minimum wages and training revisited theory predicts that minimum wages will reduce employer provided on the job training designed to improve workers skills on the current job but it is ambiguous regarding training that workers obtain to qualify for a job we estimate the effects of minimum wages on both types of training received by young workers exploiting cross state variation in minimum wage increases much of the evidence supports the hypothesis that higher minimum wages reduce formal training to improve skills on the current job but there is little or no evidence of offsetting increases in training undertaken to qualify for or obtain jobs

investment in human capital and gender wage differences evidence from the nlsy this paper uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital since the nlsy includes relatively detailed information regarding on and off the job training we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post school training also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap it is found that about 60 of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances this suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found the research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men our research suggests that the largest factor

the consequences of minimum wage laws some new theoretical ideas economists generally agree that the effect of a binding minimum wage law is to move firms backward along the demand curve for low skill workers however this prediction of worker displacement depends critically on the assumption that the productivity of firms labor is not dependent on the wage in this paper we show that in a conventional efficiency wage model a minimum wage may increase the level of employment in low wage jobs the formal logic of our model is similar to the case of labor demand under monopsony but arises in a model with a large number of employers

the school to work transition a cross national perspective school to work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies france germany japan the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states the emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position of young people and recent trends therein along with the institutions that regulate youth education training and employment the power of public policies including labor market deregulation labor market programs vocationalization of education and apprenticeship to improve youth outcomes is discussed drawing on national evaluation literatures evidence of extensive policy failure points up the need to develop nationally appropriate institutions to improve school to work transitions

principals agents and the learning curve the case of steam electric power plant design and construction a number of factors including design variation and the combination of uncertain costs and cost plus contracting diminished opportunities and incentives to improve power plant design and construction over the last several decades this paper incorporates these factors into a model of learning that relies on a principal agent framework the author finds that because of design variation learning was reduced when an agent contracted with a series of different principals agent learning declined when cost uncertainty increased during the late 1970s and 1980s and at the same time the locus of learning may have shifted from agents to principals copyright 1996 by blackwell publishing ltd

gender differences in training capital and wages this paper constructs an equilibrium job matching model where workers differ in their attachment to the labor force the model predicts that workers with weaker attachment to the labor market will receive lower starting wages and lower post training wages and will be placed in jobs that offer less training and use less capital the implications of the model for gender differences in pay and job assignment are tested with the eopp data set ourfindings suggest that while training intensity during the first three months of employment is similar in positions filled by males and females females are employed in positions that have a shorter duration of on the job training and that use less capital these differences in on the job training and capital in positions filled by men and women as well as a lower market value for women s prior labor market experience account for a substantial part of the gap in wages between males and females

effects of the minimum wage on the employment status of youths an update the large decline in the relative value of the minimum wage during the 1980s makes that period a valuable one for identifying the impact of variation in the minimum wage on youth employment this study produces the robust finding that when the experience of the 1980s is included a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is estimated to reduce teen employment by less than 1 percent the lower end of the range of previous estimates because this small employment effect is offset by a labor force withdrawal effect the study finds no discernible effect on measured unemployment the study also finds no apparent effect of the minimum wage on the employment of young adults aged 20 24

pareto improving minimum wage laws by increasing the expected wage in low skill jobs a minimum wage law can reduce the incentive for low skill workers to imitate high skill workers in the signalling process the gain from reduced investment in the signal can more than offset the loss from unemployment among low skill workers so that total output increases moreover with an appropriate poll tax on workers to compensate owners of capital the law can make all workers and owners of capital better off

long term impact of minimum wages on workers careers evidence from two decades of longitudinal linked employer employee data i acknowledge the support of the spanish ministry of the economy severo ochoa programme for centres of excellence in r d sev20150563 the aei spain and feder ue grant eco2016 76734 p

up scaling formative phases and learning in the historical diffusion of energy technologies the 20th century has witnessed wholesale transformation in the energy system marked by the pervasive diffusion of both energy supply and end use technologies just as whole industries have grown so too have unit sizes or capacities analysed in combination these unit level and industry level growth patterns reveal some consistencies across very different energy technologies first the up scaling or increase in unit size of an energy technology comes after an often prolonged period of experimentation with many smaller scale units second the peak growth phase of an industry can lag these increases in unit size by up to 20 years third the rate and timing of up scaling at the unit level is subject to countervailing influences of scale economies and heterogeneous market demand these observed patterns have important implications for experience curve analyses based on time series data covering the up scaling phases of energy technologies as these are likely to conflate industry level learning effects with unit level scale effects the historical diffusion of energy technologies also suggests that low carbon technology policies pushing for significant jumps in unit size before a formative phase of experimentation with smaller scale units are risky

human capital versus sorting the effects of compulsory attendance laws under the educational sorting hypothesis a state compulsory school attendance law will increase the educational attainment of high ability workers who are not directly affected hy the law under the human capital hypothesis such laws affect only those individuals whose hehavior is directly constrained we find that compulsory attendance laws do increase enrollment rates in age groups they do not affect directly thus our results contradict the human capital hypothesis and are consistent with the sorting hypothesis i introduction the last decade has seen considerable debate between supporters of the human capital and sorting models of education the former assert that the effect of education on wages reflects increased productivity the latter maintain that it reflects at least in part correlation between education and unobserved ability workers use education to signal their ability while employers use education to screen workers despite the importance of the debate no fully convincing tests of the hypotheses have been developed in fact many members of the profession maintain at least privately that these hypotheses cannot be tested against each other and that the debate must therefore be relegated to the realm of ideology in this paper we show that the models can be tested against each other by examining the effects of state compulsory school attendance laws we show that under the human capital hypotheis such laws will affect the educational attainment only of those who in the absence of the law would have left school prior to the minimum school leaving age on the other hand under the sorting hypothesis the effects of the law will percolate through the system increasing educational attainment even among workers not directly constrained by the law our results are consistent with the predictions of the sorting model

