the local response to tax limitation measures do local governments manipulate voters to increase revenues abstract this paper provides evidence that some cities subject to a statewide tax limit manipulate their mix of productive and administrative services in an attempt to get voters to override the statewide limit when a statewide limit reduces a city s budget one manipulative response is to cut service inputs for example teachers or uniformed police officers by a relatively large amount while cutting administrative inputs by a relatively small amount this approach reveals a relatively large trade off between public and private goods and the severe consequences from a tax limit may encourage local voters to override the statewide limit we provide evidence that cities with local override options tend to adopt this approach manipulation is most prevalent among cities run by city managers as opposed to strong mayors

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

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

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

the use of the scaling property in a frontier analysis of a system of equations this article presents a one stage efficiency frontier analysis based on the scaling property this type of analysis is a not very often applied in empirical work in spite of its nice features due

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

tax limited reaction functions summary this paper models for the first time a spatial process in local tax policies in the presence of centrally imposed fiscal limitations focusing on the frequently encountered case of a tax rate cap we evaluate three empirical approaches to the analysis of spatially dependent limited tax policies i a bayesian spatial approach for censored dependent variables ii a tobit corner solution model augmented with a spatial lag iii a spatial discrete hazard model the evidence arising from an investigation of severely state constrained local vehicle taxes in italy suggests that ignoring tax limitations can lead to substantial underestimation of inter jurisdictional fiscal interaction copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

do limits matter evidence on the effects of tax limitations on student performance abstract the goal of this research is to determine if limits on the revenue raising ability of school districts translate into constraints on the ability of these districts to affect student performance we use the recent imposition of property tax limitations on school districts in the chicago metropolitan area to determine if these limits have translated into slower growth in student performance we find only limited evidence that student performance in districts subject to the tax limitations has fallen relative to student performance in districts not subject to the limitations

the three is of public schools irrelevant inputs insufficient resources and inefficiency abstractwe examine the educational production function and efficiency of public school districts in illinois using non parametric kernel methods we find that most traditional schooling inputs are irrelevant in determining test scores even in a very general setting property tax caps are the only relevant factor that is related to districts financial constraints and have predominantly negative associations with test scores therefore insufficient resources may be partially responsible for the lack of growth in test scores for most other relevant inputs we find substantial heterogeneity in the returns which helps reconcile some of the puzzling results in the literature we further find that there exist inefficiencies in school districts moreover the level of test scores commonly used as a measure of school effectiveness while related differs substantially from our efficiency scores and standard parametric approaches drastically underestimate school efficiency we discuss the policy implicati

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

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

efficiency analysis for exogenously fixed inputs and outputs we evaluate by means of mathematical programming formulations the relative technical and scale efficiencies of decision making units dmus when some of the inputs or outputs are exogenously fixed and beyond the discretionary control of dmu managers this approach further develops the work on efficiency evaluation and on estimation of efficient production frontiers known as data envelopment analysis dea we also employ the model to provide efficient input and output targets for dmu managers in a way that specifically accounts for the fixed nature of some of the inputs or outputs we illustrate the approach using real data for a network of fast food restaurants

measuring technical efficiency abstract the theoretical consideration of technical efficiency has existed since koopmans koopmans t c 1951 an analysis of production as an efficient combination of activities in koopmans t c ed activity analysis of production and allocation cowles commission for research in economics monograph no 13 wiley new york defined it as production possibilities for which it is not possible to increase any output without simultaneously increasing any input ceteris paribus the non parametric approach to efficiency calculation known as data envelopment analysis is not based on this definition but rather on the radial index of farrell farrell m j 1957 the measurement of productive efficiency journal of the royal statistic society ser a 120 253 281 even after farrell efficiency is achieved there may exist additional slack in individual inputs and or outputs implying that farrell s index does not necessarily measure koopmans inefficiency various measures have been proposed to solve this problem this paper discusses shortcomings of these alternative measures and introduces a new relative measure of technical efficiency using simulated data it is shown that the new measure outperforms existing measures in the majority of cases

