does microfinance reduce rural poverty evidence based on household panel data from northern ethiopia evidence on the long term impacts of microfinance credit is scarce we use a unique four round panel dataset on farm households in northern ethiopia that had access to microfinance observed on two key poverty indicators household consumption and housing improvements fixed effects and random trend models are used to reduce potential selection biases due to time invariant unobserved heterogeneity and individual trends therein results show that borrowing indeed causally increased consumption and housing improvements a flexible specification that takes into account repeated borrowings also suggests that borrowing has cumulative long term effects on these outcomes implying that short term impact estimates may underestimate credit effects

cyclicality and the labor market for economists the 1987 academic market was strong whereas the 1997 market was weak a multimarket theory of optimal search suggests that job seekers will respond to a weakening market by changing their search strategies at the extensive margin which markets to enter and the intensive margin how many applications to submit per market employers respond to the weakening market by raising their hiring standards high quality applicants will obtain an increased share of academic interviews in weak markets while applicants from weaker schools will increasingly secure interviews outside of the academic market empirical results show that in the bust market graduates of elite schools shifted their search strategies to include weaker academic institutions while graduates of lower ranked schools shifted their applications away from academia and toward the business sector in bust conditions academic institu tions increasingly concentrate their interviews on elite school graduates women and u s residents

the demand for and impact of learning hiv status this paper evaluates an experiment in which individuals in rural malawi were randomly assigned monetary incentives to learn their hiv results after being tested distance to the hiv results centers was also randomly assigned without any incentive 34 percent of the participants learned their hiv results however even the smallest incentive doubled that share using the randomly assigned incentives and distance from results centers as instruments for the knowledge of hiv status sexually active hiv positive individuals who learned their results are three times more likely to purchase condoms two months later than sexually active hiv positive individuals who did not learn their results however hiv positive individuals who learned their results purchase only two additional condoms than those who did not there is no significant effect of learning hiv negative status on the purchase of condoms

selecting successful students undergraduate grades as an admission criterion abstractin europe s reformed education system universities may be forced by law to consider undergraduate grade point average ugpa as the primary admission criterion in the selection of graduate students in this article we investigate whether ugpa predicts graduate student performance in order to discuss its usefulness as an admission criterion in our theoretical framework we show that undergraduate students may choose slower study progress in favour of receiving higher grades and conclude that ugpa is a relatively good weak predictor for graduate grade point average study progress having data from a cohort of students whose selection was in clear conflict with the legal requirement we empirically confirm our theoretical predictions by exploiting a unique opportunity for assessing educational policies discussion of our findings leads to some important conclusions concerning the bologna reforms and the lawmakers idea of giving some independence to universities but not too much of it

informality and poverty in ecuador this paper uses national representative data from the ecuadorian family expenditure survey to study the determinants of poverty and informality in the country taking into account the two way relationship between these two phenomena the main contribution of this paper is to present new empirical evidence on this relationship for a developing country where more than 60 of workers are in the informal sector the results support the view of a heterogeneous informal market in which informal work is both a demand led phenomenon and a voluntary and primarily supply led form of employment

the labor market for new ph d economists presents results from a survey of 450 new 1996 97 ph d economists providing information about employment underemployment employers work activities salaries and job satisfaction comparisons are made across ranks of the graduates ph d programs sectors of employment and subfields of economics as well as over time labor market outcomes for economists also are compared with those of seven other disciplines results indicate that a growing proportion of new economics ph d s start their careers in business or industry that an international market for new economics ph d s is evolving and that job outcomes for economists compare favorably with new ph d s in many other disciplines

organizing the global value chain a firm level test in this paper we study the organization of global value chains on a sample of about 4 000 manufacturing parent companies operating more than 90 000 affiliates on a global scale which chose to integrate at least once in the period 2004 2012 assuming a technological sequence of production stages a recent property rights framework antra s and chor 2013 alfaro et al 2015 predicts that a choice of vertical integration is crucially based on both the position of a supplier along the chain and on the relative size of demand elasticities faced by the final producer and the supplier we positively test whether if final demand is sufficiently elastic inelastic producers of final goods integrate production stages that are more proximate to far from the consumers however this is not valid for cases of midstream parents i e for producers of intermediate inputs that can integrate either backward or forward along the chain we document that midstream are at least as common as are downstream parent companies but that existing theory neglects them in these cases we find that demand elasticities do not play a significant role in integration choices interestingly both midstream and downstream parents tend to integrate affiliates that are more proximate in segments of a supply chain our findings point to a role for technological determinants that may be as important as are contracting frictions in organizing global value chains

renegotiation of concession contracts in latin america evidence from the water and transport sectors abstract high rates of contract renegotiation have raised serious questions about the viability of the concession model to attract private participation in infrastructure in developing countries after extending in reduced form a standard regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts we use a unique data set of 307 concessions awarded in latin america from 1989 to 2000 covering the sectors of transport and water to analyze the determinants of this high incidence of renegotiations of infrastructure contracts we look in details at the impact on the probability of renegotiation of a concession of regulatory institutions institutional features economic shocks and of the characteristics of the concession contracts themselves we then derive some policy implications of our work

so you want to earn a ph d in economics how much do you think you ll make john j siegfried using data from individuals who earned a ph d in economics in 1996 97 this study identifies factors associated with securing full time permanent positions and determinants of starting salaries for new ph d economists where individuals attend graduate school and factors including the field of specialization and work as a teaching research assistant impact whether graduates obtain full time permanent jobs choice of graduate program and amount of time spent in the program influence starting salary as does obtaining a position outside academia or in a research oriented academic institution both of which entail higher salaries relative to employment at a b a level academic institution jel j44 a10 1 introduction the job market for economists continues to be the focus of empirical studies that provide information on initial job placement the market process and differential market outcomes by age sex and graduate program rank for new ph d economists carson and navarro 1988 barbezat 1992 formby et al 1993 mcmillen and singell 1994 ehrenberg et al 1998 siegfried and stock 1999 stock and alston 2000 stock et al 2000 despite widespread interest in the job market little is known about influences on starting salaries for new ph d economists some salary information obtained by surveying department heads is disseminated each year at the traditional department chairs breakfast at the allied social science association s meetings curington and market 1996 and through the american economic association s aea universal academic questionnaire scott and siegfried 1999 2000 however this information reports only aggregate trends in starting salaries not an assessment of the effect of individual characteristics on starting salaries only two studies both limited to academics have examined starting salaries for individual economists formby et al 1993 examined 1987 88 starting salaries for academic economists using survey data obtained from 258 u s economics departments they found significantly higher starting salaries in higher cost of living areas in ph d granting departments and for individuals who began jobs after finishing their ph d who work in public universities who are in business schools and who are in highly ranked departments they found no significant demographic effects on starting salary with the exception that age was a slight detriment in non research oriented departments ehrenberg et al 1998 used aea salary data to study the influence of tenure probabilities on starting salaries of economists they found that departments with low tenure probabilities tend to pay higher starting salaries they also found differences in starting salary based on benefit packages and cost of living differences and for individuals who began jobs after finishing their ph d recent work by siegfried and stock 1999 presents a broad overview of labor market outcomes using a large survey of economics ph d s from the class of 1996 97 they document changes in market structure occurring over the past two decades including a shift from academic to nonacademic positions record numbers of new ph d s entering the market increasing proportions of foreign graduates and a growing number of foreign sector jobs in addition they present a general overview of factors influencing starting salaries which reveals salary premiums for u s citizens but no relationship between salary and other demographic attributes age sex marital status race those who took longer to earn their ph d and those working in academia earned lower salaries the purpose of this study is to explicitly identify and quantify determinants of starting salaries for new ph d economists using the siegfried and stock survey data we also identify factors associated with securing full time permanent positions in economics an important analysis because the percentage of new economics ph

