Essays on External Conditions and Wage-Setting Within Firms: Dissertation Summary

Authors

Eric Verhoogen, University of California, Berkeley

Award Type

First Prize, Co-winner

Dissertation Advisor

David Card

Abstract

This dissertation presents two essays investigating the influence of conditions external to firms on wage-setting within them. Chapter 2, “Trade, Quality Upgrading and Wage Inequality in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector,” examines the response of plants in the Mexican manufacturing sector to the shock to product market conditions generated by the peso crisis of late 1994, and the differential consequences for wages of blue-collar and white-collar workers. Chapter 3, “Fairness and Freight-Handlers,” examines changes in the fairness perceptions and performance of employees in the freight-handling terminals of a U.S. trucking firm in response to changes in unemployment rates and the wages of similar workers in the local labor markets surrounding each terminal.

Link to dissertation full text