geographic mobility race and wage differentials abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between geographic mobility and earnings we present an equilibrium search model that yields differences between the reservation wages of mobile and immobile workers the expected wages of mobile workers exceed those of immobile workers due to partial sorting across high and low paying firms an extension to visibly distinct groups with different immobile proportions yields statistical discrimination against immobile group members using combined displaced workers files we find that mobility positively affects earnings and partially explains racial and ethnic earnings differentials to test for statistical discrimination we estimate separate earnings functions for union and nonunion workers

collective bargaining arrangements closed shops and relative pay this paper uses establishment level data to examine the impact on union nonunion pay differentials of the industrial relations setting in which bargaining takes place the pre entry closed shop is found to be of prime importance for the pay of both skilled and semiskilled manual workers for skilled workers and for semiskilled workers in larger establishments the differentials are found to be insignificantly different from zero in the absence of a pre entry closed shop copyright 1987 by royal economic society

women ask for less only from men evidence from bargaining in the field abstract data from a tv show provide the opportunity to study gender differences and gender interaction effects in bargaining with sizable stakes a proposer and a responder who is selected by the proposer bargain over a fixed pie proposers are in a stronger bargaining position because they have a positive outside option and information on the size of the pie while responders have neither the matching between male proposers and female responders stands as the most favorable for proposers women as responders demand less only from male proposers which explains the difference in earnings

the colorblind crowd founder race and performance in crowdfunding the dearth of minority entrepreneurs has received increasing media attention but few academic analyses in particular the funding process creates challenges for either audit or correspondence methods making it difficult to assess the role or type of discrimination influencing resource providers we use a novel approach that combines analyses of 7 617 crowdfunding projects with an experimental design to identify whether african american men are discriminated against and whether this reflects statistical taste based or unconscious bias on the part of prospective supporters we find that african american men are significantly less likely than similar white founders to receive funding and that prospective supporters rate identical projects as lower in quality when they believe the founder is an african american male we conclude that the reduction in perceived quality does not reflect conscious assumptions of differences in founder ability or disamenity but rather an unconscious assumption that black founders are lower quality in two additional experiments we identify three means of reducing this bias through additional evidence of quality via third party endorsements i e awards evidence of prior support through evidence that african american founders have succeeded previously and by removing indicators of the founder s race the online appendix is available at https doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2017 2774 this paper was accepted by toby stuart entrepreneurship and innovation

black white differences in inflation 1974 1991 abstract food s budget share for blacks fell substantially relative to that of whites from 1974 to 1991 much of this decline cannot be explained by improvements in blacks cpi deflated income or any other variables i attribute this unexplained fall in food s share much larger for blacks than whites to an unmeasured rise in income in the case of whites the unmeasured rise in real income is attributable to cpi bias in the case of blacks i believe that in addition to cpi bias there is a pattern of declining race specific price premia from 1974 1991

what explains wage differences between union members and covered nonmembers an individual covered by a collective bargaining agreement but who is not a union member is estimated to earn about 13 lower wages than a union member sectors with relatively few covered nonmembers are associated with a large coverage differential while sectors with high proportions of covered nonmembers are associated with small differentials this suggests freeriders either weaken the bargaining position of the union or weak bargaining positions increase the incentive to freeride only a modest amount of this differential is accounted for by unmeasured ability the probationary period associated with newly hired union workers or union status misclassification

the effect of unions on the structure of wages a longitudinal analysis this paper studies the effects of unions on the structure of wages using an estimation technique that explicitly accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status and potential correlations between union status and unobserved productivity the econometric model is estimated separately for five skill groups using a large panel data set formed from the u s current population survey the results suggest that unions raise wages more for workers with lower levels of observed skills in addition the patterns of selection bias differ by skill group among workers with lower levels of observed skill unionized workers are positively selected whereas union workers are negatively selected from among those with higher levels of observed skill despite a large and sophisticated literature there is still substantial disagreement over the extent to which differences in the structure of wages between union and nonunion workers represent an effect of trade unions rather than a consequence of the nonrandom selection of unionized workers over the past decade several alternative approaches have been developed to control for unobserved heterogeneity between union and nonunion workers 2 one method that has been successfully applied in other areas of applied microeconometrics is the use of longitudinal data to measure the wage gains or losses of workers who change union status unfortunately longitudinal estimators are highly sensitive to measurement error even a small fraction of misclassified union status changes can lead to significant biases if the true rate of mobility between union and nonunion jobs is low this sensitivity led lewis 1986 to essentially dismiss the longitudinal evidence in his landmark survey of union wage effects in this paper i present some new evidence on the union wage effect based on a longitudinal estimator that explicitly accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status the estimator uses external information on union status misclassification rates along with the reduced form coefficients from a multi variate regression of wages on the observed sequence of union status indicators to isolate the causal effect of unions from any selection biases introduced by a correlation between union status and the permanent component of unobserved wage heterogeneity recognizing that unions may raise wages more or less for

counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression we propose a method to decompose the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time in several factors contributing to those changes the method is based on the estimation of marginal wage distributions consistent with a conditional distribution estimated by quantile regression as well as with any hypothesized distribution for the covariates comparing the marginal distributions implied by different distributions for the covariates one is then able to perform counterfactual exercises the proposed methodology enables the identification of the sources of the increased wage inequality observed in most countries specifically it decomposes the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time into several factors contributing to those changes namely by discriminating between changes in the characteristics of the working population and changes in the returns to these characteristics we apply this methodology to portuguese data for the period 1986 1995 and find that the observed increase in educational levels contributed decisively towards greater wage inequality copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

types and patterns an experimental east west german comparison of cooperation and solidarity abstract in a study of public good and solidarity experiments conducted in eastern and western germany we found in both games that eastern subjects behave in a significantly more selfish manner than do western subjects besides that we found that many qualitative results of both data sets are similar since our experiments were conducted in two parts of one nation we present an unusually well controlled cross cultural study by avoiding difficulties that usually arise in multinational settings we conclude that cooperation and solidarity behavior seem to depend strongly on different culture specific norms resulting from opposing economic and social histories in the two parts of germany

retail redlining are gasoline prices higher in poor and minority neighborhoods anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor go shopping one day in harlem for anything and compare harlem prices and quality with those downtown james baldwin nobody knows my name 1961 it s not that these businesses are saying you black people you get out of my establishment they are saying come on in but we re going to rip you off allison bethel florida assistant attorney general in u s news and world report 2000 i introduction the economics literature on discrimination in consumer markets is dominated by studies of differences in negotiated prices in two markets housing e g myers 2004 ondrich ross and yinger 2003 yinger 1986 1995 and automobiles e g ayres and siegelman 1995 goldberg 1996 a few additional studies examine price differentials in smaller markets in which prices are also negotiated such as trading cards list 2004 car repairs gneezy and list 2004 and fish graddy 1995 less evidence is available from the numerous consumer markets in which prices are publicly posted and fixed in this situation individually targeted racial price discrimination is unlikely because as siegelman 1998 points out it would require the flagrant and illegal display of different prices for whites and minorities however firms may still adopt practices that increase the probability that minorities or other targeted groups will pay higher prices we use data on gasoline prices and station characteristics from three metropolitan areas to test for one such practice commonly referred to as retail redlining following d rozario and williams 2005 we define retail redlining as a practice among retailers that results in lower quality goods and services and or higher prices in areas with large minority or poor populations claims of retail redlining arise regularly in both academic sources and the popular press often involving catch phrases such as the poor pay more the high price of poverty or the poorer you are the more things cost brown 2009 downing 2007 sturdivant 1969 accusations of retail redlining also arise in courtrooms and politics gm walmart burger king domino s pizza and kb toys have been sued for discriminatory practices in minority neighborhoods fuller 1998 jelisavcic 1996 kaplan 2000 smith 1996 in 1992 the mayor of los angeles touted the need for more equal access to supermarkets following the los angeles riots and in 2009 illinois senator roland burris introduced a request to the annual federal appropriations bill for a campaign to fight retail redlining on chicago s south side burris 2009 shaffer 2002 the bulk of the empirical evidence on retail redlining comes from the large grocery gap literature which explores variations across neighborhoods in the accessibility quality and price of food sold at grocery stores much of this evidence suggests that grocery prices are higher in inner city neighborhoods and that this is largely explained by the lack of large chain stores in these areas chung and myers 1999 hall 1983 kaufman et al 1997 shaffer 2002 by contrast hayes 2000 using a large nationally representative sample of price data from the sampling frame used to construct the consumer price index finds that prices are lower in poor neighborhoods but that the discount is not constant across races poor whites and hispanics receive discounts but poor blacks pay similar prices as affluent whites turning to the market for prepared food graddy 1997 finds that fast food meal prices increase by about 5 for a 50 point increase in the percent black in a zip code while food which makes up a large portion of consumer budgets is an important candidate for the study of inter neighborhood price variations accusations of retail redlining extend beyond this single market we provide evidence from a hitherto unexamined market retail gasoline

race and gender discrimination in bargaining for a new car more than three hundred paired audits at new car dealerships reveal that dealers quoted significantly lower prices to white males than to black or female test buyers using identical scripted bargaining strategies ancillary evidence suggests that the dealerships disparate treatment of women and blacks may be caused by dealers statistical inferences about consumers reservation prices but the data do not strongly support any single theory of discrimination copyright 1995 by american economic association

anonymous job applications of fresh ph d economists abstract this paper analyzes anonymous job applications of ph d economists in the academic job market we use data on interview invitations from a randomized experiment at a european based research institution results show that the underrepresented gender was hurt by anonymous applications

union egalitarianism as income insurance it is a common observation that unions often try to compress the wage distribution among their members as compared with the productivity distribution a troublesome aspect of standard theories of redistributive unions is the question why high productivity workers choose to enter the union in the first place this paper develops and explores the implications of an alternative insurance rationale for egalitarian wage objectives apart from providing a simple explanation of why heterogeneous union members may agree on egalitarian wage policies it also suggests a more guarded attitude toward the welfare costs of pay compression copyright 1992 by the london school of economics and political science

