This volume contains 13 new and important never before published chapters covering aspects of the employer-employee relationship. The volume is focused at the academic audience, but is also geared to government and business policy makers worldwide. The chapters use data from the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle-East to answer a number of vital labor market questions. These include: Why has part-time work increased so dramatically in the 15 European Union countries? What changes in retirement behavior will be expected as countries change pension laws? Why do firms often use fixed-term instead of long-term employment contracts? How do employee work interruptions affect occupational choice? Why do both employers and employees often prefer additional fringe benefits to wage increases? Do academic certifications really signal higher worker quality? How is an individual's work ethic influenced by others in residential neighborhoods? And, why do risky jobs often pay lower wages when one might expect employees need better remuneration to take dangerous jobs?
List of contributors. Introduction (S.W. Polachek). Changes in wage inequality, 1970-1990 (J. Mincer). What we know about employer-provided training: a review of the literature (J.H. Bishop). Asymmetric information and the provision of general training (A. Shrivastava). Some empirical implications of a model of human capital investment under asymmetric information (Chung Chang, Yijiang Wang). Work-related training and earnings growth for young men in Britain (W. Arulampalam, A.L. Booth and P. Elias). Relative wages and the returns to education in the labor market for registered nurses (E.J. Schumacher). The utilization of human capital in the United States, 1975-1992: patterns of work and earnings among working age males (R. Haveman, L. Buron and A. Bershadker). Male-female earnings differentials in the scientific and technical labor market in India (P. Duraisamy, M. Duraisamy). Rural public works and the poor: the case of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in India (R. Gaiha). Ethnicity and the intergenerational transmission of welfare dependency (G.J. Borjas, G.T. Sueyoshi). Immigrant entry earnings and human capital growth: evidence from the 1960-1980 censuses (H. Orcutt Duleep, M.C. Regets). Immigrants and natives: comparative economic performance in the United States, 1850-1860 and 1965-1980 (J.P. Ferrie). Minimum wages: curse or blessing? (M.O. Ravn, J.R. Sorensen). Eyeballing state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in aggregate unemployment duration data (G.J. van den Berg, J.C. van Ours).