the minimum wage restaurant prices and labor market structure using store level and aggregated consumer price index data we show that restaurant prices rise in response to minimum wage increases under several sources of identifying variation we introduce a general model of employment determination that implies minimum wage hikes cause prices to rise in competitive labor markets but potentially fall in monopsonistic environments furthermore the model implies employment and prices are always negatively related therefore our empirical results provide evidence against the importance of monopsony power for understanding small observed employment responses to minimum wage changes our estimated price responses challenge other explanations of the small employment response too

employment effects of minimum and subminimum wages panel data on state minimum wage laws using panel data on state minimum wage laws and economic conditions for the years 1973 89 the authors reevaluate existing evidence on the effects of a minimum wage on employment their estimates indicate that a 10 increase in the minimum wage causes a decline of 1 2 in employment among teenagers and a decline of 1 5 2 in employment for young adults similar to the ranges suggested by earlier time series studies the authors also find evidence that youth subminimum wage provisions enacted by state legislatures moderate the disemployment effects of minimum wages on teenagers

good jobs versus bad jobs this article develops a model of noncompetitive labor markets in which high wage good and low wage bad jobs coexist minimum wages and unemployment benefits shift the composition of employment toward high wage jobs because the composition of jobs in the laissez faire equilibrium is inefficiently biased toward low wage jobs these labor market regulations increase average labor productivity and may improve welfare

international structural adjustment and its sectoral and spatial impacts structural economic adjustment has relevance and significance in oecd countries among the countries in transition from socialism to capitalism and in the developing countries of asia africa and latin america its impacts are multi institutional being in firms government agencies non government organisations and households institutions are having to innovate to adapt and to reorganise to meet rapidly changing economic conditions in an increasingly competitive environment this article evaluates the structural adjustment process it will establish general principles for interpretation and for a newly emerging dominant political economy the new political economy npe in which adjustment is being articulated the npe is evolving being influenced by the post 1990 enhanced relevance of social and environmental issues adding to the neoliberalism characteristics of the early origins of the npe also the npe is being infused with intellectual institutionalism especially the new institutional econom

hedonic wages and labor market search this article investigates the consequences of labor market search for the theory of hedonic wages we find that the introduction of search has surprising consequences for the theory of hedonic wages in particular we demonstrate that the equilibrium distribution of wage and nonwage amenity bundles generally bears little resemblance to workers underlying preferences a consequence of this analysis is that estimates of workers marginal willingness to pay derived from the conventional hedonic wage methodology are biased in addition we demonstrate that search generates differences between firm level and employee level data that can cause substantial deviations in the estimates of hedonic wage equations

worth waiting for delayed compensation training and turnover in the united states and japan this article utilizes a rich data set on workers and their employers in the united states and japan to test several predictions of human capital theory the data set incorporates both prospective and retrospective measures of turnover includes multiple measures of training and provides a basis for calculating plant specific returns to tenure contrary to human capital theory there is no evidence that establishments with high levels of training have either high returns to tenure or low levels of turnover surprisingly establishments with high returns to tenure do not have low levels of turnover

minimum wage effects on labor market outcomes under search matching and endogenous contact rates building upon a continuous time model of search with nash bargaining in a stationary environment we analyze the effect of changes in minimum wages on labor market outcomes and welfare although minimum wage increases may or may not lead to increases in unemployment in our model they can be welfare improving to labor market participants on both the supply and demand sides of the labor market we discuss identification of the model using current population survey data on accepted wages and unemployment durations and show that by incorporating a limited amount of information from the demand side of the market it is possible to obtain credible and precise estimates of all primitive parameters we show that the optimal minimum wage in 1996 depends critically on whether or not contact rates can be considered to be exogenous and we note that the limited variation in minimum wages makes testing this assumption problematic

has democratization reduced infant mortality in sub saharan africa evidence from micro data does democracy help babies survive in sub saharan africa by using retrospective fertility surveys conducted in 28 african countries i compare the survival of infants born to the same mother before and after democratization to disentangle the effect of democracy from that of changes in population characteristics which is infeasible with country level statistics on infant mortality i find that infant mortality falls by 1 2 percentage points 12 of the sample mean after democratization in the post cold war period relevant aspects of democracy appear to be the combination of multiparty elections and leadership change

does the human capital educational sorting debate matter for development policy if education increases human capital subsidizing education can generate economic growth and combat poverty estimates of its return suggest that education is a good social investment in sorting models the return reflects in part the information about productivity revealed by the worker s education thus the social and private returns diverge it might appear that if we believe the sorting model we should be less swayed by evidence that estimated returns to education exceed the social discount rate and therefore less likely to support education based development policies this conclusion is shown to be incorrect this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

full wages part time employment and the minimum wage the economic effects of the minimum wage have become increasingly ambiguous historically economists have asserted that increases in the minimum wage result in increases in unemployment this relationship has been challenged recently by card and krueger katz and krueger and card these authors have provided empirical evidence that seems to indicate that there is no relationship between various economic variables such as level of employment and product price among others and the minimum wage in addition these authors have not provided a cogent presentation of the effects of the minimum wage on part time employment this study examines from a theoretical standpoint the effects of the minimum wage on employment furthermore we emphasize the distinction between money wages and full wages and the role that part time employmentplays in the analysis after incorporating these factors into a theoretical presentation we provide empirical evidence by way of an ols regression we conclude that firms re