steve jobs or no jobs entrepreneurial activity and performance among danish college dropouts and graduates are college dropouts successful entrepreneurs other than anecdotal evidence on illustrious college dropouts who managed to become self made billionaires there is only limited empirical evidence to answer this question this paper addresses this issue by investigating the relationship between college dropout or graduation and entrepreneurship activity as well as performance using information from the danish labor market register we identify college students whether these students graduate and if they registered a new venture we find that a larger share of dropouts starts a business but this reflects the endogeneity of the decision to exit from college on average becoming an entrepreneur does not allow dropouts to escape from their punishment in the labor market

the morning after alcohol misuse and employment problems using a rich recent and nationally representative longitudinal survey specifically designed to examine alcohol use and associated problems we investigate the effects of alcohol misuse on a series of understudied and perhaps less common employment problems such problems include being fired or laid off from a job sustained unemployment and conflicts with a supervisor and or co worker after controlling for time invariant omitted variables via fixed effects estimation we find evidence that three measures of alcohol misuse are significantly related to employment problems the results offer new information on the potential adverse labour market effects of alcohol misuse and shed light on potential mechanisms through which alcohol misuse may impact intensive labour supply and or wages

evolving standards for academic publishing a q r theory this paper develops models of quality standards to examine two trends academic journals increasingly require extensive revisions of submissions and articles are becoming longer and changing in other ways papers are modeled as varying along two quality dimensions q reflects the importance of the main ideas and r other aspects of quality observed trends are regarded as increases in r quality a static equilibrium model illustrates comparative statics explanations a dynamic model in which referees with a biased view of their own work learn social norms for weighting q and r is shown to produce a long gradual evolution of social norms

concessions of infrastructure in latin america government led renegotiation this paper analyzes government led renegotiations in infrastructure concession contracts in latin america based on the same sample used in guasch laffont and straub 2003 to examine firm led renegotiations after extending the theoretical framework to a multiple period context in which both pareto improving and rent shifting renegotiations at the initiative of the government can occur we develop an original instrumental variable strategy to address the issue of contract endogeneity and derive empirical results while some of the main insights concerning the importance of having a regulator in place when awarding concessions and the fragility of price cap regulatory schemes are unchanged significant differences arise with respect to the effect of investment and financing as well as the corruption variables we provide evidence that a good regulatory framework is especially important in contexts with weak governance and political opportunism copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

ph d program learning and job demands how close is the match the types of knowledge skills and proficiencies that should be imparted to students in graduate economics programs are a matter of long standing controversy a 1953 american economic association aea report cataloged major shortcomings in graduate economic education and recommended changes to enhance the quality and effectiveness of economics ph d programs howard r bowen 1953 by the 1980 s the perception grew that economics ph d programs devoted excessive attention to theoretical work at the expense of real world application wassily leontief 1982 this development triggered david colander and arjo klamer 1987 to conduct an independent study based on interviews with graduate students at elite ph d programs their study reinforced the views of many including leaders in the aea the national science foundation and several private foundations that something was amiss in 1988 the aea established the commission on graduate education in economics cogee to undertake a thorough study of graduate training the commission s major concern based on extensive surveys and interviews of graduate students faculty and employers was that graduate education in economics had removed itself from real world economic problems anne o krueger et al 1991 the cogee study is distinguished by its attempt to determine the emphasis given to cultivating a set of economic proficiencies in graduate school and the importance of an array of skills for success in graduate school and later on the job hansen 1991 the proficiencies included in the cogee study were providing rigorous training in economic theory providing training in econometrics and measurement applying theory to real world problems using economic theory in empirical applications and conducting independent economic research for this study we added three proficiencies to the cogee list understanding economic institutions and history and understanding the history of economic ideas to capture concerns about curriculum changes that eliminated or scaled back training in these two fields and developing teaching skills to reflect recent emphasis on improving the quality of instruction william e becker 2003 the skills included in the cogee study were critical judgment analyzing ideas reviewing literature formulating pertinent comments analytics understanding and solving problems making and analyzing logical arguments application seeing practical implications of abstract ideas analyzing real world policies and processes mathematics constructing and analyzing proofs manipulating mathematical abstractions computation effectively and quickly finding and manipulating relevant data estimating economic relationships using statistical software communication speaking and writing effectively quickly understanding spoken and written ideas of others explaining ideas clearly and creativity conceiving interesting questions finding new means of analysis we added instruction being an effective classroom teacher to the skills list for the same reason mentioned above

gender differences in first jobs for economists over the last several decades women have made substantial progress into traditionally maledominated professions reflecting this trend much recent research has focused on explaining the choice of profession and the gender composition of the workforce 5 23 16 however a focus on occupation choice may conceal interesting patterns within professions because a profession can include a number of different job types with a distinct mix of professional activities the dual labor market phenomenon of primary and secondary jobs may also be present although perhaps to a lesser extent within a particular profession 17 gender differences in composition of employment among the various jobs within a profession could thus affect the status pay and advancement of women in the occupation if women primarily place in secondary type jobs the advantages of entering a profession will be lower for women relatively little is known about career choice within a profession 15 in this paper we model the first job choice of economists among several careers and use data on new ph d economists over the last thirty years to examine whether career choices differ by gender over a period of low but increasing representation of women an advantage of our single profession analysis is that it contains a relatively homogeneous set of workers with quantitative human capital measures that other studies of job choice suggest are important 7 there is significant variation in career choices available within economics that permits possible market segmentation 2 there are research and teaching academic jobs and the government and private sectors employ large numbers of economists we find significant structural differences in the placements of male and female economists indicating that the choices of female economists differ from those of their male counterparts both within academia and between this and other sectors the economics profession provides a useful background to examine gender differences in the career choices of professionals in a male dominated occupation over the last 30 years the average number of ph d s conferred annually in the u s has increased from approximately 300 to over 800 reflecting increased opportunities for economists within economics departments and expansion of other academic government and private sector jobs at the same time the proportion

