To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, we conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel in late 2015. The findings point to a significant rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged in...

Recent reports on the “gig economy” create an impression that a dizzying mix of technological and competitive forces is fundamentally reworking the landscape of employment in the United States. A central aspect of this change is the perceived rise of independent contracting as an alternative to the conventional employer-employee relationship. However, even quantifying whether and...

In the global construction context, the best value or most economically advantageous tender is becoming a widespread approach for contractor selection, as an alternative to other traditional awarding criteria such as the lowest price. However, economic scoring formula selection by auctioneers is invariably and paradoxically a highly intuitive process in practice, involving few theoretical or...

A common but understudied argument is that the reorganization of work has contributed to the deterioration of labor standards in the US over the past four decades. Yet an analysis of existing aggregate data does not show a strong, unambiguous increase in key measures of nonstandard work. This paper therefore identifies data gaps and research...