who loses when prices are negotiated an analysis of the new car market we establish that there are large and persistent differences in final transaction prices for identical new cars and that demographic characteristics explain at least 20 of the observed variation older consumers perform progressively worse in negotiations and the age premium is greater for women than for men our results suggest that the complex nature of vehicle transactions leads to price dispersion in this market and that the worst performing groups older women have the lowest rates of market participation we conjecture that the results are driven by the sharp increases in women s education and labor force participation in recent decades

firm level contracting and the structure of wages in spain in many european countries sectoral bargaining agreements are automatically extended to cover all firms in an industry employers and employees can also negotiate firm specific contracts the authors of this paper use a large matched employer employee data set from a 1995 survey in spain to study the effects of firm level contracting on the structure of wages they estimate a series of wage determination models including specifications that control for individual characteristics coworker characteristics the bargaining status of the workplace and the probability that the workplace was covered by a firm level contract they find that firm level contracting was associated with a 5 10 wage premium with larger premiums for more highly paid workers although they cannot decisively test between alternative explanations for the firm level contracting premium they find that workers with firm specific contracts had substantially longer job tenure than other workers suggesting that the premium was at least

macroeconomic performance and collective bargaining an international perspective this paper critically reviews the research on how collective bargaining systems influence macroeconomic performance in industrialized countries the review considers effects of bargaining level coordination and corporatist institutional arrangements key empirical results turn out to be quite fragile and much of the paper explores issues of measurement and specification that account for the fragility the paper concludes that complementarities between key institutions and between institutions and the economic environment may be more important for macroeconomic performance than the effects of individual institutions and it suggests research strategies

union effects on nonunion wages evidence from panel data on industries and cities the authors test for threat and crowding effects of unions on non union wages at the industry and city levels using panel data on the percent organized and nonunion industry and city wage differentials constructed from current population surveys over the period 1973 89 at the industry level increases in the percent organized were associated with decreases in the nonunion industry wage differential suggesting that crowding effects were the predominant union effect on nonunion industry wage differentials in contrast at the city level increases in the percent organized were associated with increases in the nonunion city wage differential suggesting that threat effects predominated the authors also find evidence of negative cross occupation union effects on nonunion industry wage differentials supporting their hypothesis that the industry level results were partly driven by complementarity between union and nonunion labor

deciding to discipline race choice and punishment at the frontlines of welfare reform welfare sanctions are financial penalties applied to individuals who fail to comply with welfare program rules their widespread use reflects a turn toward disciplinary approaches to poverty manage

contractual wages and the wage cushion under different bargaining settings how does a typically european bargaining system with collective bargaining and national minimum wage coexist with low unemployment and high wage flexibility a unique data set on workers firms and collective bargaining contracts in portugal is used to analyze the determinants of both the contractual wage and the wage cushion difference between contractual and actual wages the results indicate that the wage cushion stretches the returns to worker and firm attributes whereas it shrinks the returns to union power therefore firm specific arrangements partly offset collective bargaining granting firms certain freedom when setting wages contractual wages reflect trade unions egalitarian policy

from sick man of europe to economic superstar germany s resurgent economy in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s germany was often called the sick man of europe indeed germany s economic growth averaged only about 1 2 percent per year from 1998 to 2005 including a recession in 2003 and unemployment rates rose from 9 2 percent in 1998 to 11 1 percent in 2005 today after the great recession germany is described as an economic superstar in contrast to most of its european neighbors and the united states germany experienced almost no increase in unemployment during the great recession despite a sharp decline in gdp in 2008 and 2009 germany s exports reached an all time record of 1 738 trillion in 2011 which is roughly equal to half of germany s gdp or 7 7 percent of world exports even the euro crisis seems not to have been able to stop germany s strengthening economy and employment how did germany with the fourth largest gdp in the world transform itself from the sick man of europe to an economic superstar in less than a decade we present evidence that the specific governance structure of the german labor market institutions allowed them to react flexibly in a time of extraordinary economic circumstances and that this distinctive characteristic of its labor market institutions has been the main reason for germany s economic success over the last decade

let me talk to my manager haggling in a competitive environment although negotiating over prices with sellers is common in many markets such as automobiles furniture services consumer electronics etc it is not clear how a haggling price policy can help a firm gain a strategic advantage or whether it is even sustainable in a competitive market in this paper we explore the implications of haggling and fixed prices as pricing policies in a competitive market we develop a model in which two competing retailers choose between offering either a fixed price or haggling over prices with customers there are two consumer segments in our analysis one segment thehagglers has a lower opportunity cost of time and a lower haggling cost than the other segment thenonhagglers when both retailers follow the same pricing policy then a haggling policy is more profitable than a fixed price policy only when the proportion of nonhagglers is sufficiently high we find two kinds of prisoners dilemma under some conditions a more profitable haggling policy can be broken by a fixed price policy and under other conditions a fixed price policy can be broken by a haggling policy surprisingly we show that under some conditions an asymmetric outcome with one retailer haggling and the other offering a fixed price is also an equilibrium