completion rates and time to degree in economics phd programs with comments by david colander n gregory mankiw melissa p mcinerney james m poterba abstract this paper describes the progress eight years after matriculating of 586 individuals who entered one of 27 economics ph d programs in fall 2002 by october 2010 59 percent of the fall 2002 entering cohort had earned a ph d in economics at the university where they initially matriculated 37 percent had dropped out and 4 percent were still writing their dissertations we examine student outcomes by ph d program tier and investigate factors associated with completion and time to degree we document and describe the rise in median time to degree from 5 0 to 5 6 years during the period 1996 2010

lifetime earnings and the vietnam era draft lottery evidence from social security administrative records errata the randomly assigned risk of induction generated by the draft lottery is used to construct estimates of the effect of veteran status on civilian earnings these estimates are not biased by the fact that certain types of men are more likely than others to service in the military social security administrative records indicate that in the early 1980s long after their service in vietnam had ended the earnings of white veterans were approximately 15 percent less than the earnings of comparable nonveterans copyright 1990 by american economic association

money for nothing universal child care and maternal employment abstract the strong correlation between child care and maternal employment rates has led previous research to conclude that affordable and readily available child care is a driving force both of cross country differences in maternal employment and of its rapid growth over the last decades we analyze a staged expansion of subsidized child care in norway our precise and robust difference in differences estimates reveal that there is little if any causal effect of subsidized child care on maternal employment despite a strong correlation instead of increasing mothers labor supply the new subsidized child care mostly crowds out informal child care arrangements suggesting a significant net cost of the child care subsidies

nobel laureate robert e lucas jr architect of modern macroeconomics in 1995 robert e lucas was awarded the nobel memorial prize for economic science this review places lucas s work in a historical context and evaluates the effect of this work on the economics profession lucas s central contribution is that he developed and applied economic theory to answer substantive questions in macroeconomics economists today routinely analyze systems in which agents operate in complex probabilistic environments to understand interactions about which the great theorists of an earlier generation could only speculate this sea change is due primarily to lucas

analyzing the welfare improving potential of land in the former homelands of south africa this article contributes to the debate on the role of land in reducing poverty in rural south africa it uses the year of arrival in the former homelands as an instrument for land access and size this identification strategy is based on the fact that african households were forcibly relocated to the homelands during the apartheid due to increasing population pressure later arrivals were less likely to be assigned land the results show that land has a large positive effect on household welfare because the homelands are relatively disadvantaged areas these results provide a lower bound for the positive effects of land on household welfare

much ado about two reconsidering retransformation and the two part model in health econometrics in health economics applications involving outcomes y and covariates x it is often the case that the central inferential problems of interest involve e y x and its associated partial effects or elasticities many such outcomes have two fundamental statistical properties y 0 and the outcome y 0 is observed with sufficient frequency that the zeros cannot be ignored econometrically this paper 1 describes circumstances where the standard two part model with homoskedastic retransformation will fail to provide consistent inferences about important policy parameters and 2 demonstrates some alternative approaches that are likely to prove helpful in applications

sowing for food security a case study of smallholder farmers in bolivia abstract this paper explores the role that agriculture can play in the food security agenda to meet this objective this study measures the impact of the programa de apoyos directos para la creacion de iniciativas agroalimentarias rurales criar an agricultural technology adoption program implemented in highly food insecure areas of rural bolivia the paper analyzes whether changes in food security are due to improved food availability production and local sales and or greater food access income and production used for home consumption to this end data from a sample of 1287 households 817 beneficiaries and 470 controls interviewed specifically for this purpose are used to address self selection issues the program s impact is estimated using an instrumental variable model the results present evidence that program participation improved food security specifically positive impacts on agricultural productivity agricultural sales and household income are found these findings confirm the importance of considering agricultural programs as policy tools to address food insecurity

does migration raise agricultural investment an empirical analysis for rural mexico the effect of remittances on capital accumulation remains a contested topic this paper uses a panel data set from rural mexico to investigate the impact of remittances on agriculture and livestock investments after controlling for the endogeneity of migration through an instrumental variable estimation our empirical results show that international migration has a significantly positive effect on the accumulated agricultural assets but not on livestock capital this suggests that households use the capital obtained from international migration only to overcome liquidity constraints for subsistence production whereas migration itself seems to be the superior investment option compared to other productive activities such as livestock husbandry

intercountry comparisons of labor force trends and of related developments an overview this paper is a survey of analyses of women s labor force growth in 12 industrialized countries originally presented at a conference in sussex england in june 1983 the main focus of the conference papers and of the current survey is on growth of the labor force of married women in the years 1960 80 trends in fertility wages and family instability also receive attention as related developments married women s labor force growth is observed in all countries except for the ussr after 1970 where labor force rates of women reached the level of men growth rates differ among countries they apparently respond to growth in real wages and to growth in education but response elasticities differ among countries estimates of these elasticities contained in the country papers were helpful in predicting the trends other findings include ubiquitous declines in fertility and growth of divorce in the 1970s both developments are related to long run labor force growth in all countries wages of women were lo

the allocation of talent over the business cycle and its long term effect on sectoral productivity it is well documented that graduates enter different occupations in recessions than in booms in our paper we examine the impact of the resulting change in the allocation of talent for long term productivity and output in a sector in a setting where output can be quantitatively and qualitatively measured we find evidence that talent flows to stable sectors in recessions and to cyclical sectors in booms economists starting or graduating from their phd in a recession are significantly more productive in academia over the long term than economists starting or graduating in a boom

the market for new ph d economists in 2002 a period of malaise in the mid 1990 s led to a contraction in enrollment at many economics ph d programs the resulting reduction in the supply of new ph d economists combined with a smaller contraction in demand for new ph d economists generated as the wall street journal reported a hot pursuit for some economics ph d s with even low level candidates being treated like big shots jon e hilsenrath 2001 p b1 as might be expected the scarcity of new economics ph d s that materialized at the end of the decade appears to have induced more enrollments in economics ph d programs with annual matriculations rising by about 25 percent between fall 1998 and fall 2002 charles e scott and siegfried 1999 2003 predictions for the current job market are mixed on the one hand demand may expand as some academic departments whose hiring had been constrained by financial exigency return to active recruiting jennifer jacobson 2003 on the other hand the aftermath of the recession continues to limit some public university budgets at the same time that the supply of new economics ph d s may start to expand resulting in a job market for american ph d s that the economist 2003 p 60 describes as bleak five years ago we reported the results of a comprehensive survey of the labor market for economics ph d s graduating in 1996 1997 siegfried and stock 1999 in contrast to other social science and science disciplines most economists who graduated with a doctorate in 1996 1997 found full time careertracking jobs that paid well those in permanent full time jobs in the united states earned an average starting salary of 61 000 many of those employed in business and industry however were not satisfied with their jobs despite receiving a significant salary premium relative to academics here we report results from a new survey of the class of economics ph d s graduating in 2001 2002 this information should be of interest to current and prospective ph d students of use to advisors of undergraduates considering graduate study in economics and of assistance to faculty concerned with the employment prospects of applicants they admit to their doctoral programs for methodological details consult our earlier report siegfried and stock 1999

