| Abstract: | The common law doctrine of employment at will holds that, unlessspecified otherwise, the employment relationship can be terminatedfor any reason. Beginning in the mid-1970s, many state courtsbecame willing to find exceptions to this doctrine. A possiblebenefit of this new approach is that it provides a third-partyenforcement mechanism to implicit labor contracts. This articleuses two large micro data sets on employee tenure and wagesto evaluate the impact of exceptions to employment at will.Although the results suggest that exceptions to employment atwill affected labor markets, there is little evidence that exceptionshelped enforce implicit contracts. |
