Prevailing wage regulations date to just after the Civil War
at the federal level (1868) and to 1891 at the state level (
Losing Ground: Lessons from the Repeal of Nine Little Davis Bacon Acts (pdf)
Azari-Rad
H., Yeagle A., and Philips P. (1994), "The
Effect of the Repeal of Utah's Prevailing Wage Law on the Labor Market in
Construction," in Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd,
Ronald L. Seeber, and Rudolph A. Oswald, eds.
Restoring the Promise of American Labor Law.
(This was the first case study I did on prevailing wage laws. I do not have a pdf of this paper but for those who like more descriptive research rather than econometric analysis, this paper might be worth a trip to your library.)
State Prevailing Wage Laws and Construction Labor Markets (Ph.D. thesis by Mark Price) (pdf)
State Prevailing Wage Laws and Construction Labor Markets (Industrial and Labor Relations Review, January 2001) by Daniel P. Kessler and Lawrence F. Katz (pdf)
Kessler and Katz find that while there is no statistically significant employment increase for blacks after prevailing wage laws are repealed, the wages for whites and union workers fall relative to blacks after repeal. Using K&K’s econometric model and data, Mark Price replicates their results and then extends them to look at the effect of repeal on unionization, the wages of skilled and unskilled construction workers, the payment of health and pension benefits, and the educational attainment of construction workers.
Making
Hay When It Rains: The Effect Prevailing Wage Regulations, Scale Economies,
Seasonal, Cyclical And Local Business Patterns Have On School Construction Costs, Journal of Education Finance, 27 (SPRING 2002). 997-1012
State Prevailing Wage Laws and School Construction Costs, Industrial Relations, Vol. 42, No. 3 (July 2003).
Prevailing
Wage Regulations and School Construction Costs: Evidence From
British Columbia, Journal of Education Finance v25 no3 p415-31 Wint 2000