Daniel J.B. Mitchell

Professor Emeritus, Management and Organizations

“In management, politics and life itself, the greatest illusion is that ‘everything is under control.’”

daniel.j.b.mitchell@anderson.ucla.edu

(310) 825-1504

Areas of Expertise:

California Budget Issues
California Policy Issues
Downsizing
Federal Government
Labor Issues
Employee Benefits
Part-Time Workers
Outsourcing
Temporary Workers
Recruiting
Retirement

About

Biography

Daniel J.B. Mitchell is professor emeritus at UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, where he chaired the Department of Policy Studies in 1996–97. Mitchell was formerly director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (1979–90) and continues to serve on the Institute's advisory committee.

During Phase II of the federal wage/price controls program of the early 1970s, Mitchell was chief economist of the Pay Board, the agency that administered wage controls. He was twice associated with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., including a stint as a senior fellow in the economic studies program (1978–79), and participated in several Brookings-sponsored research projects.

His professional activities have included memberships and committee responsibilities on the executive boards of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (both national and Southern California), the North American Economics and Finance Association and the Institute of Industrial Relations Association. Mitchell is a past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association. In 2007 he was named a distinguished fellow of this association, now known as the International Banking, Economics, and Finance Association.

Mitchell has also served on the nominating committee of the American Economic Association and on the editorial boards of various academic journals. He was co-editor of the journal Industrial Relations for many years. Currently, Mitchell edits the annual California Policy Options volumes and contributes a chapter each year on the California state budget.

Mitchell regularly served as a member of the Human Resource Forecast Panel while it operated at the Conference Board and, later, at UCLA. He is a member of the International Industrial Relations Association and chairs one of its study groups (Pay Systems). At UCLA, he was co-director and then director (1999–2000) of the UCLA Anderson Business Forecasting Project. As a faculty member at UCLA, he has created the course California Policy Issues (now co-taught with former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis), now a core course of the minor in public policy. Mitchell received an Excellence in Education award in 2006 from the Labor and Employment Relations Association.

Mitchell has served as a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve Board, the President's Council on Wage and Price Stability, the U.S. Department of Labor and the International Labour Organisation. He is neutral chair of the board that oversees the health plans of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1277. Mitchell's past publications are generally in the areas of wage determination, wage-price controls, concession bargaining, flexible pay plans, non-wage employee benefits, use of labor-market data, labor standards in international trade and other aspects of labor-market analysis. He now focuses on California policy issues, especially state finance. He is part of a team developing an online network and website to foster research in the employment area, known as the Employment Policy Research Network.

Mitchell is the author of Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly: Historic Social Movements and Their Lessons for Our Aging Society (M.E. Sharpe, 2000). The book uses California's colorful experience with "pensionite" movements among the state's seniors during the period from the 1920s through the 1940s to draw implications for the upcoming retirement of the baby boom.

In 2007, Mitchell received the Excellence in Education Award from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He lives in Santa Monica, California, with his wife Alice. They have two adult children.

Education

Ph.D. Economics, 1968, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A.B. Economics, 1964, Columbia University