matriculation in u s economics ph d programs how many accepted americans do not enroll using a sample of 26 u s economics ph d programs in fall 2003 we estimate that only about 12 percent of the u s and canadian students accepted for doctoral study did not enroll in any u s economics ph d program in fall 2003 or fall 2004 it is not possible to increase the supply of new ph d economists substantially by closing the sale on accepted applicants additional qualified applicants are needed nonmatriculants are remarkably similar to enrollees in demographics prior education test scores and fields of special interest but express less interest in economic research and are less likely to have been offered financial aid an expected financial aid deficiency was also the most cited reason for deciding not to matriculate followed by how long it takes to earn an economics ph d and the expectation of higher lifetime earnings in a career other than economics most who decided against an economics ph d enrolled in an alternative graduate program this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

china s land market auctions evidence of corruption this paper studies the urban land market in china in 2003 2007 in china all urban land is owned by the state leasehold use rights for land for re development are sold by city governments and are a key source of city revenue leasehold sales are viewed as a major venue for corruption prompting a number of reforms over the years reforms now require all leasehold rights be sold at public auction there are two main types of auction regular english auction and an unusual type which we call a two stage auction the latter type of auction seems more subject to corruption and to side deals between potential bidders and the auctioneer absent corruption theory suggests that two stage auctions would most likely maximize sales revenue for properties which are likely to have relatively few bidders or are cold which would suggest negative selection on property unobservables into such auctions however if such auctions are more corruptible that could involve positive selection as city officials divert hotter properties to a more corruptible auction form the paper finds that overall sales prices are lower for two stage auctions and there is strong evidence of positive selection the price difference is explained primarily by the fact that two stage auctions typically have just one bidder or no competition despite the vibrant land market in chinese cities

limitations of contract farming as a pro poor strategy the case of maize outgrower schemes in upper west ghana summary contract farming cf arrangements have the potential to address market failures and improve technology adoption productivity and welfare in ghana government and donors use cf as a strategy for increasing adoption of new agricultural technologies and developing value chains yet to date there has not been a rigorous assessment of these cf schemes the focus in this paper is on different maize based cf schemes in the poorest and most remote region in ghana it assesses the profitability and potential impact of these cf schemes utilizing a unique plot level dataset that covers two periods of data and two maize plots scheme and non scheme per household and employing matching techniques and an instrumental variable approach to address selection bias and unobserved heterogeneity across farmers these are complemented by a community level survey in depth interviews with scheme operators and a series of key informant interviews results show that these schemes led to improved technology adoption and yield increases in addition a subset of maize farmers with high yield improvements due to cf participation have high profits maize cf schemes also enabled market coordination and consistent supply of quality maize to downstream industries however on average the impact of the cf schemes on profitability is negative even when input diversion is accounted for yield increases are not high enough to compensate for higher input requirements and the cost of capital under the schemes despite higher yields the costs to produce one metric tonne of maize under cf schemes are higher than on maize farms without cf schemes twice that of several countries in africa and more than seven times higher than that of major maize exporting countries the united states brazil and argentina sustainability of these cf schemes will largely depend on developing and promoting much improved varieties and technologies that boost yields in order to compensate for the high input and credit costs

does raiding explain the negative returns to faculty seniority i introduction economists have studied various aspects of faculty mobility research shows that turnover is greater among nonunion faculty rees 1994 female faculty average slightly more employers than male faculty barbezat and hughes 2001 ginther and kahn 2004 1 the responsiveness of turnover to relative pay diminishes with rank ehrenberg kasper and rees 1991 and research productivity enhances prospects for upward mobility ault rutman and stevenson 1979 1982 coupe smeets and warzynski 2005 still questions remain unanswered where do faculty go when they leave a university how does faculty turnover vary with time at a university what percentage of faculty move upward and what percentage move downward because of tenure denials or the prospect of being turned down for tenure the present article contributes to our understanding of these issues but its primary objective was to use data on faculty mobility to provide insights on another issue returns to academic seniority the negative returns to seniority that many studies find are commonly attributed to one of two factors 2 the first view is that negative returns reflect monopsony power on the part of universities faculty with high mobility costs acquire high seniority and because they are unlikely to move they are paid less than equally productive faculty that employers view as more likely to leave a competing explanation is that highly productive faculty are raided according to this story returns to seniority are biased negatively because faculty with high seniority tend to have low unmeasured productivity the best faculty are bid away moving on to better jobs those who remain are the faculty without outside offers and the negative returns estimated for senior faculty actually reflect a penalty for low unmeasured productivity rather than a true penalty for seniority the raiding story has several implications first estimated returns to seniority should become less negative the more fully the productivity is measured second estimated returns should be less negative once we control for faculty who are bid away finally and of particular importance estimated returns to seniority should not be negative for faculty who are bid away the faculty for whom unmeasured productivity is presumably high with the right data set these hypotheses can be tested rejection of the raiding hypothesis would provide tacit evidence of monoposony in academic markets 3 this article contributes to the literature in several ways it is the first research to directly test the raiding hypothesis it provides a detailed look at faculty mobility in one segment of the academic labor market it extends and improves bratsberg ragan and warren 2003 in the following ways it expands the sample to cover three decades of faculty pay records it includes additional controls for productivity number and types of books recent and prospective articles and so forth resulting in the most complete specification of research productivity to date and it allows for heterogeneity in the seniority penalty via phd pedigree and direction of move finally it tests for the possibility that the academic job market does a better job of matching faculty and universities in recent years as might be expected because of the information revolution the sample consists of five public phd granting universities in the midwest we track all tenure track economics faculty employed in these universities over a 30 yr period we measure their productivity their pay and their mobility as such the study provides a rich and detailed investigation of one subset of economics programs it is possible that mobility may be greater in urban areas where faculty can more readily obtain alternative employment without relocating and prior research indicates that pay structures depend on the university s stature and its relative emphasis on research and teaching