dea and its use in the regulation of water companies abstract this paper begins with an introduction to the basic principles of data envelopment analysis dea dea is a linear programming based method for assessing the productive efficiencies of operating units such as bank branches sales outlets schools or individuals this paper then goes on to describe the use of dea in the regulatory framework regulation employed to safeguard the public interest is increasingly playing an major role in great britain and other countries in the aftermath of the privatisation of publicly owned companies including utilities which still enjoy a good degree of monopoly power this paper gives an account of the use of dea to estimate potential cost savings at water companies in the context of the price review conducted by the regulator of water companies in england and wales in 1994 it also highlights certain generic issues arising in the use of dea in the regulatory context this paper should prove of interest both to those who want to know about dea as a tool in general and to those interested in efficiency measurement under regulation

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

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

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

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

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

fair demographic risk sharing in defined contribution pension systems in this article we formulate and solve the optimal design problem of a defined contribution public pension fund in a highly stylized but still rather general non stationary framework we adopt the viewpoint of a benevolent social planner who aims at treating in a fair manner the successive overlapping generations participating to such a long term mandatory system using the approach of el karoui and jeanblanc 1998 for the optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem with random income in a complete market we exhibit a solution to our intertemporal stochastic control problem where each generation receives a fair lumpsum retirement benefit it is proportional to the contributions she has paid during her active worklife and follows a fixed common rule although her pension value itself may depend on variables only observable at her retirement time we next relax the assumption that the collective pension system is mandatory and investigate the performance of individual investment plans in the market comparing the outcomes of both alternatives we derive a condition under which the collective fund can be expected to overperform the individual plan in the special case of a stationary economy such a possibility has been pointed out by gollier 2008 in fact this effect results from the possibility for the collective fund to borrow today against contributions of future generations which allows to implement riskier strategies and may improve its performance

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

the effect of property tax limitation measures on local government fiscal behavior abstract previous evidence on the effects of tax and expenditure limitation measures has not been conclusive difficulties arise in characterizing differences in fiscal institutions across states and estimating behavior in the absence of limitation measures a recently enacted tax limitation measure limits the growth in local property taxes in some illinois jurisdictions but not in others such differential treatment of otherwise similar jurisdictions provides a natural experiment for estimating the impact of the tax cap on local government fiscal behavior we find that the cap has been effective in that the fiscal behavior of capped jurisdictions differs from that of never capped jurisdictions

did the tax revolt reduce school performance abstract this paper uses detailed school level data from 49 states to analyze the effects of tax revolt era property tax limitations on school services i find that limitations are associated with larger student teacher ratios and lower cost of living adjusted starting teacher salaries all else equal these results are robust to modelling the results as endogenous and using a variety of measures for whether the limitation binds at particular schools however i find no such evidence that schools subject to limitations have reduced their administrative costs furthermore i find that limitations are associated with lower student performance on mathematics science social studies and reading examinations all else equal

direct estimates of the demand for race and sex discrimination for empirical economists one of the most fruitful areas of research has been the examination of racial sexual differences in wages and employment opportunities the dynamic movement of relative wages during the 1960s not only aroused widespread interest among the academic community it also spurred the search for ways to quantify both the level of wage discrimination and the secular changes in wage discrimination the two principle research models used in this regard have been what i shall refer to as the relative demand curve and wage decomposition approaches both approaches are inspired by the model exposited in gary becker s seminal work the economics of discrimination the relative demand curve approach interprets the intercept and time trend variables and secular changes in these variables as discrimination shifters in regression of relative wages on the relative quantities of blacks to whites the wage decomposition approach on the other hand looks at separate race specific wage regressions and takes the difference in the regression coefficients weighted by the mean value of the respective variable as indicators of wage discrimination in the next section i argue that both of these empirical approaches to estimating wage discrimination or changes in wage discrimination are intrinsically incapable of measuring becker s tastes for discrimination variable in section iii a new empirical approach to estimating wage discrimination the production function approach is presented and applied in section iv to a time series cross section of black and white