death rates life expentancy and china s economic reforms a critique of a k sen abstract sen s recent work has emphasized the ineffectiveness of economic growth in achieving fundamentally important human ends here his influential propositions concerning post mao china are assessed factors affecting mortality rates and life expectancy in china since the mid 1970s are discussed in section 2 in section 3 it is shown that contrary to his claims post mao china achieved a widespread decline in death rates an improvement in life expectancy and a reduction in the number of people living in absolute poverty the poorest rural households were not excluded from the benefits of rapid growth of output after the reforms

private sector training and graduate earnings this paper uses a survey of british graduates to estimate the impact of employer provided training on the earnings of men and women graduates the results indicate that although the training impact is reduced after controlling for endogeneity some forms of training have a considerable impact however there are substantial gender differences in the earnings impact of various typ es of training moreover men graduates are more likely to receive training than otherwise identical women

minimum wages on the job training and wage growth using data from the employment opportunities pilot project we examine the relationships between minimum wages wage growth and on the job training we find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs particularly for men we find no evidence however of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities we conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process

minimum wages and youth unemployment abstract this paper constructs a labor search model to explore the effects of minimum wages on youth unemployment to capture the gradual decline in unemployment for young workers as they age the standard search model is extended so that workers gain experience when employed experienced workers have higher average productivity and lower job finding and separation rates that match wage and worker flow data in this environment minimum wages can have large effects on unemployment because they interact with a worker s ability to gain job experience the increase in minimum wages between 2007 and 2009 can account for a 0 8 percentage point increase in the steady state unemployment rate and a 2 8 percentage point increase in unemployment for 15 24 year old workers in the model parameterized to simulate outcomes of high school educated workers minimum wages can also help explain the high rates of youth unemployment in france compared to the united states

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

employer size and on the job training decisions the effect of employer size on labor market outcomes have been the subject of extensive although relatively recent research by economists it has been widely demonstrated that large and small firms exhibit a number of differential characteristics with regard to their employment relationships 29 42 employees at large firms have higher wages and fringe benefits 16 10 15 22 32 35 higher levels of job mobility within the firm 19 greater job stability 44 a greater tendency to have mandatory overtime rules 23 higher education levels 8 a more structured work environment 20 26 46 and higher levels of investments by the firm both in the form of search costs 4 5 and direct on the job training 6 10 while numerous theories exist that account for many of these relationships such as monitoring and on the job training models no single explanation has been able to account definitively for the observed empirical patterns clearly size of employer is a significant factor in the dynamics of labor markets that still requires much investigation the focus of this paper is on one particular aspect of employer size effects the observed higher training investments in large firms we propose and test a model in the human capital tradition of viewing on the job training ojt as an investment 9 36 38 39 42 which not only explains the greater investment in on the job training by larger firms but additionally generates predictions with regard to the allocation of the firm s resources across investment in people with different demographic characteristics these latter implications of the model facilitate empirical comparisons to alternative explanations our central hypothesis is that large employers exhibit different behavior from small employers with regard to the risk component of the investments in their employees other training decision models that have addressed firm behavior under uncertainty have done so in the context of monitoring difficulties introduced by either the higher opportunity cost of managers time 43 or diseconomies of scale in monitoring 16 in larger firms although both of these approaches

capital investment strategies under uncertain regulation this article presents a positive model of investment choices by regulated firms that offers rational explanations for electric utilities recent behavior of delaying investment and choosing smaller shorter lead time technologies the model assumes thatfirms capital investments require long lead times during which the value of the completed project is uncertain firms anticipate regulatory profit and loss restrictions but expectations about the value of a completed project change over time firms decisions are modelled using an option pricing approach that incorporates the value of flexibility to delay or abandon projects the article shows why rational firms invest in smaller shorter lead time plants or delay investment when faced with uncertain and asymmetric profit and loss restrictions it also looks at decisions to abandon partially completed plants and shows that the static result that a higher cost allowance on abandoned projects increases the incentive for investment is not generally true in a dynamic model

funding self sustaining development the role of aid fdi and government in economic success this article challenges a long held development policy assumption that aid and foreign direct investment fdi serve as substitutes or complements in accelerating the development of the world s poorer countries we show both theoretically and empirically that aid and fdi affect development differently aid contributes powerfully to both economic growth and human development and the higher the level of human capital in a country the more aid contributes by contrast fdi at best has no effect on economic growth and actually slows the rate of human development in less developed countries we find no evidence that the degree of democratic responsiveness in government conditions the effectiveness of either aid or fdi although we do find that democracy independently increases human development in all but the most developed countries our results demonstrate that fdi and aid are not and cannot be substitutes in the development of the world s poorer countries nor even can they be thought of as complements certainly not at mid to low levels of development in the end poor countries need democracy and aid not fdi we are extremely grateful to susan rose ackerman gustav ranis frances rosenbluth kenneth scheve and participants at the leitner political economy seminar at yale university in december 2003 for very helpful comments we also received valuable suggestions from two anonymous reviewers stephen kosack would like to thank the national science foundation for the support of a graduate research fellowship

nuclear reactors construction costs the role of lead time standardization and technological progress this paper provides the first comparative analysis of nuclear reactor construction costs in france and the united states studying the cost of nuclear power has often been a challenge owing to the lack of reliable data sources and heterogeneity between countries as well as the long time horizon which requires controlling for input prices and structural changes we build a simultaneous system of equations for overnight costs and construction time lead time to control for endogeneity using expected demand variation as an instrument we argue that benefits from nuclear reactor program standardization can arise through short term coordination gains when the diversity of nuclear reactors technologies under construction is low or through long term benefits from learning spillovers from past reactor construction experience if those spillovers are limited to similar reactors we find that overnight construction costs benefit directly from learning spillovers but that these spillovers are only significant for nuclear models built by the same architect engineer a e in addition we show that the standardization of nuclear reactors under construction has an indirect and positive effect on construction costs through a reduction in lead time the latter being one of the main drivers of construction costs conversely we also explore the possibility of learning by searching and find that contrary to other energy technologies innovation leads to construction costs increases