comment the state of british economics i read the three articles in this symposium with great interest having been quite involved in at least some of these topics as an economist on the other side of the atlantic i will both comment on how the world is similar or different in us academic economics and will also feel freer than did the authors to speculate on underlying causal factors behind the data having chaired the american economic association s committee on the status of women in the economics profession cswep for three years i first read booth and burton s article i was struck by how similar the numbers appeared in the united kingdom and the united states table 1 presents the results reported from cswep s annual departmental questionnaire which is sent to all phd granting institutions in the united states as the table shows women constitute about 6 of full professors 15 of tenured associate professors and 28 of untenured assistant professors even recognising differences in the definition of academic positions between the united states and the united kingdom these numbers are remarkably similar to those shown in table 1 of booth and burton for full time staff furthermore as in the united kingdom the proportion of women is somewhat lower in the topranked departments in recent years between 25 and 34 of those receiving phds in economics have been female in the united states also similar to the uk numbers in table 4 of booth and burton in the united states the share of women in academic positions decreases at every level in economics the share of female assistant professors is lower than the share of women graduating with a phd the share of women promoted to associate professor is lower than their share among assistant professors and the share of female full professors is lower than among associates while this is partly due to the pipeline problem in which a disproportionate share of female phds are younger it is not entirely due to this i recently tried to model the expected flow of women up through the academic ranks from 1980 forward given information in each year on the share of women receiving a phd and assuming that women should enter academic work and move upward at the same rate as men my evidence showed that women are not advancing as rapidly as men and that the smaller shares in associate and full professor tenured jobs is not just a pipeline issue but also due to women dropping out of academic economics at a higher rates at each point of course the key question is why do women drop out of or fail to be promoted in academic economics at a higher rate at least three issues are frequently raised first women disproportionately choose to specialise in more applied fields in economics not only is this work less valued in academic

incumbent innovation and domestic entry this paper analyzes the escape entry incentive for innovation by incumbent firms the threat posed by the possibility of leading edge firms entering the market influences incumbent innovation to overcome problems of endogeneity we apply an instrumental variable approach to analyze a rich firm level dataset 1987 2000 for germany we find evidence that domestic entry has a negative effect on incumbent product innovation which is a strong indication of new entrants comparative advantage in commercializing new ideas in contrast domestic entry has a positive effect on incumbent process innovations an effect also known as the escape entry effect

do workplace smoking bans reduce smoking in recent years workplace smoking policies have become increasingly prevalent and restrictive using data from two large scale national surveys we investigate whether these policies reduce smoking our estimates suggest that workplace bans reduce smoking prevalence by 5 percentage points and daily consumption among smokers by 10 percent although workers with better health habits are more likely to work at firms with smoking bans estimates from systems of equations indicate that these results are not subject to an omitted variables bias the rapid increase in bans can explain all of the recent drop in smoking among workers relative to nonworkers

turgot founder of classical economics a r j turgot s capital theory is rightly famous this paper argues that his contribution to distribution theory should also be recogniz ed as a major achievement the interest rate or profit rate is equa lized between different activities and governed by returns at the agr icultural margin intensive and extensive returns decrease as the m argin moves out with capital accumulation this implies a rent theory and a theory of accumulation substantially equivalent to that of dav id ricardo and makes turgot who wrote before adam smith the origin al inventor of the main lines of classical economics copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

does compulsory school attendance affect schooling and earnings we establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws we estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings by using quarter of birth as an instrument for education the instrumental variables estimate of the return to education is close to the ordinary least squares estimate suggesting that there is little bias in conventional estimates every developed country in the world has a compulsory schooling requirement yet little is known about the effect these laws have on educational attainment and earnings 1 this paper exploits an unusual natural experiment to estimate the impact of compulsory schooling laws in the united states the experiment stems from the fact that children born in different months of the year start school at different ages while compulsory schooling laws generally require students to remain in school until their sixteenth or seventeenth birthday in effect the interaction of school entry requirements and compulsory schooling laws compel students born

job search in thick markets abstract i analyze empirically the effects of urban and industrial agglomeration on both search behavior and the efficiency of matching the analysis is based on a unique panel data set from the italian labor force survey micro data covering 520 randomly drawn local labor market areas 66 of the total over the four quarters of 2002 i compute transition probabilities from non employment to employment by jointly estimating the probability of searching and the probability of finding a job conditional on having searched i then test whether these are affected by market size industrial variety and or industry specialization the main results indicate that market size and industry specialization raise job seekers chances of finding employment conditional on having searched while industrial variety is not significantly different from zero finally the effect of agglomeration on non employed individuals search behavior cannot be significantly distinguished from zero

estimating outcome distributions for compliers in instrumental variables models in imbens and ingrist 1994 angrist imbens and rubin 1996 and imbens and rubin 1997 assumptions have been outlined under which instrumental variables estimands can be given a causal interpretation as a local average treatment effect without requiring functional form or constant treatment effect assumptions we extend these results by showing that under these assumptions one can estimate more from the data than the average causal effect for the subpopulation of compliers one can in principle estimate the entire marginal distribution of the outcome under different treatments for this subpopulation these distributions might be useful for a policy maker who wishes to take into account not only differences in average of earnings when contemplating the merits of one job training programme vs another we also show that the standard instrumental variables estimator implicitly estimates these underlying outcome distributions without imposing the required nonnegativity on these implicit density estimates and that imposing non negativity can substantially alter the estimates of the local average treatment effect we illustrate these points by presenting an analysis of the returns to a high school education using quarter of birth as an instrument we show that the standard instrumental variables estimates implicitly estimate the outcome distributions to be negative over a substantial range and that the estimates of the local average treatment effect change considerably when we impose nonnegativity in any of a variety of ways

the oregon health insurance experiment evidence from the first year in 2008 a group of uninsured low income adults in oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for medicaid this lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use financial strain and health of low income adults using a randomized controlled design in the year after random assignment the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected we find that in this first year the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization including primary and preventive care as well as hospitalizations lower out of pocket medical expenditures and medical debt including fewer bills sent to collection and better self reported physical and mental health than the control group

entry level salaries of academic economists does gender or age matter i introduction since the mid 1970s earnings differentials in academic labor markets have been extensively investigated with particular attention focused on salary differentials between males and females the leading studies use similar methodologies but differ in terms of the time period analyzed data sources and whether a single academic discipline or multiple disciplines are considered for example johnson and stafford 1974 investigate several academic professions in 1970 jusenius and scheffler 1981 consider a single discipline economics in 1973 and include a cross section of universities and professorial ranks as well as race several investigators including katz 1973 hirsch and leppel 1982 rickman 1984 and raymond sesnowitz and williams 1988 focus on a single college or university and include diverse academic disciplines the latter two studies raise the question of whether gender continued to matter in academic labor markets in the 1980s and reach opposite conclusions a consistent finding transcending early studies of academic labor markets is that earnings differentials are smallest between men and women who are at the beginning of their careers for example johnson and stafford in a widely cited study state the most important finding is that the salaries of females start out at not much less than those of males 4 to 11 percent in the six disciplines in our sample and then decline 1974 901 this paper investigates entry level salaries in a single academic discipline by considering a cross section of newly hired economists the primary source of labor market information is a unique survey of entry level salaries in the 1987 88 academic year it might seem that by the late 1980s gender differentials should have disappeared at the entry level but like johnson and stafford s 1974 earlier result our survey reveals newly hired females received 1060 3 4 percent less than males our principal purpose is to determine whether this gender differential and the effects of age are significant once other determinants of earnings are taken into account for example we consider and control for terminal degree status the quality of the ph d granting department field of specialization highest degree offered by the hiring department differences in cost of living across areas and other institutional factors that can influence beginning entry level salaries we first describe the data set developed primarily from a survey which is used to estimate entry level earnings equations we also briefly compare our survey to other surveys providing information on market outcomes for economists we then present estimates of the determinants of entry level salaries and discuss the influence of gender age and other determinants of earnings ii the survey a total of 469 u s economics departments were surveyed in the summer and fall of 1987 with 258 departments responding 55 percent 1 the 1987 88 academic year salary of each new hire was requested of each department demographic information age sex and human capital characteristics ph d granting university primary field of specialization and degree status were also requested for each new hire in addition the survey included questions on whether the hiring college university is privately or publicly supported the administrative reporting channel of the economics department highest degree offered and number of entry level persons hired the identities of the hiring department and the university at which the newly hired economist did his or her graduate work are used to construct two measures of quality the quality of the department where the ph d work was done is the first measure and the quality of the hiring department is the second 2 the survey was designed to provide microdata on individual entry level economists for the purpose of estimating earnings equations in an effort to maximize responses the questionnaire was intentionally brief only questions directly relevant to estimating the earnings equation of entry level economists were included

