IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/indres/v53y2014i4p593-616.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prevailing Wage Regulations and School Construction Costs: Cumulative Evidence from British Columbia

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Duncan
  • Peter Philips
  • Mark Prus

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="irel12072-abs-0001"> The effect of prevailing wage laws on the cost of public construction has been the subject of an ongoing public policy debate. We measure this effect by comparing the public/private construction cost differential for schools built before and after British Columbia's Skills Development and Fair Wage Policy. Regression results indicate that public schools were 40.5 percent more expensive to build prior to the policy. This differential was 40.1 percent after the policy's enforcement. However, this change is not statistically significant. Regression results also indicate a stable construction cost function over the policy period. These results indicate that the effect of fair wage requirements was not different from zero in terms of magnitude or statistical significance. Combining these results with the findings of our previous research provides a comprehensive view regarding the effect of the British Columbian prevailing wage policy on school construction. This body of research, utilizing a variety of statistical methods, provides consistent evidence indicating that a relatively strong prevailing wage policy was not associated with changes in the efficiency or productivity of construction that contributes to increased building costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Duncan & Peter Philips & Mark Prus, 2014. "Prevailing Wage Regulations and School Construction Costs: Cumulative Evidence from British Columbia," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 593-616, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:indres:v:53:y:2014:i:4:p:593-616
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/irel.2014.53.issue-4
    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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter Harrison, 2007. "Can Measurement Error Explain the Weakness of Productivity Growth in the Canadian Construction Industry?," CSLS Research Reports 2007-01, Centre for the Study of Living Standards.
    2. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    3. William Blankenau & Steven Cassou, 2011. "Industry estimates of the elasticity of substitution and the rate of biased technological change between skilled and unskilled labour," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(23), pages 3129-3142.
    4. George C. Leef, 2010. "Prevailing Wage Laws: Public Interest or Special Interest Legislation?," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 30(1), pages 137-154, Winter.
    5. Belman, Dale L, 1988. "Concentration, Unionism, and Labor Earnings: A Sample Selection Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(3), pages 391-397, August.
    6. Kniesner, Thomas J & Goldsmith, Arthur H, 1987. "A Survey of Alternative Models of the Aggregate U.S. Labor Market," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(3), pages 1241-1280, September.
    7. Kevin C. Duncan, 2015. "The Effect of Federal Davis-Bacon and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Regulations on Highway Maintenance Costs," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 68(1), pages 212-237, January.
    8. Breusch, T S & Pagan, A R, 1979. "A Simple Test for Heteroscedasticity and Random Coefficient Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1287-1294, September.
    9. Balistreri, Edward J. & McDaniel, Christine A. & Wong, Eina Vivian, 2003. "An estimation of US industry-level capital-labor substitution elasticities: support for Cobb-Douglas," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 343-356, December.
    10. Kennedy, Peter E, 1981. "Estimation with Correctly Interpreted Dummy Variables in Semilogarithmic Equations [The Interpretation of Dummy Variables in Semilogarithmic Equations]," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 801-801, September.
    11. Jaewhan Kim & Chang Kuo-Liang & Peter Philips, 2012. "The Effect of Prevailing Wage Regulations on Contractor Bid Participation and Behavior: A Comparison of P alo A lto, C alifornia with Four Nearby Prevailing Wage Municipalities," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 874-891, October.
    12. Dale Belman & Paula B. Voos, 2006. "Union Wages and Union Decline: Evidence from the Construction Industry," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 67-87, October.
    13. Kevin Duncan & Peter Philips & Mark Prus, 2006. "Prevailing wage legislation and public school construction efficiency: a stochastic frontier approach," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(6), pages 625-634.
    14. Fraundorf, Martha Norby & Farrell, John P & Mason, Robert, 1984. "The Effect of the Davis-Bacon Act on Construction Costs in Rural Areas," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 142-146, February.
    15. Peter Harrison, 2007. "Can Measurement Error Explain the Weakness of Productivity Growth in the Canadian Construction Industry?," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 14, pages 53-70, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew Hinkel & Dale Belman, 2022. "Should prevailing wages prevail? Re‐examining the effect of prevailing wage laws on affordable housing construction costs," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 60(4), pages 761-783, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bodo E. Steiner, 2004. "Australian wines in the British wine market: A hedonic price analysis," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(3), pages 287-307.
    2. Jean-Paul Azam & Catherine Bonjean, 1995. "La formation du prix du riz : théorie et application au cas d'Antananarivo (Madagascar) ," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 46(4), pages 1145-1166.
    3. Stellner, Christoph & Klein, Christian & Zwergel, Bernhard, 2015. "Corporate social responsibility and Eurozone corporate bonds: The moderating role of country sustainability," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 538-549.
    4. Stern, David I. & Gerlagh, Reyer & Burke, Paul J., 2017. "Modeling the emissions–income relationship using long-run growth rates," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(6), pages 699-724, December.
    5. Tsimpanos, Apostolos & Tsimbos, Cleon & Kalogirou, Stamatis, 2018. "Assessing spatial variation and heterogeneity of fertility in Greece at local authority level," MPRA Paper 100406, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Caldara, Dario & Iacoviello, Matteo & Molligo, Patrick & Prestipino, Andrea & Raffo, Andrea, 2020. "The economic effects of trade policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 38-59.
    7. Marijke Verpoorten & Lode Berlage, 2004. "Genocide and land scarcity: Can Rwandan rural households manage?," CSAE Working Paper Series 2004-15, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    8. Machado, Jose A. F. & Silva, J. M. C. Santos, 2000. "Glejser's test revisited," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 189-202, July.
    9. Katarzyna Jabłońska, 2018. "Dealing With Heteroskedasticity Within The Modeling Of The Quality Of Life Of Older People," Statistics in Transition New Series, Polish Statistical Association, vol. 19(3), pages 423-452, September.
    10. Michael O'Connor Keefe & David Gallagher, 2014. "Does the effect of revealed private information on initial public offering (IPO) first trading day return differ by IPO market heat?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 54(3), pages 921-964, September.
    11. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    12. Richard H. Spady & Sami Stouli, 2018. "Simultaneous Mean-Variance Regression," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 18/697, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    13. Russell, Bill & Chowdhury, Rosen Azad, 2013. "Estimating United States Phillips curves with expectations consistent with the statistical process of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 24-38.
    14. Olivier Damette & Philippe Delacote, 2009. "The environmental resource curse hypothesis : the forest case [L'hypothèse de malédiction environnemental des ressources : le cas des forêts]," Working Papers hal-01189378, HAL.
    15. Joachim Zietz, 2006. "Detecting neglected parameter heterogeneity with Chow tests," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(6), pages 369-374.
    16. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2003. "Instrumental variables and GMM: Estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, March.
    17. Pedro Delicado & Juan Romo, 1998. "Constant coefficient tests for random coefficient regression," Economics Working Papers 329, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    18. Dean H. Gatzlaff & G. Stacy Sirmans & Barry A. Diskin, 1994. "The Effect of Anchor Tenant Loss on Shopping Center Rents," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 9(1), pages 99-110.
    19. Russell Davidson & Victoria Zinde‐Walsh, 2017. "Advances in specification testing," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1595-1631, December.
    20. Dufour, Jean-Marie & Khalaf, Lynda & Bernard, Jean-Thomas & Genest, Ian, 2004. "Simulation-based finite-sample tests for heteroskedasticity and ARCH effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 317-347, October.

    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:bla:indres:v:53:y:2014:i:4:p:593-616. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0019-8676 .

    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.