Published Papers

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2020). How Local Should Politics Be? Santa Monica's District vs. At-Large Voting Litigation, California Policy Options 2020. [Link]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2020). Time for an Old Guy; California Fiscal Affairs Shift from Brown to Newsom, California Policy Options 2020. [Link]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2019). The Handover Budget of 2018-19: The Fiscal Legacy of Jerry Brown. California Policy Options 2019, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2019). The Conflict Diamonds of Adriana Gianturco. California Policy Options 2019, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2018). If Not About Legacy, Then About What Else: Jerry Brown's 2017-18 Budget. California Policy Options 2018, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2018). The Trash-Talking Candidate Who Wasn't Supposed to Win. California Policy Options 2018, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2017). Not If He Can Help It: Enacting the 2016-2017 California State Budget. California Policy Options 2017, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, (2017). Death and Resurrection: The Tale of Coroner Noguchi. California Policy Options 2017, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2016). Clearing the Air: What the Times Called for in 1947. California Policy Options 2016, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2014). The Adult Budget Supervisor Tackles the 2014-15 California State Budget. California Policy Options 2015, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2012). Suck It In: Round Two on the California Budget in Jerry Brown's Second Round as Governor. California Policy Options 2013. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, ed.. (2012). Public Policy and Political Agendas: The Public Sector in an Era of Economic Distress. Labor and Employment Research Assn., Includes Chapter 8, Daniel J.B. Mitchell, "California's Public Sector Adapts to the Great Recession," pp.195-235. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2012). Really! No Mental Reservations: Jerry Brown Inherits California's Budget Crisis. California Policy Options 2012, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2011). Government by (Hot) Checks and (Im)Balances. California Policy Options 2011. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2010). Shades of Gray. California Policy Options 2010. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (January 2010). Homeland Security: Theme of the New Deal. LERA-Atlanta meetings. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (December 2009). Division of Labor: California's Renewed Budget Crisis Splits the Labor Movement. WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 12. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Winter 2009). I Never Knew It Could Be Like This: Lessons from the 1980s for California's Budget Crisis. Municipal Finance Journal, vol. 29, pp. 101-124. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (June 2008). Something Different in the Air? The Collapse of the Schwarzenegger Health Plan in California. WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 11, pp. 199-218. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Summer 2007). Governor Reagan's Ballot Box Budgeting: One That Got Away. Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 89, pp. 195-227. [ Link ]

Christopher L. Erickson and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2007). Monopsony as a metaphor for the emerging post-union labour market. International Labour Review, Vol. 146, No. 3-4. [ Link ][ French ] [ Spanish ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Winter 2006). IR, Ire, and Mire: Kaufman on the Fate of Industrial Relations. Journal of Labor Research, pp. 21-53. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Summer 2006). Earl Warren's Fight for California's Freeways, Setting a Path for the Nation. Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 88, pp. 205-238. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (March 2006). "They Want to Destroy Me": How California's Fiscal Crisis Became A War on "Big Government Unions". WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 9, pp. 99-121. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2006). The National Labor Relations Act After Seventy Years: An Assessment. Discussion. Labor and Employment Relations Association Series, Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting, [ Link ]

Christopher L. Erickson and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (October 2005). Not yet dead at the fed: Unions, worker bargaining, and economy-wide wage determination. Industrial Relations, Vol. 44, No. 4.[ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell and Christopher L. Erickson. (Spring 2005). De-Unionization and Macro Performance: What Freeman and Medoff Didn't Do. Journal of Labor Research, vol. XXVI, no. 2, pp. 183-208. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2004). Recent Developments in California Labor Relations. University of California Institute for Labor and Employment, The State of California Labor 2004, pp. 133-183.[ Link ]

Edmund D. Edelman and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (February 2004). Binding-Nonbinding Arbitration: A New Process to Resolve Interest Disputes. California Public Employee Relations Journal, Issue 164. [ Link ]

Burton, John F. & Mitchell, Daniel J.B.. (2003). Employee Benefits and Social Insurance: The Welfare Side of Employee Relations. Industrial Relations to Human Resources and Beyond, eds. Beaumont, Helfgott & Sharpe, pp. 172-219. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2003). Incentives and Structure: Development of pay practices in the Twentieth Century. Industrial Relations to Human Resources and Beyond, Kaufman, Beaumont & Helfgott, eds., pp. 220-257. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell and Chris Erickson. (2002-2003). The Individual Employee in the Context of Employer Ascendancy: New-Old Economic Analysis. Journal of Individual Employment Rights, Vol. 10, No. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (December 2002). Impeding Earl Warren: California's Health Insurance Plan That Wasn't and What Might Have Been. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Vol. 27, No. 6. [ Link ]