welfare impacts of maize pigeonpea intensification in tanzania this article examines the driving forces behind farmers decisions to adopt improved pigeonpea and maize and estimates the causal impact of technology adoption on household welfare using data obtained from a random cross section sample of 613 small scale farmers in tanzania we use seemingly unrelated and recursive bivariate probit regressions to test the endogeneity and joint decision making of pigeonpea maize production a double hurdle model is used to analyze the determinants of the intensity of technology adoption conditional on overcoming seed access constraints to address the impact of adoption on welfare the article employs both propensity score matching and switching regression techniques results from bivariate probit models show that unobservable factors cause both decisions to be correlated but the finding does not support the conjecture that both decisions are made jointly overall the analysis of the determinants of adoption identifies inadequate local supply of seed access to information human capital and access to private productive asset as key constraints for pigeonpea technology adoption the causal impact estimation from both the propensity score matching and switching regression suggests that maize pigeonpea adoption has a positive and significant impact on income and consumption expenditure among sample households

semi parametric estimation of simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables a case study of female labour supply we propose a general strategy to estimate semi parametrically simultaneous equations with limited dependent variables first each reduced form rf is estimated with various semi parametric methods second the specification of each rf is tested to select an appropriate method third the structural form sf equations are estimated using minimum distance methods and the restrictions among the sf and rf parameters a case study of female labour supply is presented

one essay on dissertation formats in economics dissertations in economics have changed dramatically over the past forty years from primarily treatise length books to sets of essays on related topics we document trends in essay style dissertations across several metrics using data on dissertation format phd program characteristics demographics job market outcomes and early career research productivity for two large samples of us phds graduating in 1996 1997 or 2001 2002 students at higher ranked phd programs citizens outside the united states and microeconomics students have been at the forefront of this trend economics phd graduates who take jobs as academics are more likely to have written essay style dissertations while those who take government jobs are more likely to have written a treatise finally most of the evidence suggests that essay style dissertations enhance economists early career research productivity

spousal control and intra household decision making an experimental study in the philippines i elicit causal effects of spousal observability and communication on financial choices of married individuals in the philippines when choices are private men put money into their personal accounts when choices are observable men commit money to consumption for their own benefit when required to communicate men put money into their wives account these strong treatment effects on men but not women appear related more to control than to gender men whose wives control household savings respond more strongly to the treat ment and women whose husbands control savings exhibit the same response changes in information and communication interact with underlying control to produce mutable gender specific outcomes

estimation of limited dependent variable models with dummy endogenous regressors applied economists have long struggled with the question of how to accommodate binary endogenous regressors in models with binary and nonnegative outcomes i argue here that much of the difculty with limited dependent variables comes from a focus on structural parameters such as index coefcients instead of causal effects once the object of estimation is taken to be the causal effect of treatment several simple strategies are available these include conventional two stage least squares multiplicative models for conditional means linear approximation of nonlinear causal models models for distribution effects and quantile regression with an endogenous binary regressor the estimation strategies discussed in the article are illustrated by using multiple births to estimate the effect of childbearing on employment status and hours of work

competing for talents abstract two organizations compete for high quality agents from a fixed population of heterogeneous qualities by designing how to distribute their resources among members according to their quality ranking the peer effect induces both organizations to spend the bulk of their resources on higher ranks in an attempt to attract top talents that benefit the rest of their membership equilibrium is asymmetric with the organization with a lower average quality offering steeper increases in resources per rank high quality agents are present in both organizations while low quality agents receive no resources from either organization and are segregated by quality into the two organizations a stronger peer effect increases the competition for high quality agents resulting in both organizations concentrating their resources on fewer ranks with steeper increases in resources per rank and yields a greater equilibrium difference in average quality between the two organizations

causal parameters and policy analysis in economics a twentieth century retrospective the major contributions of twentieth century econometrics to knowledge were the definition of causal parameters within well defined economic models in which agents are constrained by resources and markets and causes are interrelated the analysis of what is required to recover causal parameters from data the identification problem and clarification of the role of causal parameters in policy evaluation and in forecasting the effects of policies never previously experienced this paper summarizes the development of these ideas by the cowles commission the response to their work by structural econometricians and var econometricians and the response to structural and var econometrics by calibrators advocates of natural and social experiments and by nonparametric econometricians and statisticians this paper considers the definition and identification of causal parameters in economics and their role in econometric policy analysis it assesses different research programs designed to recover causal parameters from data at the beginning of this century economic theory was mainly intuitive and empirical support for it was largely anecdotal at the end of the century economics has a rich array of formal models and a high quality database empirical regularities motivate theory in many areas of economics and data are routinely used to test theory many economic theories have been developed as measurement frameworks to suggest what data should be collected and how they should be interpreted econometric theory was developed to analyze and interpret economic data most econometric theory adapts methods originally developed in statistics the major exception to this rule is the econometric analysis of the identification problem and the companion analyses of structural equations causality and economic policy evaluation although an economist did not invent the phrase correlation does not imply causation 1 economists clari

is the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a threatened theory a meta analysis of the literature abstract although widely studied deforestation remains a common research topic the relationship between economic development and deforestation is still in question this paper presents a meta analysis of environmental kuznets curve ekc studies for deforestation using 69 studies offering 547 estimations we shed light on why ekc results differ we investigate the incidence of choices made by authors such as econometric strategy measure of deforestation geographical area and presence of control variables on the probability of finding an ekc after a phase of work corroborating the ekc we find a turning point after the year 2001 building on our results we conclude that the ekc story will not fade until theoretical alternatives are provided

