Improving Workplace Conditions through Strategic Enforcement

This report draws on a series of studies led by David Weil, Professor of Economics at Boston University School of Management, that have sought to examine how industry structures affect the way employers behave and, in particular, their likelihood to comply with the important provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). These studies have examined key dimensions of the ways that many of the industries employing large numbers of vulnerable workers create incentives or disincentives for compliance. The research shows that insight into these relationships provides opportunities to increase compliance through different approaches to enforcement.