social security and intergenerational redistribution a generational accounting perspective this paper is concerned with the analysis of intergenerational redistribution in a pay as you go financed social security scheme instead of annual fiscal indicators we apply generational accounts to calculate the intertemporal effects arising from a projected aging process as a case study the institutional settings and the parameterization of our model refer to the conditions found in germany in 1989 additionally the intergenerational impacts of the german 1992 pension reform act are taken into account our findings suggest that the major reform measures affect the distribution of the demographic burden between future and presently living generations however the burden is shifted in favor of the generations currently alive thereby contradicting the explicit political intentions and aggravating the situation for future generations

parametric pension reform with higher retirement ages a computational investigation of alternatives for a pay as you go based pension system abstract this paper discusses parametric reform options to control losses generated by a publicly managed pay as you go payg pension system under alternative deficit reduction reform strategies involving changes in contribution and replacement rates and statutory retirement ages two different problems corresponding to different pension reform strategies are considered using computational techniques the techniques are illustrated through exercises employing data for the financially troubled pension system in turkey

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

alternative models of earnings determination and labor market structures there are three distinct research traditions in the analysis of individual earnings determination human capital or earnings function analyses aggregate wage analyses and labor demand analyses an important and incongruous aspect of each is the treatment of geographical differences in labor markets this paper first investigates the magnitude and character of geographical wage differentials the sizable differences discovered there are then related to the existing and highly simplified models of labor market differences while the two major classes of models compensating differentials and labor demand differ significantly in assumptions and implications it is impossible to distinguish adequately between them there appears to be a clear need for more structural analyses of labor market operations

the use of data envelopment analysis in the regulation of uk water utilities water distribution abstract regulation is increasingly playing a major role in defence of the public interest in the uk and other economies in the aftermath of the privatisation of utilities operating in near monopoly environments this paper gives an account of the use of data envelopment analysis dea by the regulator of water companies in england and wales in 1994 in the context of setting price limits dea is a general purpose linear programming based method for assessing the productive efficiencies of operating units such as bank branches or schools the paper details the use of dea to estimate potential savings in the specific context of water distribution and discusses the use of the results obtained it also highlights certain generic issues arising in the use of dea and more generally performance measurement methods in the regulatory context

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

an analysis of occupational upgrading differentials between black and white males the racial occupational mobility gap is examined by applying a decomposition methodology to logistic functions results indicate that approximately one third of the mobility gap between black and white male workers is due to differences in average characteristics the endowment effect the residual difference accounts for the remaining two thirds formal education is found to be a major component of both the endowment effect and the resdiual difference the returns to tenure with a firm overall labour market experience and marriage reduce the mobility gap in favour of black workers

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

measuring direct discrimination in labor markets using a frontier approach evidence from cps female earnings data numerous studies of earnings differentials have attempted to measure discrimination against females or minorities by decomposing the total differential between males and females or whites and non whites into an explained and unexplained portion typically these studies follow the work of oaxaca 8 however a number of criticisms can be raised with these techniques 9 5 4 of which two are particularly important that the reduced form wage equations for the two groups will not be identical in every case and that there may be large and unobservable differences between the characteristics of the two groups for which the wage equations cannot account either of these problems are sufficient to make it impossible to use residual analysis to measure discrimination attempts to address these problems and obtain reliable and consistent estimates of the extent of discrimination are important for policy purposes low and villegas 7 address the first of these problems by suggesting the use of hedonic wage equations which contain only human capital characteristics or proxies and characteristics which directly affect the hedonic parameters in this framework perfect substitution between the workers is assumed their work however leaves the second problem unresolved in this paper a stochastic earnings frontier with a discrimination discount is used to estimate discrimination against women an earnings frontier for females that depends upon marginal productivity as measured by human capital and labor market characteristics of females is estimated discrimination is assumed to be the amount female earnings are removed from the frontier less any labor market inefficiency since these estimates will depend solely on female data they do not depend upon an assumption of similarity between males and females this procedure allows