time series evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on youth employment and unemployment our updated estimates indicate that a 10 percent increase in the federal minimum wage or the coverage rate would reduce teenage 16 19 employment by about 1 percent which is at the lower end of the range of estimates from previous studies because of substantial labor force withdrawal the unemployment effects are practically zero these minimum wage effects differ very little by sex and there is no strong evidence that the effects vary by race the study also finds a significant albeit small unemployment impact for young adults 20 24 and examines the consequences of numerous alternative statistical and mathematical specifications of the estimating model

sources of training and their impact on wages using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth from 1986 to 1990 the author investigates the wage impact of various sources of training among them company training programs apprenticeships business schools vocational and technical institutes correspondence courses and seminars outside the workplace time spent in training of whatever kind apparently did not affect 1990 wage levels the incidence of two kinds of training however company training and seminars outside work was positively related to wage levels as well as to wage change between 1986 and 1990 that is workers who undertook such training enjoyed higher wages than those who did not time spent in vocational schools was also positively associated with wage change though not with 1990 wage levels the other forms of training had no apparent impact on either wage levels or wage change

optimal minimum wage policy in competitive labor markets this paper provides a theoretical analysis of optimal minimum wage policy in a perfectly competitive labor market and obtains two key results first we show that a binding minimum wage while leading to unemployment is nevertheless desirable if the government values redistribution toward low wage workers and if unemployment induced by the minimum wage hits the lowest surplus workers first importantly this result remains true in the presence of optimal nonlinear taxes and transfers in that context a binding minimum wage enhances the effectiveness of transfers to low skilled workers as it prevents low skilled wages from falling through incidence effects second when labor supply re sponses are along the extensive margin only the co existence of a minimum wage with a positive tax rate on low skilled work is always second best pareto ineffcient a pareto improving policy consists of reducing the pre tax minimum wage while keeping constant the post tax minimum wage by increasing transfers to low skilled workers and financing this reform by increasing taxes on higher paid workers overall our results imply that the minimum wage and subsidies for low skilled workers are complementary policies pa

legal minimum wages and employment duration 1 introductionthe effect of a legal minimum wage on employee turnover is an important consideration when evaluating the effectiveness of a minimum wage policy if an increase in the minimum wage results in greater turnover then firms hiring costs are increased and the direct benefit to workers who are paid the minimum wage may be lessened a reduction in turnover on the other hand would mean more stability for employers and workers though access to minimum wage jobs may be reduced for job seekers despite the recent proliferation of studies on the effects of legal minimum wages their impact on turnover has received relatively little attention from economists this may be due to the fact that much of the literature focuses on the teen labor market where there is more churning than in the adult labor market gardecki and neumark 1998 the fact remains however that a significant proportion of workers hired at the minimum wage are adults and the effects of the minimum wage onthe turnover hazard are understudied 1standard economic theory suggests that a price floor such as a minimum wage results in fewer transactions and in rents for those suppliers who manage to sell in the context of the labor market this means workers in minimum wage jobs may be expected to receive rents and therefore may be less likely to quit another possible consequence of a minimum wage arises from imperfect information in the labor market combined with heterogeneity among workers and jobs prior to the start of an employment relationship the worker does not know all the relevant aspects of the job and the employer does not know all the important characteristics of the worker as a result in the absence of a mandated minimum wage job applicants may use wage offers to infer information about the nonpecuniary aspects of jobs thereby facilitating the matching process a binding minimum wage compresses the wage distribution so that a single wage is associated with a larger array of jobs this means that the wage offer becomes a poor indicator of a job s nonwage characteristics which leads to a higher proportion of poor matches and consequently more turnover this paper uses data on young men and women in the 1988 1994 rounds of the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to estimate the relationship between the minimum wage and the turnover hazard the extent to which the minimum wage binds varies across states both because of differences in state laws and because of differences in wage levels across states we exploit this variation to estimate turnover hazards as a function of the ratio of the nominal minimum wage to the state median wage this variable measures the extent to which the minimum wage binds we find some evidence that in states where the minimum wage is low relative to the state s median wage men hired at the minimum wage have lower employee initiated separation hazards than other low wage workers as the minimum wage rises relative to the prevailing median wage that is as the minimum wage becomes more binding men hired at the minimum wage are increasingly likely to leave their jobs at any given duration when the minimum wage is high relative to the median wage we find that men hired at the minimum wage have significantly higher employee initiated separation hazards than other low wage workers we interpret these findings as evidence that while rents may accrue to minimum wage workers the job matching process is undermined when the minimum wage binds our results apply to the men in our sample but not to the women indeed for women we find no connection between employment duration and the starting wage rate though we do uncover some evidence that for women in low wage jobs employment duration is more elastic with respect to the presence of family friendly fringe benefits than it is for men the paper proceeds as follows the next section explores the possible reasons minimum wages would affect turnover and discusses the existing empirical and theoretical research on this topic