the joint determination of union status and union wage effects some tests of alternative models the problems of estimation and interpretation of union wage differentials are examined the properties of cross section and longitudinal estimators are compared estimates are presented and those in the literature summarized conflicting results are obtained longitudinal estimators typically produce results smaller than those of ols while cross section methods instrumental variables or inverse mills ratio raise the estimate the paper offers a reconciliation of these results it supports a more optimistic conclusion than that reached in reviews by freeman and lewis who argued that little has been learned from attempts to deal with the endogeneity issue comparisons between estimators are used to throw light on the process governing union status and to suggest interpretations of union differentials consistent with the current evidence

business models of heat entrepreneurship in finland abstract this paper presents the business models of small scale heat energy production in finland firstly the development of heat entrepreneurship in the country is presented including the remarkable growth of small and medium size enterprises smes in the last 15 years secondly the concept of business model business architecture of product service flows and earning logics is modified to the framework of wood heat production the business model concept and its sub concepts is applied in a brief review of current heat energy businesses in finland we arrive at a business model of heat entrepreneurships that are public companies utilities public private partnerships private companies and cooperatives energy saving company esco network model of large enterprise and franchising descriptive cases of these models are presented finally the paper concludes with a discussion on the applicability of the business models in different operational environments and geographical contexts

dealer price discrimination in new car purchases evidence from the consumer expenditure survey this paper documents the variation in dealer discounts for new cars using transactions price data from the consumer expenditure survey consumer specific characteristics fail to explain dealer discounts whereas model market specific and purchase transaction variables e g first time purchase trade in and financing through dealer do explain them the results contradict earlier findings of race and gender discrimination based on a controlled experiment this contradiction is reconciled by examining the higher moments of the empirical discount distribution while mean and median markups do not vary by race and gender minority purchases are characterized by higher dispersion this may rationalize the disparate treatment of minorities by dealers documented in the controlled experiment

economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers 1984 2001 economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large representative data on establishments with union status information estimates are also confounded by selection bias because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages using multiple establishment level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the united states during 1984 1999 this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival employment output productivity and wages essentially outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election e g by one vote are compared with those where the unions barely lost the analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine estimates for wages are close to zero the evidence suggests that at least in recent decades the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains

gender differences in bargaining outcomes a field experiment on discrimination abstract relying on a commonly used fixed offer bargaining script we examine gender differences in bargaining outcomes in a highly competitive and frequently used market the taxi market in lima peru our bargaining script secures that only the seller can change prices and terminate negotiations thus we are able to examine differences in the seller s entire path of negotiation and in the reservation price at which they are willing to trade we find that male and female passengers who use the same bargaining script are not treated equally men face higher initial prices final prices and rejection rates these differences are consistent with male drivers being more reluctant to give in to demanding negotiations by male passengers and with male passengers being perceived as having high valuations to identify whether taste based or statistical discrimination drives the inferior treatment of men we conduct an experiment where passengers send a signal on valuation before negotiating the signal eliminates gender differences and the response is shown only to be consistent with statistical discrimination thus in the limiting case of a highly competitive market with experienced traders we do not find evidence of taste based discrimination the differential observed is however consistent with statistical discrimination

rent sharing and collective bargaining coverage evidence from linked employer employee data using a linked employer employee data set this paper analyses the relationship between firm profitability and wages particular emphasis is given to the question of whether the sensitivity of wages to firm specific rents varies with collective bargaining coverage to address this issue we distinguish sector specific wage agreements firm specific wage agreements and wage determination without any bargaining coverage our findings indicate that individual wages are positively related to firm specific rents in the non union sector and under firm specific contracts industry wide wage contracts however seem to suppress firm level rent sharing while pooled ols estimates yield a positive correlation between wages and quasi rents under centralised contracts estimates accounting for unobserved individual and establishment heterogeneity point to a coefficient of zero differenced gmm estimates accounting for the endogeneity of our profitability measure even point to a negative relationship under centralised contracts

insurance within the firm we evaluate the allocation of risk between firms and their workers using matched employer employee panel data unlike previous contributions this paper focuses on idiosyncratic shocks to the firm which are the correct empirical counterpart of the theoretical notion of diversifiable risk we allow for both temporary and permanent shocks to output and find that firms absorb temporary fluctuations fully but insure workers against permanent shocks only partially risk sharing considerations can account for about 15 percent of overall earnings variability the remainder originating from idiosyncratic shocks to individual workers our welfare calculations indicate that firms are an important vehicle of insurance provision

can gender parity break the glass ceiling evidence from a repeated randomized experiment this paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters we make use of the unique evidence provided by spanish public examinations where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random we analyse how the chances of success of 150 000 female and male candidates for positions in the four main corps of the spanish judiciary from 1987 to 2007 were affected by the gender composition of their evaluation committee we find that a female male candidate is significantly less likely to be hired whenever she he is randomly assigned to a committee where the share of female male evaluators is relatively greater evidence from multiple choice tests suggests that this is due to the fact that female majority committees overestimate the quality of male candidates