Erickson, C.L., Fisk, C., Milkman, R., Mitchell, D.J.B. and Wong, K.. (September 2002). Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles: Lessons from Three Rounds of Negotiations. British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 40, No. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2002). California Labor Relations: Background and Developments Through Mid-2002. The State of California Labor 2002, pp. 171-221. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Fall 2002). Book Review: Negotiating the World Economy, Richard B. Freeman, ed.. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, pp. 709-711. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Summer 2002). Earl Warren's Lost Cause: How the United States Might Have Had Canadian-Style Health Insurance. Working USA, Vol. 6, No. 1. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2001). Townsend and Roosevelt: Lessons from the Struggle for Elderly Income Support. Labor History, Vol. 42, No. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2001). The Aging Workforce and the Next Turning Point. Perspectives on Work, Vol. 5, No. 2. [ Link ]

Werner Z. Hirsch and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Feb. 12, 2001). Surplus? California Is Running a Deficit. Los Angeles Times, p. B7. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Fall 2000). The Retirement of the Baby Boomers. WorkingUSA, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 112-132. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Fall 2000). The Retirement of the Baby Boomers: Will They Get Their Ham and Eggs?. WorkingUSA, Vol. 4, No. 2. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2000). Pensions, Politics, and the Elderly: Historic Social Movements and Their Lessons for Our Aging Society. M.E. Sharpe,

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (2000). Dismantling the cross of gold: economic crises and U.S. monetary policy. North American Journal of Economics and Finance, 11 (2000) 77-104. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Summer 2000). The Lessons of Ham and Eggs: California's 1938 and 1939 Pension Ballot Propositions. Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 2. [ Link ]

Christopher L. Erickson and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Summer 1999). The American Experience with Labor Standards and Trade Agreements. Journal of Small and Emerging Business Law, Vol. 3, No. 1. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1999). Profit Sharing and Job Anxiety: Moving Public Policy Toward a Win-Win Solution. Super-Optimizing Examples Across Public Policy Problems; Nagel, ed., pp. 7-36.[ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1998). Eur-Only as Sovereign as Your Money: California's Lessons for the European Union. UCLA Anderson Forecast for the Nation and California, June 1998. [ Link ]

Daniel Mitchell. (September-October 1998). Calculating the Price of Everything: The CPI. Challenge, Vol. 41, No. 5. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1998). Emergence of Convergence?. I.I.R.A. Eleventh World Congress Proceedings, Vol. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1998). Ensuring a Future for the American Labor Movement. Through a Glass Darkly: Building a New Workplace for the 21st Century, J. A. Auerbach, ed., [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (January 1998). Book Review: Change at Work by Peter Cappelli, et. al.. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, pp. 336-338. [ Link ]

Christopher L. Erickson and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1998). Labor Standards and Trade Agreements: U.S. Experience. I.I.R.A. Eleventh World Congress Proceedings, Vol. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (August, 1997). Regional Labor-Market Data: Why Bother? How to Bother?. Labor Law Journal, Vol. 8, No. 8. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1997). Our Stake in Official Economic Data. Perspectives on Work, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 76-81. [ Link ]

Christopher L. Erickson and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Dec. 1996). Labor Standards in International Trade Agreements: The Current Debate. Labor Law Journal, Vol. 47, No. 12, pp. 763-775. [ Link ]