food and freedom the links between food and freedom at first appear rather remote to policymaking and far from central and practical concerns the lecture discusses important connections between the two that need to be recognized more fully as background to practical food policy although ethics specifically freedom seems far less compelling a concept than concrete demands of food the contrast is artificial the provision of food is a central issue in general social ethics since so much in human life does depend on the ability to find enough to eat in particular the freedom that people enjoy to lead a decent life including freedom from hunger from avoidable morbidity from premature mortality etc is centrally connected with the provision of food and related necessities also the compulsion to acquire enough food may force vulnerable people to do things they resent doing and may make them accept lives with little freedom thus the role of food in fostering freedom can be extremely important on the other side freedom may also causally influence the success of the pursuit of food one consideration that has received a great deal of attention relates to the role of freedom to make profits by providing incentives for the expansion of food production this consideration has often cropped up in the critical evaluation of agricultural policies pursued in many countries in africa and asia the lecturer supplements the conceptual and theoretical discussions with practical illustrations

learning by drilling interfirm learning and relationship persistence in the texas oilpatch author s kellogg ryan m abstract production in many industries such as construction and heavy manufacturing relies on inputs from both lead firms and contractors these firms joint productivity often hinges on their ability to share information and coordinate activities suggesting that they have strong incentives to learn about each other s personnel procedures and expertise this learning differs from standard learning by doing in that it is relationship specific its benefits are not appropriable outside the relationship in which the learning takes place in this paper i empirically examine the importance of relationship specific learning using high frequency data from oil and gas drilling i find that the joint productivity of a lead firm and its drilling contractor is enhanced significantly as they accumulate experience working together this result is robust to other relationship specificities i also find that firms appear to recognize the benefits of joint experience controlling for other specificities lead firms are more likely to work with contractors with which they have substantial prior experience than those with which they have worked relatively little

the length of life and the standard of living economic influences on premature death in china a detailed survey of mortality is used to analyse the determinants of premature death in rural china premature death is found to be inversely related to income higher income in a county reduces its mortality rate ceteris paribus the inverse relationship is found for most major illnesses and might be explained by the large element of self reliance in the funding of health care expenditures in china both at the household and the local levels these and other results are used to address the basic question why has there been a remarkable decline in premature mortality in china since the early 1950s the contributions of income of deliberate health care policies and of collective organisation are examined

minimum wage laws are they overrated l minimum has been fixed in nominal terms at about 55 percent of the current average wage rising wages in the rest of the economy gradually erode the real minimum wage and eventually the process is repeated sometimes the increase in the nominal minimum is accompanied by a permanent reduction in those businesses exempted from the law proposals for a lower minimum wage for young workers or to index the minimum wage to the average wage have been debated but not adopted the minimum wage was last increased to 3 35 in 1981 since then average hourly wages have risen by 25 percent eliminating any momentum for a lower minimum wage for youth but reviving proposals for another increase in the nominal minimum economists are fascinated by the minimum wage because we have strong theoretical predictions about the direction of the effect of the minimum wage on employment and fairly widely accepted methods to estimate the size of that impact it probably didn t hurt that the earliest and later estimates lined up well with the predictions but that is not the only reason for our fascination with the topic depending on whether we include those who say they earn less than the minimum wage minimum wage workers account for 6 to 12 percent of those employed gilroy 1981 p 157 and less than 5 percent of wage and salary income the minimum wage gives economists a relatively rare opportunity to study the impact of an exogenous increase in the price of labor and thus a chance to refine our thinking

firm sponsored general education and mobility frictions evidence from hospital sponsorship of nursing schools and faculty this study asks why hospitals provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty this support is striking because nursing education is clearly general clearly paid by the firm and information asymmetries appear minimal using aha and survey data i find hospitals employing a greater share of their msa s registered nurses are more likely to provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty net of size and other institutional controls given the institutional context i interpret this result as unusually specific evidence that technologically general skill training may be made de facto specific by imperfect and costly mobility

capital deepening and wage differentials germany versus us in flexible labour markets capital increases the productivity of skilled workers more than that of unskilled workers and in the us faster investment is associated with wider wage inequality but labour market institutions that keep unskilled workers wages high also imply that firms may find it profitable to invest so as to boost those workers productivity our empirical analysis based on industry level data confirms that a higher capital intensity in germany is associated with smaller wage differentials and with a larger share of unskilled workers in the labour costs changes in capital labour ratios during the 1980s reduced wage differentials by 5 8 in german industries while in the us capital deepening in such industries as machinery and retail was accompanied by an increase of wage differentials larger than 7 winfried koeniger and marco leonardi

extensive search intensive search and hiring costs new evidence on employer hiring activity this paper presents recent evidence on employer search to fill a position a 1982 employer survey sponsored by the national institute of education and the national center for research in vocational education provides the basis for analyzing employer search and hiring costs the paper examines the effects of such factors as employer size dismissal costs unionization on the job training adjustment costs capital and labor market conditions on intensive employer search extensive employer search and hiring costs intensive employer search is measured by the average number of hours the employer spends recruiting screening and interviewing per applicant extensive search is measured by the number of applicants seen per applicant interviewed and the number interviewed per employment

the minimum wage law and youth crimes time series evidence gtrowing evidence indicates that the federal minimum wage law has adversely affected the employment rate the labor force participation rate and on the job training of young workers 1 insofar as the minimum wage has adverse effects on youth labor markets it is also expected to affect the time spent in activities outside the labor market including criminal activities 2 little research has been done on the minimum wage