organisational capabilities and learning in complex product systems towards repeatable solutions this paper suggests that chandler s chandler a d 1990 scale and scope the dynamics of industrial capitalism belknap press of harvard univ press cambridge ma organisational capabilities framework can be modified to explain how suppliers of complex product systems cops build the capabilities necessary to expand successfully into new lines of business in addition to chandler s functional and strategic capabilities we propose the concept of project capabilities to refer to important cops activities of bid preparation and project execution an organisational learning cycle model is presented to show cops firms can move from the first bid or project of its kind in a new domain of business to achieve what we call economies of repetition by putting in place organisational changes routines and learning processes to provide a growing number of similar bids and projects more efficiently and effectively

a controlled field experiment on corruption abstract this paper reports on a controlled field experiment on corruption designed to address two important issues the experimenter s scrutiny and the unobservability of corruption in the experiment a grader is offered a bribe along with a demand for a better grade we find that graders respond more favorably to bigger bribes while the effect of higher wages is ambiguous it lowers the bribe s acceptance but it fosters reciprocation monitoring and punishment can deter corruption but we cannot reject that it may also crowd out intrinsic motivations for honesty when intensified finally our results suggest several micro determinants of corruption including age ability religiosity but not gender

firms rents workers bargaining power and the union wage premium this article identifies the wage premium associated with firm level union recognition in france an average premium of 2 is found despite the fact that most workers are already covered by industry level agreements to explore the origin of the premium i construct a simple bargaining model from which i derive three predictions which are tested empirically using matched employer employee data the main prediction is that if intra firm bargaining is behind the union wage premium the latter increases with the amount of quasi rents available in the firms that unions organise this prediction is validated empirically when firms market shares are used as a proxy for their rents

institutional influences on business model choice by new ventures in the microgenerated energy industry abstract business model choice plays an important source of competitive advantage for new ventures in the microgeneration sector yet existing literature focuses on strategic management of internal resources as the constraints in this choice process in the energy sector external factors may be at least as influential in shaping these business models this paper examines the roles of politico institutional and socio institutional dynamics in the choice of business models for microgeneration ventures business models have traditionally been viewed as constructions of the internal values strategies and resources of organizations but this perspective overlooks the role that external forces have on these models particularly in more highly institutionalized contexts like microgeneration when these factors are introduced into the existing framework for business model choice the business model based less on firm decision making and more about variables that exist within national innovation systems and political structure local socio technological conditions and cognitive abilities of the entrepreneur and corresponding stakeholders

international expansion through flexible replication learning from the internationalization experience of ikea business organizations may expand internationally by replicating a part of their value chain such as a sales and marketing format in other countries however little is known regarding how such international replicators build a format for replication or how they can adjust it in order to adapt to local environments and under the impact of new learning to illuminate these issues we draw on a longitudinal in depth study of swedish home furnishing giant ikea involving more than 70 interviews we find that ikea has developed organizational mechanisms that support an ongoing learning process aimed at frequent modification of the format for replication another finding is that ikea treats replication as hierarchical lower level features marketing efforts pricing etc are allowed to vary across ikea stores in response to market based learning while higher level features fundamental values vision etc are replicated in a uniform manner across stores and change only very slowly if at all in response to learning flexible replication we conclude by discussing the factors that influence the approach to replication adopted by an international replicator

collective bargaining and union membership effects on the wages of male youths the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the nonunion wage differential consists of two effects the first represents the differential between the wage of a nonunion worker in a collective bargaining unit and the wage paid to a comparable worker not covered by a bargaining agreement this effect arises from the monopoly power of organized labor the second is the wage differential between union and nonunion workers in collective bargaining units this latter effect is attributed to economic benefits that unionism brings to its members empirical evidence is presented in support of both effects

estimating bargaining power in the market for existing homes although bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods it has largely been ignored in the hedonic literature in a break from that tradition we establish sufficient conditions that permit one to identify the effect of buyer and seller bargaining on hedonic models our model is estimated using a previously overlooked feature of the american housing survey that permits us to observe characteristics of both buyers and sellers results suggest that household wealth gender and other demographic traits influence bargaining power in addition variation in bargaining power arising from the presence of school age children accounts for anomalous seasonal patterns reported in various widely cited indices of quality adjusted house prices

eco industrial park initiatives in the usa and the netherlands first lessons abstract since the introduction of the industrial ecology concept by frosch and gallopoulos in 1989 and the apparent success of the kalundborg industrial symbiosis project attention to planned eco industrial park eip development projects has grown all over the world this article includes data from six of these eip development projects three of the projects discussed are located in the netherlands and three in the us this article compares the differences in project approach and results on a national level the approach suggested is derived from the available eip development literature initial research indicates that the dutch eip projects are more successful than their us counterparts this difference in success can be mostly attributed to the fact that the us projects are initiated by local and regional governments that see the project as a way to improve the local regional economy with access to substantial government funds because of this heavy government involvement us companies are in general not interested in the project the more successful dutch projects on the other hand are mostly initiated by the companies themselves with financial and advisory support from the local and regional government

