employment discrimination an empirical test of forward versus reverse regression using data on faculty salaries at a large university we follow a methodology suggested by goldberger to conduct an empirical test of the conway roberts proposition that reverse and not forward regression is the proper way to detect salary discrimination we obtained 11 different estimates of the amount of salary discrimination not only are these estimates statistically inconsistent but they are also at variance with the estimate derived from the composite reverse regression therefore we conclude that in light of the econometric modeling used reverse regression does not yield an unbiased estimate of salary discrimination

occupational self selection a human capital approach to sex differences in occupational structure a rich and diverse literature exists concerning the distribution of labor incomes one approach namely that of human capital concentrates on lifetime accumulation paths of earnings capacity units human capital individual variations in human capital imply differences in earnings power thereby yielding strong implications concerning earnings distribution within a population despite its explanatory power the human capital model has been widely criticized one criticism centers on its inability to obtain inferences concerning occupational distribution the purpose of this paper is to alleviate at least some such criticism by applying the hedonic price approach so as to embed occupational choice into the human capital framework the significance is that neoclassical economic theory can be used to obtain implications concerning the determinants of occupational structure excerpt

the earnings and human capital of american jews this paper analyzes the earnings and returns from human capital investments of second generation american jews compared with non jews jewish men have 16 percent higher earnings other things the same a 20 percent higher rate of return from schooling and a steeper experience earnings profile these patterns persist even after controlling for occupation self employment status and geographic concentration in the new york area there are no systematic differences among jews by parents country of birth the findings suggest that american jews are more productive in creating and using human capital and that this has encouraged greater investments in human capital

the effect of gender and race differentials on public private wage comparisons a study of postal workers this study argues that the aggregative specifications often used to examine wage diferentials fail to control for important demographic variations in wage patterns in testing how postal wages comp

the impact of maximum markup regulation on prices markup regulation is a common yet understudied type of regulation we analyze the repeal of maximum wholesale and retail markup regulation in an oligopolistic and vertically non integrated market by comparing the prices of products affected by regulation before and after the policy change and using unregulated products as a control group we find that abolishing regulation led to a significant decrease in both retail and wholesale prices the results provide indirect but consistent evidence that markup ceilings provided a focal point for collusion among wholesalers

affirmative action and opportunity a study of female quit rates t he effectiveness of affirmative action efforts has been a topic of some controversy and the literature is unclear about whether women and or minorities benefit one source of confusion is that in some models the economywide effect can be in a different direction than the effect upon regulated or covered individuals and firms in a sense this is much like the minimum wage in that while some individuals benefit there is considerable controversy about the gains for target groups as a whole what is more surprising however is that the affirmative action literature is unclear about whether the programs achieve their goals for firms which are covered again in part this confusion is theoretical for wage and hiring directives may provide conflicting incentives beller 1978 another difficulty is methodological in that measures of affirmative action activity tend to be indirect 1 this last point as we shall see is especially true for studies of the federal contract compliance program this paper assesses the effectiveness of the federal contract compliance program which is administered by the office of federal contract compliance ofcc in improving opportunities for women rather than focusing on wage growth or the sex composition of occupations or firms as have all the previous studies we examine quit rates quits are a useful measure of people s perceptions about their opportunities and effective affirmative action programs may improve intra firm opportunities for advancement as a result subject to some caveats discussed below we expect that program effectiveness is captured by a reduction in quit rates from previous levels in addition this paper employs a more defensible measure of ofcc activities than is typical in most studies part i of the paper develops the model part ii introduces the data and the specifications the basic results are presented in part iii two major conometric difficulties whether the ofcc variables are actually proxies for other industry effects and the possible endogeneity of ofcc activity are addressed in part iv and the results are summarized in the final section

the wage effect of the occupational segregation of women in britain married females earn around 60 percent of the male rate of pay part of this wage difference der ives from inequality of pay within occupations and part derives from the different occupational distributions of the male and female workf orces this paper merges models of occupational attainment and gender wage distributions it shows that the gender wage difference derives largely from wage differences within occupations the effect of fema le nonparticipation in the paid workforce is found to be an important aspect of occupational attainment as well as of pay differences with in occupations copyright 1987 by royal economic society

