Labor studies.

• Position: National Bureau of Economic Research meeting

Members and guests of the NBER's Program on Labor Studies met in Cambridge on April 16. Program Director Richard B. Freeman and Lawrence F. Katz, both of NBER and Harvard University, chose these papers to discuss:

David Neumark, NBER and Michigan State University; Kimberly Bayard, University of Maryland; Judith K. Hellerstein, NBER and University of Maryland; and Kenneth R. Troske, University of Missouri, "Sex Segregation and Sex Differences in Wages within and across Plants: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data" (NBER Working Paper No. 7003)

Daron Acemoglu and Jorn-Steffen Pischke, NBER and MIT, "Minimum Wages and On-the-Job Training" (NBER Working Paper No. 7184)

Zadia M. Feliciano and Robert E. Lipsey, NBER and Queens College, "Foreign Ownership and Wages in the United States, 1987-92" (NBER Working Paper No 6923)

Dora L. Costa, NBER and MIT, and Matthew E. Kahn, Columbia University, "Power Couples: Changes in the Locational Choice of the College Educated" (NBER Working Paper No 7109)

Henry S. Farber, NBER and Princeton University, and Kevin F. Hallock, University of Illinois, "Changing Stock Market Response to Announcements of Job Loss: Evidence from 1970-97"

Neumark, Bayard, Hellerstein, and Troske assemble a matched employer-employee dataset covering all industries and occupations across all regions of the United States. They use this data to reconsider the relative contributions to the overall gender gap in wages of sex segregation as opposed to wage differences by sex within occupations, industries, establishments, and the like. They find that a sizable fraction of the gender gap in wages is explained by the segregation of women into lower-paying occupations, industries, establishments, and jobs within establishments. Nonetheless, a substantial part of the gap is attributable to the individual's sex. This finding contrasts sharply with earlier conclusions, based on narrower samples, which indicated that sex segregation alone accounted for the gender wage gap.

Acemoglu and Pischke demonstrate that when the assumption of perfectly competitive labor markets is relaxed, minimum wages actually can increase training of affected workers by inducing firms to train their unskilled employees. More generally, a minimum wage may increase training for workers constrained by it, while reducing training for those who must take wage cuts to finance it. The authors find no evidence that minimum wages reduced training among low-wage workers...