do minimum wages fight poverty i introduction one of the most compelling rationales for a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor or near poor families with members in the workforce this general point however is often missed in the debates over the merits of a higher minimum wage in contrast to these oft stated distributional goals much of the focus in such debates has been on the employment effects of minimum wages especially among the teenage population in large part this focus is probably attributable to the extensive body of economic research on the effects of minimum wages on employment of low skilled workers however although negative employment effects represent a cost of minimum wages such costs do not necessarily imply that minimum wages constitute bad social policy in particular the employment losses associated with a higher minimum wage may be more than offset by positive effects on low income families especially if minimum wages are a significant factor in helping move families out of poverty 1 this is not to argue that research on employment effects of minimum wages is irrelevant but such research may be more important as a test of the theory of labor demand and as a method of learning how employers and individuals adjust to exogenous wage increases than as a method of assessing the wisdom of the policy in addition we do not mean to suggest that the short run effects of minimum wages on the incomes of poor families should be the sole criterion for evaluating such policies other studies have found evidence suggesting for example that minimum wage increases reduce school enrollment rates and training neumark and wascher 1996a hashimoto 1982 factors that may affect longer run earnings or earnings growth these deleterious longer run effects might offset the benefits of shorter run effects of minimum wages on family incomes nonetheless our perception is that potential increases in the incomes of poor families provide the main motivation for raising the minimum wage making it important to assess the evidence on whether minimum wage increases achieve this goal in this regard there are two questions that pertain to the influence of minimum wages on family incomes generally and on poverty in particular first there is the question of the effects of minimum wages on low wage workers that is do the wage gains received by employed workers more than offset the lost earnings suffered by those who lose or cannot find jobs 2 second there is the question of how minimum wages affect workers in different parts of the family income distribution because many roughly speaking a large minority of minimum wage workers are in relatively affluent families gramlich 1976 card and krueger 1995 burkhauser et al 1996 which workers gain and which lose will have an important influence on the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family incomes in this article we present evidence on the effects of minimum wages on family incomes focusing in particular but not solely on the effectiveness of minimum wages in reducing poverty using matched march current population surveys cpss we estimate the effects of minimum wages on the probabilities of various transitions in the family income distribution such as transitions into and out of poverty given that federal changes in minimum wages may be confounded with other aggregate level shocks influencing family income we rely heavily on state level changes in minimum wages to identify minimum wage effects in a nutshell our empirical strategy is to compare rates of transition through the family income distribution in states in which minimum wages do and do not increase for example if poor families are more likely to escape from poverty when minimum wages increase in their states of residence we would infer that minimum wage hikes help families move out of poverty on the other hand if transitions in to poverty are more common when minimum wages increase we would infer that the disemployment effects of minimum wages play a dominant role among the low income population

minimum wage increase and firm productivity evidence from the restaurant industry abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of increasing the federal minimum wage on productivity in the restaurant industry based on the equity theory and fair wage hypothesis this study empirically investigated the relationship between the federal minimum wage and restaurant productivity the results revealed that increasing the federal minimum wage immediately enhances restaurant productivity for up to two years the results further indicated that both full service restaurants and low wage restaurants benefit from the positive effect while there is no significant effect on limited service restaurants and high wage restaurants the results suggest that restaurants should cope with minimum wage policies by focusing on implementing initiatives that can maximize enhanced work efforts and productivity more importantly the results further highlight that restaurants should consider either continuously raising wage levels or raising them every two years to consistently obtain enhanced motivation and productivity

minimum wages and the incentives for skill formation we show that minimum wages may have beneficial effects on human capital allocation in a situation when the marginal product of skilled labor is shared between firm and worker according to bargaining strength firms prefer more productive workers to less p

the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family incomes a nonparametric analysis an oft stated goal of the minimum wage is to raise incomes of poor or low income families we present nonparametric estimates of the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family income relative to needs in the united states although minimum wages increase the incomes of some poor families the evidence indicates that their overall net effect is if anything to increase the proportions of families with incomes below or near the poverty line it would appear that reductions in the proportions of families that are poor or near poor should not be counted among the potential benefits of minimum wages

ambiguous changes in product quality economic goods are frequently sold according to a price per unit quantity where the quantity characteristic does not measure all the economically important characteristics of the good milk is sold by the quart automobiles rented by the mile physicians services bought by the visit and tennis lessons by the hour in all cases heterogeneous units are available in the market and the price per unit quantity depends upon the amount of the unpriced characteristic contained in each unit the per quart price of milk depends upon the butterfat content the mileage costs of automobile rentals on the cars make and the price per unit time for personal services on the providers skill and training the common distinction made between these variants of the same good is that they differ in quality where quality refers to the amounts of the unpriced attributes contained in each unit of the priced attribute thus milk is packaged according to the attribute milk liquid and the quality of milk refers to the ratio of butterfat per unit of liquid 2 this paper considers some of the unique aspects of the economics of supply and demand under this situation where products contain at least two desired attributes only one of which is quantified and measured prior to purchase product quality is here defined by the ratio of the second quality attribute per unit of the measured quantity attribute 3 this simple specification of quality allows a direct link between standard economic models of related products and the economics of variable product quality previous analyses which treat quality simply as a shift parameter in the demand function are shown to obscure the actual subtleties of supply and demand with variable endogenous quality 4 the paper proceeds by first examining the efficient quality and quantity and the competitive equilibrium the market equilibrium under monopoly is then contrasted in the second section the general theme of the

training and the new minimum wage using the british household panel survey we estimate the impact of the national minimum wage introduced in april 1999 on the work related training of low wage workers we use two treatment groups those workers who explicitly stated they were affected by the new minimum and those workers whose derived 1998 wages were below the minimum using difference in differences techniques for the period 1998 to 2000 we find no evidence that the introduction of the minimum wage reduced the training of affected workers and some evidence that it increased it

effective aid how democracy allows development aid to improve the quality of life abstract research into foreign aid has mostly focused on its ability to affect economic i e gdp per capita growth conclusions have been mixed i consider aid s effectiveness differently by its ability to improve quality of life i find that though aid does not affect quality of life in the aggregate it is effective when combined with democracy and ineffective and possibly harmful in autocracies the results suggest that aid would be more effective if it were combined with efforts to encourage democratization