car ownership and the labor market of ethnic minorities we show how initial wealth differences between low skilled minorities and white workers can generate differences in their labor market outcomes this even occurs in the absence of a taste for discrimination against ethnic minorities or exogenous differences in distance to jobs because of the initial wealth difference minorities cannot afford to buy a car while whites can car ownership allows whites to reach more jobs per unit of time which gives them a better bargaining position in the labor market as a result in equilibrium ethnic minorities end up with both higher unemployment rates and lower wages than whites furthermore we also show that it takes more time for minorities to reach their jobs even though they travel less miles when employed those predictions are consistent with the data better access to capital markets or better public transportation will reduce the differences in labor market outcomes

union wage practices and wage dispersion within establishments this study analyzes establishment level data primarily to examine the effect of unionism on the wage structure within establishments the major finding is that within establishment dispersion of wages is significantly narrower in unionized than in nonunionized establishments a pattern the author attributes in large part to unions wage practices such as single rate or automatic progression modes of wage payment as opposed to merit reviews and individual wage determination the data also show that dispersion in average wages is narrower among organized plants but by more modest amounts than the within establishment differential overall the evidence suggests a major role for explicit union wage policies in explaining the dispersion of wages within firms and in the economy as a whole

inventories and the automobile market this article studies the within model year pricing production and inventory management of new automobiles using new monthly data on u s transaction prices we document that for the typical vehicle prices fall over the model year at a 9 0 annual rate concurrently both sales and inventories are hump shaped to explain these time series we formulate an industry model for new automobiles in which inventory and pricing decisions are made simultaneously the model predicts that automakers build to stock inventory management policy substantially influences the time series of prices and sales accounting for four tenths of the price decline observed over the model year

how common is housing discrimination improving on traditional measures abstract fair housing audits are an important tool for measuring the incidence of racial and ethnic discrimination in housing markets traditional measures of incidence calculate the proportion of cases in which the white auditor is favored gross adverse treatment or the difference between the proportion of white favored and minority favored audits net adverse treatment the gross measure may overstate discrimination because treatment differences sometimes arise from differences in circumstances across auditor visits on the other hand the net measure understates discrimination because audits in which the minority auditor is favored for systematic reasons are incorrectly subtracted this paper presents a model of agent behavior that more fully accounts for the audit design and employs the estimated parameters to calculate bounds on the incidence of discrimination this approach leads to a lower bound for the incidence of discrimination that is often substantially higher than the simple net measure and to an upper bound that is close to and sometimes above the simple gross measure

a case study of industrial symbiosis development using a middle out approach abstract industrial symbiosis is emerged as a collective multi industrial approach to improve economic and environmental performance through the use of wastes by products as substitutes for raw materials the development of is initiatives depends on the context in which they occur characterised in terms of social economic political spatial and temporal embeddedness as a consequence the context can be influenced to become more supportive of is through a continuous interactive process combining top down governmental directives and bottom up spontaneous business initiatives a strategy to develop and enhance this process is explored in this paper and described by the authors as a middle out approach policies and policy instruments introduced by governmental agencies provide objectives and incentives to businesses the middle out approach induces the development of a strategy to create positive feedback loops among agents e g government industries that may guide their actions into setting the conditions to support is emergence this paper provides a case study that discusses a regional development of is in portugal that highlights critical factors for success in implementing is and shows that the middle out approach can also be understood as an extension and combination of previous research on context factors and planned spontaneous approaches to is development

wages employment and statistical discrimination evidence from the laboratory i introduction while taste based discrimination becker 1957 is driven by prejudice research on statistical discrimination attempts to explain differential treatment of individuals unrelated to prejudice in essence statistical discrimination results when the actual or assumed statistical properties of a group are applied to anyone belonging to that group differential treatment based on lower average outcomes of one s group e g minorities females was considered a starting point for modeling of statistical discrimination see phelps 1972 however labor market researchers then considered that statistical discrimination could result from measures other than the average outcomes of one s group see aigner and cain 1977 lundberg and startz 1983 theoretical models have explored various reasons why statistical discrimination might arise in varied contexts most notable are the models based on differential screening or communication costs cornell and welch 1996 lang 1986 noisier productivity signals see discussion in aigner and cain 1977 or incomplete information lundberg and startz 1983 1 field studies some of which involve experimental manipulations have uncovered evidence of statistical discrimination in mortgage lending ladd 1998 auto sales ayers and siegelman 1995 goldberg 1996 harless and hoffer 2002 sports card price negotiations list 2004 law enforcement decisions applebaum 1996 exam grading hanna and linden 2012 taxi fare negotiations castillo et al 2013 and vehicle repair estimates gneezy and list 2006 in labor markets some discrimination may be due to factors other than productivity characteristics neumark 1999 but the evidence for statistical discrimination based on race has been elusive see altonji and pierret 2001 identifying statistical discrimination from field data is complicated by the fact that it may arise as first moment or second moment statistical discrimination and they are difficult to disentangle empirically more controlled laboratory studies have also examined statistical discrimination anderson and haupert 1999 castillo and petrie 2010 davis 1987 dickinson and oaxaca 2009 fershtman and gneezy 2001 masclet peterle and larribeau 2012 2 findings from these laboratory studies indicate that statistical discrimination may result from aversion to risk mistaken stereotypes biased probability assessments or incomplete information the benefit of the laboratory approach is our ability to control and cleanly identify the source of the discrimination if it exists whether taste based or statistical discrimination is most always measured along a single dimension such as vehicle pricing labor market wages group choice or job assignments 3 however in many instances multiple avenues for discrimination exist simultaneously and to focus on only one may produce a systematically biased view of the prevalence of statistically based discrimination 4 in this paper we examine statistical discrimination in a controlled experimental environment statistical discrimination in our study can only be based on productivity distribution risk attached to worker groups we not only cleanly separate taste based from statistical discrimination but we also cleanly isolate second moment statistical discrimination in a way not possible from field data building on dickinson and oaxaca 2009 our key contribution is to examine an environment in which discrimination may be exercised simultaneously along the dimensions of both wages and employment rates this more closely approximates the field environments we hope to study where discrimination may exist in terms of labor market wages and or hiring practices auto sales prices and or sales rates mortgage rates and or home sales as in dickinson and oaxaca 2009 subjects negotiate in a simulated labor market where worker subjects are given an induced common knowledge productivity distribution