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

the gender salary gap in british academia this paper considers salary determination and the gender salary gap in the academic labour market utilizing a particularly detailed data set of academics from five old established universities results reveal an aggregate gender salary differential for academic staff of 15 most of this differential can however be explained by our model evidence suggests a limited opportunity for female academics to combine career and family despite the flexibility of an academic job and emphasizes the importance of mobility to the male career publication record is found to be an important determinant of salary

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

imperfect signalling affirmative action and black white wage differentials the existence of black white wage differentials has received considerable attention in the economics literature imperfect information provides the underpinning of several models which attempt to explain such differentials 1 2 3 4 11 arrow s work for example shows that when screening is costly and expectations of productivity differ across groups wages may differ between individuals with identical productivity 2 3 borjas and goldberg point out that biased screens may lead to wage differentials even when the two groups have identical distributions of productivity 4 it is important to note that these differentials arise in the absence of discriminatory tastes among market participants other researchers have investigated the impact of affirmative action programs on minority majority wage differentials welch indicates the kinds of wage differences which can arise under certainty about productivity levels 12 lazear demonstrates that the apparent narrowing of blackwhite differentials under affirmative action may well be an illusion due to the failure to measure non pecuniary income in the form of on the job training 7 while these models provide an appealing explanation of the main outlines of minoritymajority wage differentials they do not explain another stylized fact which has been observed recently a study of academicians revealed that black males with a number of publications earned more than their white counterparts whereas black male academics with no publications earned less than comparable whites 5 olneck showed that in terms of occupational status the return to college graduation was higher for non whites than for whites but the return to secondary education was lower 6 159 90 similarly while the income of college educated black males rose relative to that of whites of similar qualifications between 1967 and 1978 the income of less educated black males fell relative to that of their white counterparts over the same period sowell has argued that this skewing of the relative distributions is a result of affirmative action programs 9 10 although the quotas seem to increase the demand for minority workers their legislative framework increases the

impact of the worker s employment probability on wage rates the employment probability is a significant determinant of the worker s wage rate expecially in the presence of employers hiring discrimination several tests suggest that the omission of this variable in the wage regression may lead to misspecification

tax limits and the qualifications of new teachers abstract this paper examines the impact of local tax limits on new teacher quality using data from the national center for education statistics we find that tax limits systematically reduce the average quality of education majors as well as new public school teachers in states that have passed these limits the average relative test scores of education majors in tax limit states declined by ten percent as compared to the relative test scores of education majors in states that did not pass limits this relationship is strengthened if we control for school finance equalization reforms or examine tax limits passed in two different periods

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

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

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

does school quality matter returns to education and the characteristics of public schools in the united states this paper estimates the effects of school quality measured by the pupil teacher ratio average term length and relative teacher pay on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949 using earnings data from the 1980 census we find that men who were educated in states with higher quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers holding constant school quality measures however we find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state level rates of return

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

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

affirmative action as earnings redistribution the targeting of compliance reviews affirmative action may be broadly conceived of as pursuing either the goal of reducing discrimination or that of redistributing jobs and earnings i attempt to infer the ends of affirmative action policy by analyzing the historical record of enforcement optimal enforcement strategies are developed for both the antidiscrimination and the earnings redistribution models and then compared with new data on the actual targeting of affirmative action compliance reviews during the late 1970s i find that establishments with very low proportions of minority or female workers are not significantly more likely to be reviewed but that white collar intensive establishments are more likely to be reviewed this indicates the shortcomings of the antidiscrimination model in explaining the ofccp s behavior and suggests the potential usefulness of the earnings redistribution model

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

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

black white earnings ratios since the civil rights act of 1964 the importance of labor market dropouts published median earnings of wage and salary workers by race and sex are based on distributions that exclude those without earnings and those not employed as wage and salary workers at the time of the survey it has been argued that the changing importance of these exclusions rather than any improvement in the distribution of offered wages for blacks accounts for the apparent increase in black white relative median earnings this paper presents a new method for correcting the published medians for such censoring the apparent improvement in relative earnings is reduced but not eliminated by the correction

legal constraints and the choice of educational grant structures recent empirical work suggests that legalconstraints are significant in choosingstate educational grant structures unfortunately the literature has not takensuch constraints into account thus callinginto question particular grant structurerecommendations this paper studies theconditions under which a legislature underorder to reform its educational grantstructure prefers foundation grants overdistrict power equalization grants atheoretical model is presented in which thechoice is shown to depend on the legalbasis of the court s decision and theempirical validity of this conclusion isdemonstrated using connecticut data and aseparate model of school districtexpenditure choice

