No abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. ABSTRACTA well-known, if underappreciated, finding in the mobility literature is that turnover is much lower in jobs covered by pensions than in other jobs. This could result from capital losses for job changes created by most benefit formulas, the tendency of turnover-prone individuals to avoid jobs covered by pensions, or higher overall compensation levels in such jobs. A switching bivariate probit model of pension coverage and turnover is developed to estimate the effect of each of these factors. The results show that capital losses are the main factor responsible for lower turnover in jobs covered by pensions, but self-selection and compensation levels also play an important role. This is the first direct evidence that bonding is important for understanding long-term employment relationships.

graciously provided their KLEM data set to use in this analysis. Larry Rosenblum of BLS guided me through the RENPR data. I have received helpful comments from participants at numerous seminars and conferences.

This paper examines the effect of union membership on absenteeism. On the one hand, union members might be absent more frequently than nonmembers because they face smaller penalties for absenteeism and because managers in union plants have less flexibility to tailor work schedules to individual preferences. On the other hand, union members might be absent less frequently because of the more attractive regular work schedules and stronger employee "voice" in union plants. The evidence from three data sets, two cross-sectional and one longitudinal, indicates that, other things equal, union members are at least 29 percent more likely to be absent than workers who do not belong to unions. These results, together with the finding of others that job dissatisfaction is greater among union members, suggest that union voice may not be effective in influencing many aspects of the employment relationship.THIS paper examines the differences in absence rates between union and nonunion workers. The results shed new light on two issues of paramount concern in the economic analysis of union behavior: the impact of unions on productivity and the role of unions as "voice" institutions.Although many researchers have recently found evidence of higher productivity among union workers, they have not identified precisely how unions affect productivity.' One possible means is by reduc-

This paper develops an economic model of absenteeism and tests that model with data from a sample of establishments in the paper industry. Absenteeism is viewed as a desirable nonpecuniary element of the compensation package. The model, which is based upon the hedonic framework developed by Sherwin Rosen, focuses on the effects of wages, fringe benefits, and employment hazards on the long-run equilibrium absence rate of an establishment. The author finds that absence rates are significantly higher in paper plants with low wages and high occupational illness and injury rates, as predicted by the model. The impact of fringe benefits is less clear-cut both theoretically and empirically. The results suggest that work attendance plays an important part in labor market adjustment; studies that focus only on wage differences will underestimate the compensating differential for employment hazards, which includes increased absence rates as well as higher wages. EVERY day from 3 to 4 percent of all work-2For an excellent bibliography, see Queen's University Industrial Relations Centre, Absenteeism: A Bibliography (Kingston, Ont.: Queen's University, 1975). A recent survey of the industrial psychology literature can be found in Paul M. Muchinsky, "Employee Absenteeism: A