union density and varieties of coverage the anatomy of union wage effects in germany collective bargaining in germany takes place at either industry or firm level and bargaining coverage is much higher than union density the share of a firm s employees covered can vary between 0 and 100 suggesting that researchers should distinguish union density coverage at the firm level and coverage at the individual level using linked employer employee data the authors estimate ols and quantile regressions of wages on these dimensions of union influence they find that a higher share of employees in a firm covered by industrywide or firm specific contracts is associated with higher wages but find no clear cut effect on wage dispersion yet holding coverage at the firm level constant individual coverage is associated with lower wages and less wage dispersion higher union density reinforces the effects of coverage but for employees in firms without coverage density s effect is negative and thus compresses the wage distribution in firms without coverage

reverse price discrimination with bayesian buyers this paper studies price discrimination under the situation in which buyers prior valuations are initially observable by a seller but buyers receive further information about a product or service which remains private thereafter the buyers interpret new information via bayes rule we show that in this environment prices are not monotone in buyers prior valuations interestingly this results in the possibility that a seller intentionally offers a higher price to a low valuation buyer rather than a high valuation buyer reverse price discrimination we derive this result in both monopoly and duopoly markets

conspicuous conservation the prius halo and willingness to pay for environmental bona fides abstract this paper develops a theory of conspicuous conservation a phenomenon related to conspicuous consumption in which individuals seek status through displays of austerity amid growing concern about environmental protection we identify a statistically and economically significant conspicuous conservation effect in vehicle purchase decisions and estimate a mean willingness to pay for the green signal provided by the distinctively designed toyota prius in the range of 430 4200 depending upon the owner s location results are related to the growing literature on green markets and suggest that policy should target less conspicuous conservation investments that will be under provided relative to those that confer a status benefit

training and union wages abstract this paper investigates whether unions through imposing wage floors that lead to wage compression increase on the job training our analysis focuses on germany based on a model of unions and firm financed training we derive empirical implications regarding apprenticeship training intensity layoffs wage cuts and wage compression in unionized and nonunionized firms we test these implications using firm panel data matched with administrative employee data we find support for the hypothesis that union recognition via imposing minimum wages and wage compression increases training in apprenticeship programs

replication of industrial ecosystems the case of a sustainable biogas for traffic solution abstract distributed energy systems are key in building a sustainable energy economy biofuels are an example of an industry that needs to be based on a system of rather small scale local production units due to the limited transportation radius of biomass moreover the benefits of biofuels are greater if their production is based on the integration of local production activities and consumption among traditionally separate industries as implied by the notion of industrial symbiosis such an arrangement however requires the establishment of industrial ecosystems that are customised to local conditions which increases costs and uncertainty for the involved stakeholders and the integrating company in this paper we discuss replication strategy as a means of transferring not only technical knowledge but also the business format to new locations thereby achieving economies of repetition the case of a biogas for traffic solution serves as an illustrative example we analyse the establishment of a vanguard ecosystem and assess the potential of replicating the solution in six other locations based on this we propose a replication framework that builds on functional modularisation collaboration mechanisms required for cooperating with the relevant stakeholders and organisational learning the replication approach is expected to be useful for the companies attempting to build sustainable distributed energy systems based on industrial symbiosis

equality for whom organizational policies and the gender gap across the german earnings distribution work establishments are critical for the creation and maintenance of gender inequality organizational practices most notably those that formalize personnel systems or target gender inequality are often assumed to have uniform effects on inequality across the wage hierarchy this assumption has eluded careful empirical scrutiny the authors estimate unconditional quantile regressions with a unique german linked employer employee data set to assess whether formalized human resource practices female friendly diversity measures and the availability of workplace child care facilities affect wage inequality differently across the wage distribution while these policies reduce gender inequality in general they do so more strongly near the bottom of the earnings distribution policies that formalize personnel systems and explicitly promote female employees are particularly advantageous to women in low wage jobs these results suggest that gender policies have a more subtle effect on earnings inequality than