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

an alternative approach to the analysis of wage differentials a key question in many studies of male female or black white wage differentials is how much of the differential can be explained by economic factors and how much remains unexplained the unexplained portion is then ascribed to discrimination since oaxaca 17 first formalized this decomposition the residual difference methodology has been the dominant methodology utilized in empirical studies of wage differentials 4 7 8 10 15 18 but recently the validity of the assumptions underlying the residual difference methodology have been called into question by butler 5 6 in this paper the theoretical underpinnings of the residual difference methodology are reexamined and an alternative theoretical framework for this methodology is suggested the new framework overcomes the shortcomings inherent in oaxaca s specification of the model and therefore provides a sound theoretical foundation for the residual difference decomposition

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

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

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

the dynamic adjustment of local government budgets does spain behave differently the aim of this article is to analyse whether spanish municipalities adjust in response to budget shocks and if so which elements of the budget they are more likely to adjust the methodology we use to answer these questions is a vector error correction model vecm estimated with data from a panel of spanish municipalities during the period 1988 to 2006 our results confirm that spanish municipalities do indeed make adjustments in response to fiscal shocks i e the deficit is stationary in the long run we compare our results with those obtained for us and germany to evaluate if the viability of local finance depends on the institutional arrangement and to analyse how it affects the adjustment patterns we observe that grants have a more important role in the adjustment process in environments where either they have an equalization objective or where there is no clear rule that determines their distribution this fact can generate a moral hazard problem governments tend to spend more due to the exp

racial segregation and the black white test score gap abstract racial segregation is often blamed for some of the achievement gap between blacks and whites we study the effects of school and neighborhood segregation on the relative sat scores of black students across different metropolitan areas using large microdata samples for the 1998 2001 test cohorts our models include detailed controls for the family background of individual test takers school level controls for selective participation in the test and city level controls for racial composition income and region we find robust evidence that the black white test score gap is higher in more segregated cities holding constant family background and other factors a shift from a highly segregated city to a nearly integrated city closes about one quarter of the raw black white gap in sat scores specifications that distinguish between school and neighborhood segregation suggest that neighborhood segregation has a consistently negative impact while school segregation has no independent effect though we cannot reject equality of the two effects additional tests indicate that much of the effect of neighborhood segregation operates through neighbors incomes not through race per se data on enrollment in honors courses suggest that within school segregation increases when schools are more highly integrated potentially offsetting the benefits of school desegregation and accounting for our findings

efficiency of educational production an analysis of new york school districts theoretical consideration of technical efficiency has existed since tjalling c koopmans 1951 which defined technical efficiency for production possibilities for which it is impossible to increase any output without simultaneously increasing any input the nonparametric approach to efficiency estimation is based not on this definition but rather on michael j farrell s 1957 index even after farrell efficiency is achieved there may exist additional slack in individual inputs implying that farrell efficiency doesn t measure inefficiency to solve this problem this paper suggests incorporating programming results into a second stage multivariate regression analysis for illustrative purposes this technique is applied to analyze new york state school districts copyright 1996 by mit press

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

the effects of spending on test pass rates evidence from michigan abstract this study uses data on standardized test scores from 1992 through 1998 at michigan schools to determine the effects of spending on student performance the years in the data set straddle 1994 when michigan dramatically changed the way that k 12 schools are funded and moved toward equalization of spending across schools focusing on pass rates for a fourth grade math tests the most complete and consistent data available for michigan i find that increases in spending have nontrivial statistically significant effects on math test pass rates and the effects are largest for schools with initially poor performance

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