are those paid more really more productive the case of experience this study uses computerized personnel microdata on the white male managerial and professional employees at a major u s corporation to address the following question can the additional earnings which are associated with more labor market experience at a point in time really be explained by higher productivity at the same point in time our answer to this question based on both cross sectional and longitudinal information is that performance plays a substantially smaller role in explaining cross sectional experience earnings differentials and earnings growth than is claimed by those who have adopted the human capital explanation of the experience earnings profile this response depends critically on our assumption that the performance ratings which supervisors give to their white male managerial and professional subordinates adequately reflect the subordinates relative productivity in the year of assessment we present a great deal of evidence which strongly supports this assumption

employment opportunities earnings and the journey to work of minority workers in great britain the cost to minority workers of employer discrimination is generally measured in a competitive framework which focuses upon differences in on the job benefits usually wage rates between racial groups after training and experience are allowed for with other potential costs of employer discrimination given at best more subsidiary attention chiswick i 98 i dex i 984 mcnabb and psacharopoulos i982 mccormick i986 and stewart i983 have recently provided analyses of asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom this paper explores the consequences of employer discrimination if firms cannot discriminate by offering different wages for the same job but may set higher job rejection rates perhaps costlessly because markets do not clear our primary focus is upon comparative journey to work patterns and expenditures for asian and west indian workers in the united kingdom and whether these workers accept jobs at locations that would be unacceptable to whites in order to avoid either a longer spell of unemployment or an inferior occupation with commensurate lower earnings thus within a given residential area minority workers may experience greater commuting expenditures ceteris paribus which are overlooked when comparing earnings or occupational status unlike previous models of search and discrimination in labour markets the focus is placed upon employee response to discrimination rather than the search behaviour of discriminating employers see lippman and mccall i 976 the possibility that the costs of reaching suitable work sites should be incorporated into our understanding of the problems faced by minority workers has been investigated in the united states although in a different context by kain i 964 i 968 i 980 and various other authors including recently ellwood i983 kain considers that the cost of housing market discrimination is understated by focusing upon the relative price of housing for blacks because this overlooks how obstacles to black workers obtaining suburban accommodation concentrates the supply of black labour into comparatively declining inner city areas whereas kain argues that housing market discrimination reduces earnings net of travel costs by creating a spatial mismatch of workers and jobs the concern in this paper is that earnings net of travel costs are reduced because job market discrimination may increase average journey to work distance

on decomposing the wage gap a critical comment on blinder s method many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible

partisan influence on the local tax burden in the netherlands this paper analyses the role of partisan politics in determiningthe local tax burden property taxes are the most important revenuesource which municipalities in the netherlands can decide uponthemselves using a new data set on dutch local property taxes in1996 it is concluded that municipalities with a council dominatedby left wing parties have a higher tax burden we also find thatlarger coalitions have lower levels of taxation finally taxexporting increases tax rates

estimating wage discrimination in the labor market if labor supply curves are not perfectly inelastic wage discrimination induces some minority workers to leave the labor force studies of discrimination that focus only on wage differentials overlook these disincentive effects on minority employment

detecting and removing discrimination under equal opportunities policies abstract this paper surveys part of the recent voluminous literature on the economics of discrimination focusing on two key questions first how should discrimination be measured and can in fact unambiguous estimates be derived as the basis for detecting where discrimination is present and setting in train measures to eliminate it second to what extent has the implementation of equal opportunities legislation improved the relative standing of women and minority workers in the labour force this section includes a discussion of the likely effects of recent changes in the law such as the equal value amendment in the uk or the introduction of comparable worth in the usa the survey concludes that our ability to detect discrimination at all precisely is still rudimentary and consequently policy measures are likely to be inefficient for this reason

the economic impacts of climate change evidence from agricultural output and random fluctuations in weather fisher et al 2012 hereafter fhrs have uncovered coding and data errors in our paper deschenes and greenstone 2007 hereafter dg we acknowledge and are embarrassed by these mistakes we are grateful to fhrs for uncovering them we hope that this reply will also contribute to advancing the literature on the vital question of the impact of climate change on the us agricultural sector fhrs main critiques of dg are as follows i there are errors in the weather data and climate change projections used by dg ii the climate change projections are based on the hadley 2 model and scenarios rather than the more recent hadley 3 model and scenarios iii standard errors are biased due to spatial correlation iv the inclusion of state by year fixed effects does not leave enough weather variation to obtain meaningful estimates of the relationship between agriculture profits and weather v storage and inventory adjustment in response to yield shocks invalidate the use of annual profit data and vi fhrs argue that a better specified hedonic model produces robust estimates unlike the results reported in dg four of these critiques have little basis and we respond to them here in the introduction specifically with respect to ii the more recent daily climate predictions were not available when we wrote dg nevertheless the most important issue is providing the reliable estimates of climate change and in this note we report estimates based on the climate model we used in dg and a more recent one that we gained access to in the meantime iii in the primary table on agricultural profits dg reports two sets of standard errors with the first clustered at the county level and the second based on a variance covariance matrix that accounts for spatial correlation using the method proposed in conley 1999 thus the claim of fhrs 2012 seems overblown nevertheless to ease comparisons of papers in this literature this note will adopt the fhrs convention of reporting estimated standard errors clustered at the county and state levels we find that inference is largely unaffected by the choice between these different assumptions about the variance covariance matrix

