Saturday, January 24, 2015

What Charlize Theron's Good Fortune Tells Us About Wages

I don't know whether the higher remuneration that Charlize Theron was able to obtain using information revealed by the Sony hack corrects an unfair outcome or makes a fair outcome unfair. But it does show how wages depend on bargaining power and the availability of information -- two factors that are generally ignored in undergraduate courses that discuss wages. (In the utopia described in those courses, the contribution of each worker is easily measured and known to all. And each worker gets paid what they contribute. I teach that material, but -- in my defense -- I do feel guilty about it afterwords.)

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