The Value of Working Conditions in the United States and Implications for the Structure of Wages

By Nicole Maestas, Kathleen J. Mullen, David Powell, Till M. von Wachter, Jeffrey B. Wenger. Social Science Research Network, 2018

255 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We document variation in working conditions in the United States, present estimates of how workers value these conditions, and assess the impact of working conditions on estimates of wage inequality. We conduct a series of stated-preference experiments to estimate workers’ willingness to pay for a broad set of working conditions, which we validate with actual job choices. We find that working conditions vary substantially, play a significant role in job choice, and are central components of the compensation received by workers. We find that accounting for differences in preferences for working conditions often exacerbates wage differentials and intensifies measures of wage inequality. (JEL J22, J28, J31, J81)

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c6b1983d20d1361d0b556c880ae198a3b319541b

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Alexandra Roulet
2. Roland Rathelot
3. T. L. Barbanchon
4. Jeffrey P. Clemens
5. M. Ronchi
6. Barbara Petrongolo

Citations in the corpus

• Gender Differences in Job Search: Trading off COMMUTE AGAINST WAGE* (2020, methodology): “We bring to the literature on gender differences in compensating differentials the focus on commute valuation (Filer 1985; Mas and Pallais 2017; Wiswall and Zafar 2017; Maestas et al. 2018).”
• How Do Firms Respond to Minimum Wage Increases? Understanding the Relevance of Non-Employment Margins (2021, methodology): “by Maestas et al. (2018) uses an experimental survey approach to quantify workers’ willingness to pay for improved workplace conditions, and finds these valuations to be substantial.”
• Work from Home Before and After the COVID-19 Outbreak (2020, unknown): “2 The Aggregate Evolution of WFH Before and During the Pandemic Prior to 2020, WFH was already gradually becoming more common, as documented for instance in Oettinger (2011), Mateyka et al.”
• Imperfect Competition, Compensating Differentials and Rent Sharing in the U.S. Labor Market (2019, unknown): “Indeed, both survey data (e.g., Hamermesh, 1999; Pierce, 2001; Maestas et al., 2018) and experimental studies (e.”