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Hart, Robert A.
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Hart, Robert A.
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Hart, Robert A.
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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
- PublicationA good time to stay out? Strikes and the business cycleIn this paper, we compile a unique historical dataset that records strike activity in the British engineering industry from 1920 to 1970. These data have the advantage of containing a fairly homogenous set of companies and workers, covering a long period with varying labour market conditions, including information that enables the addition of union and company fixed effects, and providing geographical detail that allows a district-level analysis that controls for year and seasonal effects. We study the cyclicality of strike durations, strike incidence, and strike outcomes and distinguish between pay and non-pay strikes. Like the previous literature, we find evidence that strikes over pay have countercyclical durations. However, in the post-war period, the magnitude of this effect is much reduced when union and firm fixed effects are included. These findings suggest that it is important when studying strike durations to take account of differences in the composition of companies and unions that are involved in strikes at different points of the business cycle. We also find that strike outcomes tend to be more favourable to unions when the national unemployment rate is lower.
505 - PublicationThe spot market matters : evidence on implicit contracts from BritainBased on the methodology of Beaudry and DiNardo (1991), this paper investigates the relative importance of the spot market and implicit contracts in the determination of British real wages. Empirical work is carried out separately for males and females with individual level data taken from the New Earnings Survey Panel for the years 1976 to 2001. In contrast to previous studies that used North American data, the spot market is found to be more important than implicit contracts in determining real wages. Indeed, there is very little support for implicit contracts in these data. Further evidence is provided through the analysis of individual wage sequences. These suggest that the downwardly rigid wage sequences implied by implicit contracts with costless worker mobility are not prevalent in Britain.
449 - PublicationForced to be rich? Returns to compulsory schooling in BritainDo students benefit from compulsory schooling? Researchers using changes in compulsory schooling laws as instruments have typically estimated very high returns to additional schooling that are greater than the corresponding OLS estimates and concluded that the group of individuals who are influenced by the law change have particularly high returns to education. That is, the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) is larger than the average treatment effect (ATE). However, studies of a 1947 British compulsory schooling law change that impacted about half the relevant population have also found very high instrumental variables returns to schooling (about 15%), suggesting that the ATE of schooling is also very high and higher than OLS estimates suggest. We utilize the New Earnings Survey Panel Data-set (NESPD), that has superior earnings information compared to the datasets previously used and find instrumental variable estimates that are small and much lower than OLS. In fact, there is no evidence of any positive return for women and the return for men is in the 4-7% range. These estimates provide no evidence that the ATE of schooling is very high.
512 - PublicationReal wage cyclicality of job stayers, within-company job movers, and between-company job movers(Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, 2006-10)
; Using the British New Earnings Survey Panel Data for 1975-2001, the authors estimate the wage cyclicality (the degree to which wage levels rise and fall with economic upturns and downturns) of three groups: job stayers, within-company job movers, and between-company job movers. Wages of internal movers, they find, were slightly more procyclical, and wages of external movers considerably more procyclical, than those of stayers. The greater cyclicality of movers' wages is particularly apparent for private sector workers and persons not covered by collective agreements. Nevertheless, because job stayers comprised about 90% of all observations in this large sample of British workers, the procyclicality of their wages was the predominant determinant of the overall procyclical pattern found across all groups. Thus, the analysis does not support the implication of some rigid wage models that employers use job title changes to adjust wages to the business cycle.802 - PublicationForced to be rich? Returns to compulsory schooling in BritainDo students benefit from compulsory schooling? In an important article, Oreopoulos (2006) studied the 1947 British compulsory schooling law change and found large returns to schooling of about 15% using the General Household Survey (GHS). Reanalysing this dataset, we find much smaller returns of about 3% on average with no evidence of any positive return for women and a return for men of 4-7%. Additionally, we utilize the New Earnings Survey Panel Data-set (NESPD) that has earnings information superior to that in the GHS and find similar estimates: zero returns for women and returns of 3 to 4% for men.
622 - PublicationReal wage cyclicality of job stayers, within-company job movers, and between-company job moversUsing the British New Earnings Survey Panel Data (NESPD) for the period 1975 to 2001 we estimate the wage cyclicality of job stayers (those remaining within single jobs in a given company), within company job movers, and between company job movers. We also examine how the proportion of internal and external job moves varies over the business cycle. We find that the wages of internal movers are slightly more procyclical and wages of external movers considerably more procyclical than those of stayers. Notwithstanding, a decomposition shows that in Britain, wage cyclicality arises almost entirely from the procyclicality of wages for job stayers, with across- and within-firm mobility playing a lesser role. Thus, there is little evidence for rigid wage models that imply that employers use changes in job titles as a means of adjusting wages to the business cycle. We also show that the distinctions between private and public sectors and between workers covered and uncovered by collective agreements have important impacts on the wage estimates of both stayers and movers.
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