fiscal faux pas an analysis of the revenue implications of trade liberalization abstract this paper examines the argument that trade liberalization depresses tax revenue gdp ratios in developing countries this occurs because the structural characteristics associated with developing countries limit their ability to make the transition from trade to domestic taxes using a panel of 80 developing and industrialized countries over 1970 98 the econometric analysis carried out employs a fixed effects regression framework to examine the evidence the results indicate that low income and upper middle income countries have experienced declining tax revenues as a result of falling income and trade tax revenues and that structural characteristics have been significant in explaining the decline

rainfall shocks local revenues and intergovernmental transfer in mali summary this paper explores the implications of rainfall shocks for municipal tax revenues and intergovernmental transfers in mali i found that exogenous phenomena such as weather not under the control of local actors could affect the way de facto decentralization plays out by influencing the fiscal capacity of local governments in a panel data of 692 municipalities from 2000 to 2008 i found that rainfall shocks through the fluctuations they induce in agricultural incomes affect revenue collection of local governments and in turn drive further revenues local governments receive through transfer by the central government

does delegation of fiscal policy to an independent agency make a difference evidence from intergovernmental transfers in india abstract one area of fiscal policy in which several countries have delegated responsibility to an independent agency is the distribution of national resource transfers across regional and local governments such delegation is expected to promote equity and efficiency and mitigate distortions created by political incentives this paper tests whether delegation to an independent agency indeed makes a difference by contrasting the impact of partisan politics on two types of fiscal transfers to states in the indian federation over a period of time 1972 1995 the pattern of evidence shows that while the transfers that are determined by the central political executive are indeed distributed to favor particular states that are politically important for the central ruling party the transfers that are delegated to an independent agency serve to constrain such partisan impact

marital status child rearing and earnings differentials in the graduate labour market differential the importance of family role specialisation for the measurement of the residual earnings differential is examined within a sample selection model of participation and earnings the earnings differential between men and women may be divided into that explained by different characteristics and attributes and that due to residual factors one element of this residual may be discrimination although other factors may be incorporated in the unexplained component the residual also incorporates the effects on earnings associated with the production of home goods see polachek ig75 a b these will occur

discrimination fact or fiction an examination using an alternative approach women earn less than men blacks earn less than whites these facts are blatantly observable in the economy with the proliferation of civil rights legislation in the last two decades social scientists have become increasingly concerned with the determination of the wage gap attributable to discrimination because workers have different productivities statistical methods have been used to isolate the discrimination effect from wage differences justified by differences in productivity the primary method estimates an equation with wages expressed as a function of productivity and sex or race since productivity cannot be directly observed a number of proxies for productivity have been used such as education tenure and experience statisticians 11 have shown that the necessity of using proxies results in statistical biases which may tend to overestimate discrimination they have shown that mismeasuring any independent variable can impart a bias on each regression coefficient thereby causing a severe misestimate of discrimination these errors are proportional to the degree of mismeasurement the relative degree of error variance in the independent variables as well as to the amount of intercorrelation between each variable and race or

an instrumental variables approach to estimating tax revenue elasticities evidence from sub saharan africa this paper exploits the significant response of real gdp growth of sub saharan african countries to exogenous international commodity price and rainfall shocks to construct instrumental variables estimates of the tax revenue elasticity iv estimates yield that a 1 increase in gdp increases tax revenues by up to 2 5

