IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tra/jlabre/v26y2005i4p725-735.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effects of Prevailing Wage Laws: A Comparison of Individual Workers' Wages Earned on and off Prevailing Wage Construction Projects

Author

Listed:
  • MIKE CLARK

Abstract

I evaluate the effects of prevailing wage laws using a unique data set that shows the wages paid to workers on prevailing wage projects and the wages paid to the same workers during the same time period for work on projects not covered by prevailing wage regulations. The wage comparison shows that workers are generally paid more for work on prevailing wage projects than they are for work on non-prevailing wage projects. Thus, prevailing wage laws likely do increase the cost of public construction. In addition, to the extent that the quality of construction is improved, prevailing wage laws appear to be an inefficient mechanism by which to achieve additional quality, as the regulations often result in workers being paid more than they earn in the private market.

Suggested Citation

  • Mike Clark, 2005. "The Effects of Prevailing Wage Laws: A Comparison of Individual Workers' Wages Earned on and off Prevailing Wage Construction Projects," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 26(4), pages 725-735, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:tra:jlabre:v:26:y:2005:i:4:p:725-735
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://transactionpub.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=D65DCKN09BT3R097
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tra:jlabre:v:26:y:2005:i:4:p:725-735. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://transactionpub.metapress.com/link.asp?target=journal&id=110581 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.