The Regulation of Work: Seniority Rules and Constrained Choice
type: CreativeWork
description: The motivation for the assignment of workers by seniority is not well understood; consequently, this thesis analyzes these rules both theoretically and empirically. Unlike much of the current work on seniority which analyzes the impact of this institution on age-earnings profiles or on wage and employment levels, this examination focuses on the firm's allocation problem itself. This basic decision problem is captured as one of assigning heterogeneous workers to different job classifications. The insights produced by a simple model include identifying the situations when a firm will choose to allocate workers according to their seniority, the indirect costs of a seniority-based allocation, and conditions on preferences that motivate workers to demand seniority rules.
abstract: The motivation for the assignment of workers by seniority is not well understood; consequently, this thesis analyzes these rules both theoretically and empirically. Unlike much of the current work on seniority which analyzes the impact of this institution on age-earnings profiles or on wage and employment levels, this examination focuses on the firm's allocation problem itself. This basic decision problem is captured as one of assigning heterogeneous workers to different job classifications. The insights produced by a simple model include identifying the situations when a firm will choose to allocate workers according to their seniority, the indirect costs of a seniority-based allocation, and conditions on preferences that motivate workers to demand seniority rules.
author: Schnell, John Franklin
keywords: Economics, Labor
date published: 2014-12-16T04:05:01Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:26:03Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/70754