James L. Medoff (1947–2012)

James Medoff served in the Economics Department at Harvard from 1975 to 2008. He was an empirically oriented labour economist who did important work in four main areas. Using data from large companies’ personnel files, he showed that wage growth diverged in important ways from changes in performance in white-collar workers’ careers. In a comprehensive study of labour unions, he found that, in addition to their well-known effect on compensation, they also improved working conditions, reduced turnover, and often increased worker productivity. Working for large employers had similar effects on wages, working conditions and turnover. Finally, he argued that job vacancy rates were a more reliable indicator of the state of the labour market than the (much more publicised) unemployment rate.