the impact of minimum wages on job training an empirical exploration with establishment data human capital theory suggests that workers may finance on the job training by accepting lower wages during the training period minimum wage laws could reduce job training then to the extent they prevent low wage workers from offering sufficient wage cuts to finance training empirical findings on the relationship between minimum wages and job training have failed to reach a consensus previous research has relied primarily on survey data from individual workers that typically lack both detailed measures of job training and important information about the characteristics of firms this study addresses the issue of minimum wages and on the job training with a unique employer survey we find no evidence indicating that minimum wages reduce the average hours of training of trained employees and little to suggest that minimum wages reduce the percentage of workers receiving training

do legal minimum wages create rents a re examination of the evidence the effects of minimum wage laws have interested economists for many years while much of the research regarding minimum wage laws has focused on its employment effects several economists have been concerned with the laws effects on the non pecuniary aspects of jobs there is disagreement in the literature as to whether minimum wage legislation creates rents in those jobs for which the law is a constraint several researchers have argued that firms will offset any rent created by the minimum wage by reducing the non wage aspects of the job 4 7 14 15 in a recent paper holzer katz and krueger 5 present evidence suggesting that employers do not completely offset the minimum wage they use information on application rates for job openings found in the employment opportunities pilot project data set eopp to test for the existence of rents on minimum wage jobs minimum wage jobs are found to have longer queues of applicants than other jobs ceteris paribus which suggests the existence of rents this paper presents additional tests of the existence of rents using the eopp data we find that workers who received starting wages equal to the minimum wage have a significantly higher probability of quitting than workers paid either less than or more than the minimum wage this result seems to contradict the findings of holzer katz and krueger regarding minimum wage jobs as we see it our findings support wessels 15 contention that since wages are more visible than non pecuniary aspects of compensation low wage workers mistakenly queue for minimum wage jobs thinking them more attractive than they are but then quit when reality sets in the paper is organized as follows section ii discusses the existing theoretical and empirical research regarding minimum wages section iii presents our empirical procedures section iv discusses the eopp data set and in section v we discuss our results finally in section vi we draw some tentative conclusions and discuss future research

the wage and employment dynamics of minimum wage workers this study uses panel data to examine the wage and employment dynamics of minimum wage workers compared with workers earning above the minimum minimum wage workers are much more likely to be new entrants or to exit the labor market changes in industry occupation and access to job training are particularly important to improving the wages of minimum wage workers many minimum wage workers earn less than their potential wage temporarily because of nonwork circumstances that make higher paying jobs less attractive duration of minimum wage employment at one extreme if minimum wage workers were entry level workers who quickly accumulate skills that push their wages above the minimum a minimum wage hike would have a relatively short term effect on any given worker s income on the other extreme if all minimum wage workers find themselves in dead end jobs that provide no opportunities for wage growth a hike in the minimum wage could have long term effects on their incomes there are several studies that provide insights into the wage growth of minimum wage workers using 1984 1985 data from the survey of income and program participation sipp smith and vavrichek 1992 show that over 60 of workers earning the minimum wage in 1984 were earning more than the minimum wage one year later for those with wage gains the typical wage increase was approximately 20 long 1999 finds similar results using the 1992 1993 sipp using national longitudinal survey data from the early 1980s schiller 1994 finds that after entering a minimum wage job only 15 of continuing workers were still earning the minimum wage after three years while most minimum wage workers realize sufficient wage growth to rise above the minimum wage relatively quickly a significant minority does not the existing literature provides some insight into which workers are most likely to be stuck at the minimum a fairly consistent finding is that less educated workers and part time workers are less likely to rise above the minimum however the understanding of the processes at work in determining the extent of wage growth is limited

an evaluation of yts the youth training scheme yts is much the most significant public policy intervention in the uk training market since the 1964 industrial training act ita this paper presents an economic evaluation of yts we begin in part ii by outlining the history and mechanics of the scheme part iii describes the market failure or failures which yts addresses and part iv assesses how successful it has been in tackling these problems finally part v considers the scheme s future what further changes are needed to improve its effectiveness

learning by doing and dynamic regulation from experience regulated monopolists learn to employ cost reducing innovations we characterize the optimal regulation of an innovating monopolist with unknown costs regulatory policy is designed to minimize current costs of service while encouraging development of cost saving innovations we find that under optimal regulation i innovation is encouraged by light handed regulation allowing the monopolist to earn greater information rents while providing greater service ii innovation occurs in the absence of long term agreements when private information is recurring and iii innovation is more rapid in a durable franchise and the regulator prefers durable franchises for exploiting learning economies

public investment social services and productivity of chinese household farms this article examines the impact of village sponsored infrastructural investment and social services on the productivity of chinese farm households using detailed farm level data for the period 1986 90 the main findings are that the public facilities and services provided by village collectives augmented productivity growth of farm households and that the expenditures on public good activities in the sample villages were below the optimal level the problems of under investment in public projects were particularly acute in low income villages

do minimum wages affect non wage job attributes evidence on fringe benefits although many studies have tested neoclassical labor market theory s prediction that employers will react to binding minimum wages by reducing employment levels much less empirical research has explored the possibility that employers also respond to minimum wages by adjusting non wage components of the job such as fringe benefits job safety and access to training using current population survey data for 1979 2000 this study investigates the effect of minimum wage legislation on the provision of employer health insurance and employer pension coverage the authors examine effects of state and federal variation in minimum wages on groups likely to be affected by the minimum wage and compare these effects to estimates found for groups unlikely to be affected whether the analysis uses only state level variation or federal and state variation in minimum wages the results indicate no discernible effect of the minimum wage on fringe benefit generosity for low skill workers