Christopher L. Erickson and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Autumn 1995). Labour Market Regulation, Flexibility and Employment. Labour, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 443-462. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (July-August, 1995). Statistical Discrepancies in Our Federal Data Programs. Challenge, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (April 1995). Book Review: Working Under Different Rules, Richard B. Freeman, ed.. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, pp. 587-589. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1994). A Decade of Concession Bargaining. Labor Economics and Industrial Relations, Kerr & Staudohar, eds., pp. 435-474. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1994). External Pressures on the American Human Resource Function. International Perspectives and Challenges in Human Resource Management, Mitchell & Lewin, eds., pp. 33-79. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, Hsueh-yu Peng and Mahmood A. Zaidi. (Spring 1993). Public Policy toward Employee Benefits in the United States, Canada and Taiwan: Lessons for European Integration. Labour, Vol. 7, No. 1. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1993). Keynesian, Old Keynesian, and New Keynesian Wage Nominalism. Industrial Relations, Vol. 32, No. 1. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1993). Employee Benefits in the Single Market. Labor and an Integrated Europe, L. Ulman, et al, eds., pp. 128-166. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell & Mahmood A Zaidi. (1992). International Pressures on Industrial Relations: Macroeconomics and Social Concertation. Participation in Public-Policy Making, Tiziano Trev, ed., pp. 59-72. [ Link ]

David Lewin and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1992). Systems of Employee Voice: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. California Management Review, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 95-111. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1992). Social Insurance and Benefits. Research Frontiers in Industrial Relations and Human Resources, Lewin, Mitchell & Sherer, eds., [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1991). Mandated Benefits, Voluntary Benefits and the Changing Workplace. Regulating for the Future: The Creative Balance, Carol Tucker Foreman, ed., [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (Fall 1990). Employee Benefits and the New Economy: A Proposal for Reform. California Management Review, Vol. 33, No. 1. [ Link ]

Sanford M. Jacoby and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (May 1990). Sticky Stories: Economic Explanations of Employment and Wage Rigidity. American Economic Review, Vol. 80, No. 2. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1990). The Economic Approach to Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations. The Effective Use of Human Resources, Mitchell & Wildhorn, eds., [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1990). Macroeconomic Conditions and HRM-IR Practice. The Economics of Human Resource Management, Mitchell & Zaidi, eds., pp. 10-34. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1989). Wage Pressures and Labor Shortages: The 1960s and 1980s. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, pp. 191-231. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (July - September 1986). Wages and Keynes: Lessons from the Past. Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J. B. Mitchell. (April 1986). Inflation, Unemployment, and the Wagner Act: A Critical Reappraisal. Stanford Law Review, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 1065-1095. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1984). The Australian Labor market. The Australian Economy, Caves & Krause, eds., pp. 127-193. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1983). The New Climate: Implications for Research on Public Sector Wage Determination and Labor Relations. . [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1982). The Ownership of Jobs: Variations on a Theme by Meyers. Job Equity and Other Studies in Industrial Relations: Essays in Honor of Frederic Meyers, [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1982). Labor Market Contracts and Inflation. Workers, Jobs and Inflation, Bailey, ed., pp. 199-238. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1982). Recent Union Contract Concessions. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, pp. 165-201. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1982). The Economic Significance of Unions: Past and Future. Corporate Enterprises in a New Environment, Weston & Granfield, eds., pp. 64-95. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell & John Clapp. (1980). The Impact of Child Labor Laws in the Kinds of Jobs Held by Young School-Leavers. Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 15, No. 3. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1979). Controlling Inflation. Setting National Priorities: The 1980 Budget, J. Pechman, ed., pp. 57-98. [ Link ]

William Caples and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1979). Public Pay Controls. ASPA Handbook of Personnel and Industrial Relations, Yoder & Heneman, eds., pp. 6-235 to 6-243. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell & Ross E. Azevedo. (1976). Wage-Price Controls and Labor Market Distortions. Institute of Industrial Relations, [ Link ]

Walter Fogel and Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1974). Higher Ed Decision Making and the Labor Market. Higher Education and the Labor Market, M.S. Gordon, ed., pp. 453-502. [ Link ]

Daniel J.B. Mitchell. (1970). Essays on Labor and International Trade. Institute of Industrial Relations, [ Link ]

Additional Content

Management And Organizations

Daniel J.B. Mitchell

Biography

Biography

Education

Published Papers

Published Papers

Additional Content

Video

Video

Dispelling the Myth of the Wage Price Spiral, UCLA

Why Does California Have an Annual Budget Crisis?