financing innovation evidence from rad grants abstract governments regularly subsidize new ventures to spur innovation this paper conducts the first large sample quasi experimental evaluation of r d subsidies i use data on ranked applicants

the canonical classical model of political economy adam smith david ricardo thomas robert malthus and john stuart mill shared in common essentially one dynamic model of equilibrium growth and distribution when the limitation of land and natural resources is added to the model of karl marx he also ends up with this same canonical classical model in its present version the model is stripped down to its minimal essentials for brevity i employ modern mathematical tools but only to characterize in modern terms the relations that were actually common to all these writers the reader should of course be warned that any simple codification of the classical economists discursive writings must be an oversimplification in some of their passages they qualify what they have written elsewhere in some they provide negations and contradictions not a few of the stereotypes about the classical writers are to paraphrase voltaire myths agreedupon by later commentators distortions that both improve and libel the originals the relevant object of study for a modern scholar is the corpus of original texts and the commentaries on them the latter not being genuinely of less interest than the former once we have succeeded in telling them apart to the fascinating question of whether classical political economy does or can be made to offer an alternative paradigm in the sense of thomas kuhn 11 1962 to modern mainstream economics the present investigation provides an instructive answer so to speak within every classical economist there is to be discerned a modern economist trying to be born a ricardo or mill did not so much replace supply and demand by quite different mechanisms but rather sought to be able to say something significant and limiting about their properties quite in the same way that we moderns endeavor to do i describe and analyze here the basic classical model in its essential form

estimation in a class of simultaneous equation limited dependent variable models estimation in a class of simultaneous equation limited dependent variable models is considered the minimum chi squared method is used to compare the asymptotic relative efficiency of marginal and new conditional maximum likelihood estimators for this class of models efficient minimum chi squared estimation procedures are described a two step algorithm based on a conditional maximum likelihood estimator provides a natural framework for both computing a linearized and locating the joint maximum likelihood estimator the unimodality of the simultaneous equation tobit likelihood function is proved and this model is used to illustrate the empirical application of some of the estimators considered in the paper the relative efficiency of these estimators in the simultaneous equation tobit model is examined in a set of monte carlo experiments many applications of microeconomic theory to individual data face the joint problems of censoring and simultaneity in particular the dependent variable under investigation may not be continuously observed and some of the conditioning variables representing the outcome of other decisions by the individual may be simultaneously determined smith and blundell 1986 developed an asymptotically efficient test for exogeneity or simultaneity in the simultaneous equation tobit model as a byproduct a conditional maximum likelihood estimator was obtained which is consistent under the alternative hypothesis of simultaneity nelson and olsen 1978 amemiya 1978 1979 and heckman 1978 consider a number of consistent marginal maximum likelihood estimators based on marginal maximum likelihood estimators of the reduced form parameters for the probit and tobit models in contrast the estimator derived from smith and blundell 1986 is based on the corresponding conditional maximum likelihood estimators this paper is concerned with estimation in a class of simultaneous limited dependent variable regression models which includes the simultaneous probit and tobit models as special cases analogous marginal and conditional maximum likelihood estimators to those of nelson and olsen 1978 amemiya 1978 1979 heckman 1978 and smith and blundell 1986 are derived and other new estimators are suggested the minimum chi squared approach discussed by ferguson 1958 malinvaud 1970 and rothenberg 1973 is used to compare the asymptotic relative efficiency of various estimators considered a simple two step algorithm based on the conditional maximum likelihood

the effect of social entitlement programs on private transfers new evidence of crowding out working paper 2010 15 september 2010 abstract this paper exploits a natural policy experiment to directly identify the crowding out effects of public transfers on the incidence and level of private transfers the introduction of a large social security program in taiwan is used to estimate the effect of an exogenous increase in government transfer payments to the elderly on the private transfer behavior of their adult children using an instrumental variables strategy that accounts for the endogeneity of receiving public transfers the empirical results show strong evidence of crowding out on the extensive margin the probability of providing a positive transfer and weaker evidence of crowding out on the intensive margin the amount of the transfer conditional on it being positive jel classification h53 h55 h31 key words private transfers crowding out 1 introduction determining the impact of public transfer programs on private transfer behavior is a key issue from both a research and policy perspective if public transfers largely crowd out private transfers then the welfare impact of social redistributive programs will be smaller than perceived economic theory is ambiguous in its predictions about crowding out the altruism model developed in the seminal papers of barro 1974 and becker 1974 predicts essentially complete crowding out the model focuses on transfers from parents to children but can be applied equally well to transfers from adult children to their elderly parents in the model the child s utility is included in an altruistic parent s utility function which gives the parent an incentive to support the child the core of the altruism model is the prediction of redistribution neutrality which posits that the parents will adjust their transfer behavior in response to changes in the child s income for example an increase in the child s income due to welfare subsidies from the government will lower the amount of parental transfers if ricardian equivalence holds and the government subsidy is financed by a tax on the parents income then the parents will reduce their transfer exactly by the tax amount implying complete crowding out in contrast to the altruism model the exchange model of bernheim et al 1985 and cox 1987 argues that a child s services to the parents such as contacts and visits are at least in part financially motivated as the child expects monetary compensation in this model the amount of transfers could be a positive or negative function of the child s income as the child s income increases the opportunity cost of services increases and thus the amount of expected compensation for the services increases in such a setting the relationship between the child s income and the amount of parental transfers is not clear it could be positive if the parents demand for services is inelastic as they would need to increase transfer payments to the child in order to receive the same level of services if this were the case government subsidies would increase the amount of private transfers received and thus there would be no crowding effect on the other hand if the demand for services is highly elastic then parents demand would fall along with monetary compensation which would lead to crowding out 1 as a result of the ambiguous effect of crowding out predicted by theory a relatively large empirical literature has focused on the estimation of both the sign and magnitude of the crowding out effect of public transfer programs however due to data limitations most empirical studies have not been able to directly measure the crowding out effect of public redistribution programs most studies in this literature have attempted to indirectly measure the impact of such programs on beneficiaries by studying the response of private transfers to changes in the recipient s level of income the results from these papers however are not consistent

completing an economics phd in five years although the median time to degree for economics phds was near 5 5 years in 2002 and appears to be rising stock and siegfried 2006 some students can and do earn the degree in under five years of 586 individuals who began phd study in economics in 2002 27 percent had a diploma they could display on their office wall by fall 2007 many economics phd programs advertise that it normally takes five years to earn the degree some programs encourage completion by limiting financial aid to five years students who take more than five years incur high opportunity costs of remaining in school as their completing an economics phd in five years let the data literally speak for themselves

a causal interpretation of extensive and intensive margin effects in generalized tobit models the usual decomposition of effects in corner solution models into extensive and intensive margins is generally incompatible with a causal interpretation this paper proposes a decomposition based on the joint distribution of potential outcomes which is meaningful in a causal sense the difference between decompositions can be substantial and yield diametrically opposed results as shown in a standard tobit model example in a generalized tobit application exploring the effect of reducing firm entry regulation on bilateral trade flows between countries estimates suggest that using the usual decomposition would overstate the contribution of the extensive margin by around 15