order from chaos the effects of early labor market experiences on adult labor market outcomes this paper examines the consequences of initial periods of churning or mobility in the labor market to help assess whether faster transitions to stable employment relationships as envisioned by advocates of school to work programs would be likely to lead to better adult labor market outcomes an analysis of national longitudinal survey of youth data for the years 1979 92 yields modest evidence at best linking early job market stability to better labor market outcomes the authors find that for both genders adult labor market outcomes defined as of the late 20s or early to mid 30s are for the most part unrelated to early labor market experiences this evidence does not support efforts to explicitly target the school to work transition insofar as doing so implies changing the structure of youth labor markets so that workers form earlier and firmer attachments to employers industries or occupations

the effect of minimum wages on immigrants employment and earnings this study examines how minimum wage laws affect the employment and earnings of low skilled immigrants and natives in the u s minimum wage increases might have larger effects among low skilled immigrants than among natives because on average immigrants earn less than natives due to lower levels of education limited english skills and less social capital results based on data from the current population survey for the years 1994 2005 do not indicate that minimum wages have adverse employment effects among adult immigrants or natives who did not complete high school however low skilled immigrants may have been discouraged from settling in states that set wage floors substantially above the federal minimum jel classifications j23 j38 j15

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

global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change food policy should serve humanity by advancing the humane goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger however these goals have recently been challenged by emerging forces including climate change water scarcity the energy crisis as well as the credit crisis this paper analyses the overall role of these forces and population growth in redefining global food security specifically global water supply and demand as well as the linkages between water supply and food security are examined the analysis reveals that the water for food security situation is intricate and might get daunting if no action is taken investments are needed today for enhancing future food security this requires action on several fronts including tackling climate change preserving land and conserving water reducing the energy footprint in food systems developing and adopting climate resilient varieties modernising irrigation infrastructure shoring up domestic food supplies reforming international food trade and responding to other global challenges

central wage setting under multiple technological equilibria a mechanism for equilibrium elimination instituting an initial round of centralized wage setting before an ultimate round of decentralized wage bargaining may actually raise employment a general multi equilibrium model is set up with strategic complementarities in the implementation of a new technology through aggregate demand spillovers in this model centralized wage setting to establish an outside option wage which is selectively binding on lo tech firms may achieve the big push to a hi tech general equilibrium with higher employment output wages and profits

implications for minimum wage policies of an s shaped labor supply curve abstract a model of family labor supply provides a rationale for raising minimum wages when the labor supply response is negative at low wages under those circumstances the labor market can be caught in a malthusian poverty trap of excess supply unemployment overextended workdays child labor and falling wages raising minimum wages may therefore help resorb this excess supply and stabilize the labor market setting a virtuous cycle in motion in a two sector context such a policy would increase wages in both the covered and uncovered sectors evidence from a study of costa rica in particular is consistent with those conclusions

investments of uncertain cost abstract this paper examines irreversible investment decisions when projects take time to complete and are subject to two types of cost uncertainty the first is technical uncertainty i e uncertainty over the physical difficulty of completing a project which is only resolved as the investment proceeds the second is input cost uncertainty i e uncertainty over the prices of construction inputs or over government regulations affecting construction costs which is external to the firm these two types of uncertainty have very different effects on the investment decision a simple investment rule is derived that maximizes firm value and is used to analyze the decision to start or continue building a nuclear power plant during the 1980s

understanding price controls and nonprice competition with matching theory we develop a quality competition model to understand how price controls affect market outcomes in buyer seller markets with discrete goods of varying quality while competitive equilibria do not necessarily exist in such markets when price controls are imposed we show that stable outcomes do exist and characterize the set of stable outcomes in the presence of price restrictions in particular we show that price controls induce non price competition price floors induce the trade of inefficiently high quality goods while price ceilings induce the trade of inefficiently low quality goods

job stability in the united states two key attributes of a job are its wage and its duration much has been made of changes in the wage distribution in the 1980s but little attention has been given to job durations since hall we fill this void by examining the temporal evolution of job retention rates in u s labor markets using data assembled from the sequence of current population survey job tenure supplements there have been relative declines in job stability for some of the groups that experienced the sharpest declines in relative wages however we find that aggregate job retention rates have remained stable

price controls non price quality competition and the nonexistence of competitive equilibrium we investigate how price ceilings and floors affect outcomes in continuous time double auction markets with discrete goods and multiple qualities when price controls exist the existence of competitive equilibria is no longer guaranteed hence we investigate the nature of non price competition and how markets might evolve in its presence we develop a quality competition model based on matching theory equilibria of the quality competition model always exist in such price constrained markets moreover they naturally correspond to competitive equilibria when competitive equilibria exist additionally we characterize the set of equilibria of the quality competition model in the presence of price restrictions in a series of experiments we find that market outcomes closely conform to the predictions of the model in particular price controls induce non price competition between agents both in theory and in the experimental environment market behaviors result in allocations close to the predictions of the model

minimum wage effects in the longer run exposure to minimum wages at young ages could lead to adverse longer run effects via decreased labor market experience and tenure and diminished education and training while beneficial longer run effects could arise if minimum wages increase skill acquisition evidence suggests that as individuals reach their late 20s they earn less the longer they were exposed to a higher minimum wage at younger ages and the adverse longer run effects are stronger for blacks if there are such longer run effects of minimum wages they are likely more significant than the contemporaneous effects on youths that are the focus of research and policy debate