evolution of the gender earnings gap among canadian university graduates this paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the gender earnings gap among recent canadian bachelor s level university graduates the overall gap as of two years leaving university narrowed significantly across successive cohorts of graduates but widened significantly from two to five years out for all groups differences in the explanatory variables explain account for between 40 and essentially the entire gap across the different periods this portion rising from two to five years out and across cohorts by the final group all of the gap is thus explained at the two year point in time and most of it is explained at the five year mark meaning that labour market returns measured in this manner are largely gender neutral for the last group of graduates hours of work is the single most important influence while past work experience job characteristics family status and province of residence and language have smaller and more mixed effects

the allocative cost of price ceilings in the u s residential market for natural gas a direct consequence of restricting the price of a good for which secondary markets do not exist is that in the presence of excess demand the good will not be allocated to the buyers who value it the most we demonstrate the empirical importance of this allocative cost for the u s residential market for natural gas which was subject to price ceilings during 1954 89 using a household level discrete continuous model of natural gas demand we estimate that the allocative cost in this market averaged 3 6 billion annually nearly tripling previous estimates of the net welfare loss to u s consumers

selectivity bias and earnings differences by gender and race abstract the effect of selectivity bias on earnings differences due to labor force participation decisions is investigated using current population survey and census data the magnitudes of observed earnings differences by both race and gender are clearly influenced by the presence of selectivity bias

affirmative action and labor markets affirmative action remains controversial the controversy extends from the original antidiscrimination legislation and its interpretation to estimates of affirmative action s effect on the labor market this paper provides a progress report on our recent efforts at detecting the effects of affirmative action on minority wages and employment although we find a substantial increase in wages for black men and black women over our sample period the timing of these wage changes is surprising most of the wage gains came prior to 1974 before the establishment of an effective monitoring structure for affirmative action indeed when the powers of the eeoc and ofcc are greatest the wage effects for young blacks are somewhat perverse using eeo 1 reports we find a major shift in black employment toward firms most vulnerable to the monitoring and potential sanctions of the affirmative action programs as with wages the shift in minority employment came prior to the expansion of the powers and budgets of the ee

tax shares in developing economies a panel study abstract tax shares the ratio of tax receipts to gnp or gdp vary across countries for a number of reasons stage of development availability of appropriate tax handles sources of non tax income and differences in tastes for public goods in this study a model is developed to explain differences in tax shares for a set of eight african countries the model is estimated using a panel of data covering the time period 1973 1981 a measure of tax effort for each of the countries is obtained by applying the estimated coefficients to the variables of the country and comparing the actual tax share to the predicted tax share further insight is gained into differences in tax shares and tax effort by application of the model to the direct and indirect tax shares of the countries

a welfare measure of consumer vulnerability to rising prices of food imports in the uae abstract the recent and expected continuing rise in food prices has re ignited concern and discussion in the united arab emirates about the country s vulnerability to food supply shocks defining vulnerability as the compensating variation relative to household income we find that although uae households in the lowest income quintile spend on food on average less than a quarter of what households in the highest income quintile spend the former are 3 5 times more vulnerable to rising prices of food imports than the latter

the effect of britain s anti discriminatory legislation on relative pay and employment pressive increase in the number of women in the labour force during the i970s between i970 and i980 female relative employment increased by i8 3 and female relative hours by i 7 6 in this paper we attempt an evaluation of the possible effects of anti discriminatory legislation by considering the labour market as a whole taking into account not only relative employment but also other factors that through their influence on demand and supply may have affected relative pay the prima facie evidence in favour of the effectiveness of this legislation is very strong and we want to see if this evidence is maintained after considering all these additional factors and their interaction within the context of the labour market in the first section we present the main facts under analysis the analytical framework to consider the joint effect of the legislation on pay and employment and the

labor force participation work experience and the pay gap between men and women previous research on the relationship between women s educational attainment and the timing of entry into parenthood has produced conflicting results although studies have consistently found that educational attainment has a delaying effect on entry

downward bias in a new measure of wage discrimination abstract wage discrimination measured as a comparison of male and female characteristics within the same wage bracket is shown to differ from the conventional measure by excluding the wage regression constant term australian data confirm that this provokes downward bias

executive compensation female executives and networking the phrase it s who you know not what you know that counts is often heard in conversations about people who get ahead in economic terms this phrase translates into it s your connections not your human capital investments that count this study attempts to determine the influence of networking in addition to human capital investments by examining a sample of top female executives in the united states we conclude that networking is as important as performance variables in helping women climb the corporate ladder

black white life cycle earnings differences and the vintage hypothesis a longitudinal analysis a common finding of virtually all previous studies of black white earnings differences is that the earnings of white males appear to rise at a more rapid rate with each additional year of work experience or with age than do the earnings of black workers this finding has been noted by economists since at least the mid 1950 s when morton zeman called

