... more The Box-Cox transformation is used to compare alternative functional forms of market value equations.
Southern Economic Journal, 1984
Page 1. Union Membership Determination and Industry Characteristics* BARRY T. HIRSCH University o... more Page 1. Union Membership Determination and Industry Characteristics* BARRY T. HIRSCH University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, North Carolina MARK C. BERGER University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky I. Introduction ...
Journal of Labor Research, 1984
Journal of Labor Research, 1982
This study examines, within the context of a model developed recently by Farber and Katz, the rol... more This study examines, within the context of a model developed recently by Farber and Katz, the role of expectations, uncertainty, and costs on the incentive to bargain. It is shown that experience with a compulsory arbitration process can best be viewed as creating opposing effects on the frequency of use. While decreased uncertainty will reduce incentives to bargain, the convergence of expectations can work either to increase or decrease arbitration usage over time. Empirical evidence, while suggestive, is found to be too limited to draw strong conclusions on the relative magnitude of these effects. In addition, the paper incorporates arbitration costs into the bargaining model, and the effects of costs on arbitration usage and on the outcomes of negotiated settlements are examined. Available evidence on the magnitude of direct arbitration costs is then summarized. Because these costs are often low and provide little incentive to bargain, the authors suggest a policy approach for levying costs on the parties.
Journal of Labor Research, 1987
Journal of Labor Research, 1998
This paper examines the effect of unions on the earnings of health care workers, with emphasis on... more This paper examines the effect of unions on the earnings of health care workers, with emphasis on the measurement and sources of union wage premiums. Using data constructed from the 1973 though 1994 Current Populations Surveys, standard union premium estimates are found to be substantially lower among health care workers than in other sectors of the economy, and to be smaller among higher skill than among lower skill occupational groups. Longitudinal analysis of workers switching union status, which controls for worker-specific skills, indicates a small impact of unions on earnings within both high and low skilled health care occupations. Evidence is found for small but significant union threat effects in health care labor markets. It has been argued that recent legal changes in bargaining unit determination should enhance union organizing and bargaining power. Although we cannot rule this out, such effects are not readily apparent in our data.
Journal of Labor Research, 2001
Monthly labor review / U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
This note describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of uni... more This note describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of union density for the years 1964 through 1999. Two sources of data are combined to produce these estimates, the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of U.S. households, and the discontinued BLS publication Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, based on data reported by labor unions to the federal government. The union density measure represents the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are union members, including employees in the public sector. A more limited database, available for years since 1977 and based exclusively on the CPS, provides a measure of union coverage density, representing the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The databases will be updated annually and distributed freely via the Internet.
This study examines shareholder risk and rates of return in union and nonunion companies in 1973-... more This study examines shareholder risk and rates of return in union and nonunion companies in 1973-87. Shareholder risk declined with the extent of union coverage in the 1970s, and returns were lower among highly unionized companies than among other companies during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Union-nonunion differences in risk were small and insignificant by the mid-1980s, however, and there was no systematic relationship between union coverage and shareholder returns in the mid-1970s or mid-1980s. Finally, firms with relatively low rates of return to investors in 1977-82 tended to experience larger than average declines in firm-level union coverage between 1977 and 1987. As a partial explanation for these findings, the authors posit a relationship between shareholder risk and the differential use of COLAs across industries and time. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This study estimates earnings function parameters across alternative occupational paths, with an ... more This study estimates earnings function parameters across alternative occupational paths, with an emphasis on identifying rates of return to post-school human capital investment. Based on cross-sectional and synthetic cohort analysis using the 1973-2000 Current Population Surveys, estimates are obtained for men and women on the returns to schooling and the investment intensity, length, and returns from postschool training. Although the shapes of wage-experience profiles differ substantially across occupations and skill groups, evidence supports the theoretical prediction that rates of return are equivalent across alternative investment paths. Little evidence is found for an increase in returns to post-school training over time. By the 1990s, returns to schooling had risen to a level similar to the returns from post-school training.
Zeitschrift für Palliativmedizin, 2008
Journal of Collective Negotiations in the Public Sector, 1983
It has long been acknowledged that the;4'f1positiol1. of fmandal costs on bargaining parties, who... more It has long been acknowledged that the;4'f1positiol1. of fmandal costs on bargaining parties, who request an arbitrator to .resolve their disputes, will encourage parties to settle without the use of arbitration. This article outlines a proposal to charge parties using conventional arbitration a fee based on both the magnitude of the difference in their positions and on the size of the bargaining unit in question. The procedure, called "cost-formula arbitration," has three advantages over alternative costimposition techniques. First, the imposed costs will provide a more substantial incentive to settle than would be the case with most other schemes. Second, the parties will have incentives to maintain their genuine offers at the stage at which arbitration is invoked. Finally, the inducements to settle voluntarily are not dissipated when the size of bargaining units is large. 21 @ 1983, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc. I Reference [7] provides a view in which the likelihood of a negotiated outcome need not be a direct function of the size of the contract zone.