the free rider problem and a social custom model of trade union membership the literature on public good provision by groups has traditionally emphasized the free rider problem if it is assumed that a group forms to provide or to lobby for the provision of a good that is collective to potential members then the major conceptual problem to the formation of such a group is that individuals can enjoy the benefits of group action without incurring the costs by doing this they free ride in small groups the free rider problem is not generally considered insurmountable however the larger the number of potential beneficiaries the more difficult it is to overcome the free rider problem due to exclusion and surveillance difficulties and the less likely is optimal collective good provision or any collective good provision in the extreme the free rider hypothesis has a long history in economic thought as early as 1848 the free rider potential of any group of workers was perceived by j s mill however it appears that it was not until 1965 that an attempt was made to explain why large groups providing collective goods manage to exist despite the free rider problem olson 1965 proposed the following explanation if a large group exists it must have formed either because membership is compulsory or because the group provides private goods and services accessible only to its members with ancillary provision of the collective good as a byproduct the literature that developed from olson s work has focused primarily on the suboptimal provision of the collective good the difficulties of getting members to contribute in proportion to the benefits received and preference revelation incentives see for example groves and ledyard 1977 however there are problems with both of the solutions proposed by olson to overcome the free rider problem facing large groups first if coercion is looked at as a solution to the free rider problem the question arises as to how the coercion itself is financed guttman 1978 this is unlikely to be costless the second problem concerns the byproduct solution private good pro

the rise of domestic outsourcing and the evolution of the german wage structure the nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the past three decades with firms increasingly relying on contractors temp agencies and franchises rather than hiring employees directly we investigate the impact of this transformation on the wage structure by following jobs that are moved outside the boundary of lead employers to contracting firms we develop a new method for identifying outsourcing of food cleaning security and logistics services in administrative data using the universe of social security records in germany we document a dramatic growth of domestic outsourcing in germany since the early 1990s event study analyses show that wages in outsourced jobs fall by approximately 10 15 relative to similar jobs that are not outsourced we find evidence that the wage losses associated with outsourcing stem from a loss of firm specific rents suggesting that labor cost savings are an important reason firms choose to contract out these services finally we tie the increase in outsourcing activity to broader changes in the german wage structure in particular showing that outsourcing of cleaning security and logistics services alone accounts for around 9 of the increase in german wage inequality since the 1980s

shopping while female who pays higher prices and why i estimate gender price discrimination in the ugandan antimalarial drug market with an audit study to determine whether results are consistent with statistical or taste based discrimination i contrast gender results with results by ethnicity tribe vendors initially offer women prices that are 0 12 3 percent higher however women are 16 percentage points more likely to successfully bargain for a discount resulting in no differential in price paid results are stronger among majority tribe females i find no differences in drug quality both women and minorities report better service quality offer price differentials suggest statistical discrimination there is no differential for prices paid

evidence on discrimination in consumer markets economists have contributed to the measurement of racial and ethnic discrimination in consumption and to the identification of its causes especially in housing markets and car sales to test the hypothesis that discrimination exists economists have turned to regression analysis and to audits a matched pair survey technique economists also have developed audit based measures of the incidence and severity of discrimination audit studies find continuing high levels of discrimination against minorities in the marketing of available housing and in car prices audit studies also find that discrimination can be caused both by economic agents prejudice and by their search for profits

women and power unpopular unwilling or held back we use spain s equality law to test for the existence of agency problems between party leaders and their constituents the law mandates a 40 percent female quota on electoral lists in towns with populations above 5 000 using pre and postquota data by party and municipality we implement a triple difference design we find that female quotas resulted in slightly better electoral results for the parties that were most affected by the quota our evidence shows that party leaders were not maximizing electoral results prior to the quota suggesting the existence of agency problems that hinder female representation in political institutions

wage settlements and wage setting results from a multi level model which dimensions of wage setting differ across establishments applying collective contracts and uncovered establishments the empirical analysis reported here utilizes german linked employer employee data for the years 1990 1995 and 2001 and is restricted to workers without supervisory functions in larger manufacturing firms results show that the expected wage of an average worker is higher in firms applying collective contracts while returns to human capital and the gender wage gap are reduced moreover during the 1990s these effects became stronger

measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits caught in the act a survey technique called a fair housing audit provides a direct measure of racial discrimination in housing this paper examines the econometric issues raised by audit data measures the discrimination uncovered by a 1981 boston study and tests hypotheses about the causes of discrimination the estimated level of discrimination is high black housing seekers are told about 30 percent fewer available housing units than are whites the hypothesis tests indicate that the primary cause of this discrimination is that housing agents illegally promote their economic interests by catering to the racial prejudice of their current or potential white customers

on the benefits from rigid labour markets norms market failures and social insurance the common view that far reaching labour market deregulation is the only remedy for high european unemployment is too simplistic first the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are