time for revisionism on rent control economists traditional hostility to rent contols is based on models that treat the housing market as perfectly competitive and on the experience with hard controls in new york city and many european countries following world war ii the current soft rent control systems in north america are varied and qualitatively different from earlier hard controls the theoretical case against them is weak particularly when the housing market is viewed as imperfectly competitive the empirical case against them is weak too economists should reconsider their blanket opposition to current rent control systems and evaluate them on a case by case basis

the effects of party competition on budget outcomes empirical evidence from local governments in spain this paper investigates the link between local budget outcomes and the intensity of party competition measured as the margin of victory obtained by the incumbent in the previous local election i e the difference between the vote share and 50 two competing hypotheses are tested in the paper on the one hand the leviathan government hypothesis suggests that the lower the intensity of party competition is the greater is the increase in the size of the local public sector irrespective of the ideology of the party in power on the other hand the partisan government hypothesis suggests that the incumbent will find it easier to advance its platform when intensity of competition is low i e parties on the left right will increase decrease the size of the local public sector when the intensity of the challenge from the opposition is low these hypotheses are tested with information on spending own revenues and deficit for more than 500 spanish local governments over 8 years 1992 1999 and information on the results of two local electoral contests 1991 and 1995 the evidence favors the partisan hypothesis over the leviathan one we found that for left wing governments spending taxes and deficits increased as the electoral margin increases whereas for right wing governments a greater margin of victory led to reductions in all these variables

the measurement of race and gender wage differentials evidence from the federal sector this paper presents an empirical analysis of wage differentials based on race and gender in the federal bureaucracy by focusing on the study of interagency variations in wage differentials the au

gender differences in the changing labor market the role of legislation and inequality in changing the wage gap for qualified workers in the united kingdom we use detailed cohort data from three surveys of graduates to examine two explanations for the large decline in the male female wage gap that occurred in the united kingdom during the early 1970s the first attributes the fall to gender specific factors most notably the introduction of antidiscrimination legislation the second explanation argues that these changes were largely in respon ie to changes in the wage structure and in particular to the introduction of income policies our findings show that for u k graduates all the change in relative wages that occurred in this period can be accounted for by gender specific forces

the economics of tenancy rent control we consider a rent control regime where rent increases on and eviction of a sitting tenant are forbidden when apartments become vacant landlords may negotiate new rents if inflation exists landlords prefer to rent to short staying tenants since departure date contingent contracts are forbidden and landlords cannot tell whether tenants are short stayers an adverse selection problem arises with a pareto inefficient equilibrium when tenant types are determined endogenously multiple equilibria can arise where one equilibrium is pareto dominated abolition of the rent control regime cannot only shift the equilibrium out of this inferior outcome but also result in across the board lowering of rents

an analysis of the earnings and employment of asian american men this paper analyzes the earnings and employment of chinese japanese filipino and white men born in the united states the chinese and japanese have higher levels of schooling and earnings than white men and the japanese work more weeks ceteris paribus there are no substantive group differences in these variables or in returns from schooling the filipinos have a lower level of schooling earnings employment and returns from schooling it is therefore not appropriate to view asian americans as a single disadvantaged minority group further the success of the chinese and japanese challenges conventional wisdom regarding the consequences of racial discrimination

sex discrimination in the promotion process previous research has suggested that intra occupational earnings differences are the principal source of the long standing earnings gap between men and women following that line of research this study examines the extent of gender differences in the incidence of and returns to promotions drawing on the quality of employment panel the authors compare the earnings and promotion experience of men and women over the period 1973 1977 after controlling for unmeasured differences in job level and constant individual ability in a fixed effect model they conclude that the returns to promotion are comparable for men and women further analysis indicates however that women are held to higher promotion standards than men and therefore receive fewer promotions than men with equal measured abilities although the female male wage ratio in this sample increased by nearly 6 percent over four years the increase could have been as much as 9 2 percent if women and men had been held to the same promotion standards

errors in variables and reverse regression in the measurement of wage discrimination abstract several recent articles have proposed reverse regression as a solution to errors in variables problems in wage discrimination regressions this note demonstrates that the reverse regression approach is biased against finding evidence of discrimination