Research in Labor Economics, 1999
The directive of the Postal Reorganization Act is to maintain compensation similar to that awarde... more The directive of the Postal Reorganization Act is to maintain compensation similar to that awarded for comparable levels of work in the private sector. This paper examines a wide array of recent evidence to assess the comparability of postal and private sector compensation. The evidence points to a substantial postal premium. Cross-sectional analysis controlling for worker characteristics indicates that bargaining unit postal employees receive wages 28% higher than similar private sector workers. A premium estimate of 34% is obtained following an accounting for occupational skill requirements and working conditions, while inclusion of fringe benefits increases further the size of the premium. Longitudinal evidence from the Postal New Hire Survey, matched CPS panels, and Displaced Worker Surveys indicate wage gains of 30%-40% among postal entrants. Data on quit rates and applicant queues reinforce the conclusion that postal workers receive substantial rents. We explore in depth methodological issues, with particular attention given to the choice of the comparison group with whom postal workers are most directly compared. Many of the issues analyzed here have general applicability to studies of wage comparability.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of un... more This paper describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of union density for the years 1964 through 2000. Two sources of data are combined to produce these estimates, the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of U.S. households, and the discontinued BLS publication Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, based on data reported by labor unions to the government. The union density measure represents the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are union members, including employees in the public sector. A more limited database, available for years since 1977 and based exclusively on the CPS, provides a measure of union coverage density, representing the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The databases will be updated annually and distributed freely via the Internet.
Regulatory Reform and Labor Markets, 1998
The effect of motor carrier deregulation on the employment and earnings of truck drivers is exami... more The effect of motor carrier deregulation on the employment and earnings of truck drivers is examined, using data for the period 1973-95. The use of a quasi-experimental design is made possible through the comparison of wages before and after deregulation among drivers in the previously regulated for-hire sector, drivers in unregulated private carriage, and an economy-wide group of male non-driver nonprofessionals. Deregulation is associated with approximately a 15 percent relative wage decline among drivers employed in the for-hire sector, resulting primarily from decreases in union wages and a shift from high-wage union to low-wage nonunion employment. In contrast to wage losses among for-hire union drivers, losses among nonunion drivers relative to workers economy-wide are small. The decline in wages among both union and nonunion drivers in the unregulated private carriage sector largely mirrors wage changes among the male non-driver control group. Our results indicate that there was little rent sharing during the regulatory period among drivers in unregulated private carriage or among nonunion drivers in the regulated sector. Sizable wage advantages among for-hire drivers and among union drivers in both the forhire and private sectors have been maintained throughout the deregulation period.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The economic impact of the 2007-2009 increases in the federal minimum wage (MW) is analyzed using... more The economic impact of the 2007-2009 increases in the federal minimum wage (MW) is analyzed using a sample of quick-service restaurants in Georgia and Alabama. Store-level biweekly payroll records for individual employees are used, allowing us to precisely measure the MW compliance cost for each restaurant. We examine a broad range of adjustment channels in addition to employment, including hours, prices, turnover, training, performance standards, and non-labor costs. Exploiting variation in the cost impact of the MW across restaurants, we find no significant effect of the MW increases on employment or hours over the three years. Cost increases were instead absorbed through other channels of adjustment, including higher prices, lower profit margins, wage compression, reduced turnover, and higher performance standards. These findings are compared with MW predictions from competitive, monopsony, and institutional/behavioral models; the latter appears to fit best in the short run.
The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1986
The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1993
The Box-Cox transformation is used to compare alternative functional forms of market value equati... more The Box-Cox transformation is used to compare alternative functional forms of market value equations.
Southern Economic Journal, 1984
Page 1. Union Membership Determination and Industry Characteristics* BARRY T. HIRSCH University o... more Page 1. Union Membership Determination and Industry Characteristics* BARRY T. HIRSCH University of North Carolina at Greensboro Greensboro, North Carolina MARK C. BERGER University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky I. Introduction ...
Journal of Labor Research, 1984
Journal of Labor Research, 1982
This study examines, within the context of a model developed recently by Farber and Katz, the rol... more This study examines, within the context of a model developed recently by Farber and Katz, the role of expectations, uncertainty, and costs on the incentive to bargain. It is shown that experience with a compulsory arbitration process can best be viewed as creating opposing effects on the frequency of use. While decreased uncertainty will reduce incentives to bargain, the convergence of expectations can work either to increase or decrease arbitration usage over time. Empirical evidence, while suggestive, is found to be too limited to draw strong conclusions on the relative magnitude of these effects. In addition, the paper incorporates arbitration costs into the bargaining model, and the effects of costs on arbitration usage and on the outcomes of negotiated settlements are examined. Available evidence on the magnitude of direct arbitration costs is then summarized. Because these costs are often low and provide little incentive to bargain, the authors suggest a policy approach for levying costs on the parties.
Journal of Labor Research, 1987
Journal of Labor Research, 1998
This paper examines the effect of unions on the earnings of health care workers, with emphasis on... more This paper examines the effect of unions on the earnings of health care workers, with emphasis on the measurement and sources of union wage premiums. Using data constructed from the 1973 though 1994 Current Populations Surveys, standard union premium estimates are found to be substantially lower among health care workers than in other sectors of the economy, and to be smaller among higher skill than among lower skill occupational groups. Longitudinal analysis of workers switching union status, which controls for worker-specific skills, indicates a small impact of unions on earnings within both high and low skilled health care occupations. Evidence is found for small but significant union threat effects in health care labor markets. It has been argued that recent legal changes in bargaining unit determination should enhance union organizing and bargaining power. Although we cannot rule this out, such effects are not readily apparent in our data.
Journal of Labor Research, 2001