economics imperialism and the new development economics as kuhnian paradigm shift abstract this paper addresses the evolving relationship between economics and other social sciences it sets the present intellectual scene as one in which economics imperialism is rampaging across other disciplines the designs of economics upon development studies are examined in terms of the kuhnian notion of paradigm shift thereby the conclusion is drawn of the potential prospect of open debate around the economy and development not least outside economics itself but there is danger of economics imperialism in the form of the post washington consensus foreclosing the analytical agenda at the expense of approaches based on the political economy of capitalism

global horse trading imf loans for votes in the united nations security council we investigate whether temporary members of the united nations security council receive favorable treatment from the international monetary fund imf using panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1951 to 2004 our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary security council membership and participation in imf programs even after accounting for economic political and country specific factors there is also evidence that security council membership reduces the number of conditions included in imf programs imf loans seem to be a mechanism by which the major shareholders of the fund can win favor with voting members of the security council

time to degree for the economics ph d class of 2001 2002 based on the median salary for full time jobs held by new ph d economists in the united states a rough estimate of the opportunity cost of taking an additional year to earn an economics ph d was 74 000 in 2002 the median time required to earn a ph d for the class of 2002 was 5 5 years up from 5 25 years for the class of 1997 if the three month difference is interpreted as 200 students i e roughly onequarter of the class of 2002 taking a year longer to complete their degrees and get a job than did their counterparts from the class of 1997 it implies an increase from 1997 to 2002 in the annual opportunity cost of producing ph d economists exceeding 14 5 million a growing elapsed time required to earn a ph d also may affect application and matriculation decisions of students who are weighing alternative careers t aldrich finegan et al 2006 we examine the time required to earn a ph d in economics for those graduating between july 1 2001 and june 30 2002 using survey responses from 398 graduates and 121 thesis advisors of nonrespondents among the cohort the 519 graduates for whom we have information comprise 61 percent of the 850 individuals estimated to have earned a ph d in the united states in 2002 siegfried and stock 2004 based on survey responses from the graduates we examine whether demographic attributes type of undergraduate training and type of financial aid are systematically related to either the time required to write a dissertation or to earn a ph d using a similar earlier survey siegfried and stock 2001 we also compare time to degree across cohorts

women in the australian labor force trends causes and consequences since 1964 all the increase in female labor force participation in australia can be attributed to married women about 90 of the increase can be attributed to women employed part time the paper argues that aggregate female participation rate equations cannot be regarded as labor supply curves the female wage rate relative to that of males is exogenously determined by wage fixing authorities above market clearing rates and the excess supply of labor is not adequately measured by the unemployment rate married women and part time workers have a high propensity to bypass the unemployment pool when leaving or seeking a job participation equations are dominated by employment demand for sex segregated jobs

where are they now tracking the ph d class of 1997 we report early career outcomes of economics ph d s by tracking the u s class of 1996 1997 we examine employment outcomes work activities salaries and graduates attitudes toward their jobs by 2003 all of the respondents were employed although almost half changed employers during the six years salaries of the cohort increased at an average annual rate of 8 2 from 1997 through 2003 academic year salaries rose about 5 7 per year whereas private sector salaries skyrocketed at 15 per year finally the median salaries of first year full time permanent 9 to 10 month academic economists hired in 2002 2003 actually exceed the median 2003 salaries of their counterparts initially hired in 1997 1998 some of this apparent salary inversion reflects a different mix of employers and departments between the two cohorts with the younger group securing relatively more jobs at higher paying institutions

the impacts of hybrid maize seed on the welfare of farming households in kenya this paper explores the impacts of hybrid maize adoption on the welfare of farming households in kenya we use a four year panel dataset to estimate the effects of hybrid seed use on four indicators of household welfare namely income assets inequality and poverty results show that use of hybrid seed not only contributes to higher annual income but also to raising the value of assets possibly reflecting longer term welfare effects further we find that use of hybrid seed reduces the depth of poverty and that the amount planted reduces inequality as expected impacts differ between major and minor maize growing areas of the country maize farmers who do not use hybrid seed are clearly disadvantaged this calls for continued public and private investments in the infrastructure and policy process that supports a competitive liberalized seed industry and improved access of smallholder farmers to well adapted affordable hybrids

does the academic labor market initially allocate new graduates efficiently it is not surprising that economics graduate students from elite and very good schools find better jobs after completion of their ph d degree on average than do candidates from less prestigious universities yet the job market outcome for candidates from the same university varies quite a lot while the top candidates from the elite schools are often able to find jobs in other elite universities it is unclear how average candidates from elite schools fare compared to the top students from relatively less prestigious schools and how the relative job market outcome relates to future success as a researcher the objective of this paper is to investigate these issues in this paper we compare the career trajectories of candidates coming from three different types of schools elite universities very good universities and good universities we define three types of graduates within each group those who placed best those who had an average placement and those who found jobs at lower levels then for each of these nine groups we look at initial and current affiliations and we compare publication patterns of the graduates more than a decade into their academic careers can we say that the initial allocation was efficient in the sense that those who placed higher were also more productive in research terms and to what extent does the labor market for economists adapt and allow economists to move between schools as the ability of individuals to publish their work manifests itself over time

young stars in economics what they do and where they go we construct a data set of job flyouts for junior economists between 2013 and 2018 to investigate three aspects of the market for stars first what is the background of students who become stars second what type of research does the top of the market demand third where do these students take jobs among other results we show that stars are more likely to be international and male than phds overall that theoretical and semi theoretical approaches remain dominant that american programs both produce the most stars and hire even more that almost none are hired by the private sector and that there is a strong shift toward having pre phd full time academic research jobs jel a11 a12 a23 j24

edward west and the classical theory of distribution and growth edward west s essay on the application of capital to land is rightly famous for its treatment of diminishing returns and rent it is not generally recognized that west also set out a model of dynamic equilibrium between the growth of population and capital and of the simultaneous determination of wage and profit rates such a model has been attributed to david ricardo but west unlike ricardo stated it explicitly and did so before any of ricardo s writings on distribution and accumulation had been published he should be given credit for it copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

hiv testing subjective beliefs and economic behavior this paper examines the effects of learning hiv status on economic behavior among rural malawians according to economic life cycle models if learning hiv results is informative about additional years of life being diagnosed hiv positive or negative should predict changes in consumption investment and savings behavior with important micro and macro economic implications using an experiment that randomly assigned incentives to learn hiv results i find that while learning hiv results had short term effects on subjective belief of hiv infection these differences did not persist after two years consistent with this there were relatively few differences two years later in savings income expenditures and employment between those who learned and did not learn their status