race ranking promotions and pay at a federal facility a logit analysis this study analyzes rank assignments and promotions among a group of federal civilian employees at a u s army base with special attention to racial differences by estimating a multinomial logit model and using pooled data from four different years the authors find that position and compensation although closely related are by no means identical nor are promotions and changes in pay for example the racial differential in compensation at this base is accompanied by a racial differential in ranking under which blacks are more likely than comparable whites to be in blue collar occupations and less likely to be in white collar occupations whereas the gender differential in compensation is accompanied by a gender differential in ranking under which women are more likely than comparable men to be in low level white collar occupations and less likely to be in other occupations similarly a narrowing of the racial differential in earnings over time coexisted with a racial differential in promotions that

price ceilings in competitive markets with variable quality abstract this paper analyzes the impact of a price ceiling on a competitive market for a good which yields a utility bearing characteristic the household characteristic producing technology is linear firms have u shaped cost curves in quantity and in total amount of characteristic produced essentially the market is cleared by an equilibrium hedonic price the hedonic price rises in response to the excess demand gap induced by a ceiling on output price bringing the market from an unconstrained equilibrium into a constrained equilibrium a price ceiling also leads to a fall in quality a fall in consumer welfare and locally a rise in producer welfare

do formula based intergovernmental transfer mechanisms eliminate politically motivated targeting evidence from ghana abstract various countries have adopted formulas for determining intergovernmental transfers as a strategy to limit the role of political considerations in resource allocation in this paper we investigate a formula based system of allocating resources from a central government to local governments to determine whether the political characteristics of recipient areas have any bearing on their allocation specifically we study the sharing of resources of the district assemblies common fund dacf in ghana amongst the country s district governments over the period 1994 to 2005 we find evidence that the mechanism does not eliminate politically motivated targeting of the grants per capita dacf grants were higher in districts where vote margins in the previous presidential election were lower suggesting that swing districts were targeted we find evidence that dacf formula indicators and their weighting were chosen and amended to produce politically desired patterns of transfers

under the weather health schooling and economic consequences of early life rainfall life in rural areas of developing countries is prone to many kinds of risk such as illness or mortality of household members crop or other income loss due to natural phenomena weather insect infestations or fire for example and civil conflict in addition to their contemporaneous effects the effects of certain types of shocks may still be felt many years or even decades later from a public policy standpoint it is particularly important to identify shocks that have large long run effects moreover the mechanics underlying the persistence of shocks may be of con siderable interest for example a health shock may have a long run effect simply because the health shock itself persists over time alternately the health shock may not directly affect long run outcomes but it could affect some other outcome such as educational attainment that helps determine long run well being in this paper we focus on shocks that occur at the very beginning of life we ask how sensi tive long run individual well being is to environmental conditions around the time of birth in particular we examine the effect of weather shocks around the time of birth on the adult health education and socioeconomic outcomes of indonesian women and men born between 1953 and 1974 in addition we attempt to shed light on the intervening pathways connecting early life rainfall to adult outcomes illuminating the roles of health and educational attainment in deter mining adult socioeconomic status this investigation has considerable data requirements it necessitates information on weather shocks experienced by individuals several decades earlier as well as detailed current informa tion on adult outcomes we use information in the indonesian family life surveys ifls on an individual s year and location of birth and link each individual in that survey to locality specific rainfall data for their birth year for individuals born in rural areas on whom we focus rainfall variation across space and time should generate corresponding variation in agricultural output and thus household income to deal with measurement error in the rainfall data we run instrumental variables regressions where variables for rainfall measured at slightly more distant rainfall stations serve as instruments for rainfall in the individual s birthplace and birth year we examine the impact of early life rainfall on a range of adult outcomes observed in 2000 we find that higher early life rainfall leads to improved health schooling and socioeconomic status for women women with 20 percent higher rainfall relative to normal local rainfall in their year and location of birth are 3 8 percentage points less likely to self report poor or very poor health they attain 0 57 centimeters greater height attain 0 22 more completed grades of

a new look at the causes of the improved economic status of black workers the wage differential between black and white men fell from 40 percent in 1960 to 25 percent in 1980 it has been argued that this convergence reflects improvements in the relative quality of black schools to test this hypothesis we assembled data on

comparable worth wage adjustments and female employment in the state and local sector our paper simulates the likely effects of a comparable worth wage adjustment policy in the state and local sector on female employment in the sector the simulation is based on estimates of within occupation male female substitution and across occupation occupational employment substitution that we obtain using data from the 1980 census of population