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

why do black basketball players work more for less money abstract we explore kahn and sherer s finding that national basketball association players salaries are lower for black than white players in general we do not find evidence that this salary differential is due to the racial preferences of fans specifically we observe that black players actually play more than comparable white players we offer a theory of price discrimination based on relative supplies and supply elasticities in lieu of the racial discrimination argument as an explanation for the black white wage differential

are any growth theories robust this article investigates the strength of empirical evidence for various growth theories when there is model uncertainty with respect to the correct growth model using model averaging methods we find little evidence that so called fundamental growth theories play an important role in explaining aggregate growth in contrast we find strong evidence for macroeconomic policy effects and a role for unexplained regional heterogeneity as well as some evidence of parameter heterogeneity in the aggregate production function we conclude that the ability of cross country growth regressions to adjudicate the relative importance of alternative growth theories is limited despite the vast amount of empirical research generated by new growth theories there is remarkably little consensus on which mechanisms are most salient in explaining cross country differences this article is designed to provide some evidence on this question by examining the robustness of empirical support for different growth the ories as determinants of both aggregate growth and its underlying components total factor productivity tfp growth and physical and human capital accumulation one reason for the lack of empirical consensus on growth determinants is that the main statistical tool in empirical studies cross country growth regressions provides very different answers depending on how the regression is specified which for this context typically amounts to the choice of control variables individual papers typically employ regressions that include modest subsets of the body of regressors that have been pro posed in the literature as a whole others employ a kitchen sink approach to evaluate the relative evidentiary support of competing growth theories in such an exercise a large number of variables are included in a regression and those variables that prove to be significant are then declared to be the important determinants of growth while the others are dismissed as unimportant rodrik et al 2002 sachs 2003

market provision of broadcasting a welfare analysis this paper presents a theory of the market provision of broadcasting and uses it to address the nature of market failure in the industry advertising levels may be too low or too high depending on the nuisance cost to viewers the substitutability of programs and the expected benefits to advertisers from contacting viewers market provision may allocate too few or too many resources to programming and these resources may be used to produce programs of the wrong type monopoly ownership may produce higher social surplus than competitive ownership and the ability to price programming may reduce social surplus

economic development and the return to human capital a smooth coefficient semiparametric approach this paper investigates the impact of human capital on the process of economic growth by allowing the contribution of traditional inputs capital and labour as well as that of human capital to vary both across countries and time the former is accomplished by constructing an index of tfp growth for traditional inputs while the latter through semiparametric methods we derive estimates of the output elasticity and social return to human capital for 51 countries at various stages of economic development copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

a model and some evidence concerning the influence of discrimination on wages the observed wage gap between men and women is widely attributed to discrimination in the workplace yet within the context of the standard neoclassical framework discrimination is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition this paper presents a modified neoclassical model which supports equilibrium wage differentials and which has testable implications the paper also surmounts a difficulty that has plagued many earlier assessments separating prejudice from other explanations of the wage gap by directing attention away from wages to other implied effects of discrimination our model offers cleaner tests of the impact of prejudice in labor markets results of such tests are reported

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

the effect of gender sorting on propensity to coauthor implications for academic promotion a cohort sample of ph d economists indicates a significant propensity for researchers to select coauthors of the same sex this gender sorting contributes to lower article production for women further we find evidence of bias in academic promotion when single authored and coauthored articles carry the same weight in promotion and salary decisions the evidence explains in part why women academics wait longer for promotion and are not as likely to be promoted as men among the effects of gender sorting is self selection of women into larger departments where they are more likely to find colleagues of the same sex

the use of earnings variance in testing the invisibility hypothesis this paper addresses the need for simple tests of discrimination models that use new sources of evidence a particular model of statistical discrimination is considered with reference to its predictions concerning relative earnings variances between demographic groups calcuations using the 1980 us census data provide qualified support for the model

does market structure affect labour productivity and wages evidence from a smooth coefficient semiparametric panel model this paper investigates the impact of market structure on labour productivity and wages using a panel data set of us manufacturing industries over the period 1958 2007 to account for nonlinear effects we employ a smooth coefficient semiparametric model scsm we find evidence in support of a nonlinear relationship between market concentration and labour productivity and wages lastly our empirical findings shed new light on the competition labour productivity nexus

estimating market power in a two sided market the case of newspapers the newspaper industry is a two sided market the readers market and the advertising market are closely linked by inter market network externalities we estimate market power in the italian newspaper industry by building a structural model which encompasses a demand estimation

the local solow growth model abstract this paper generalizes the empirical analysis of the solow growth model to account for country specific heterogeneity this generalization relaxes the assumption made in bulk of empirical growth studies that all countries possess identical aggregate production functions our empirical results indicate that there is substantial country specific heterogeneity in the solow parameters heterogeneity that is associated with differences in initial income we therefore conclude that the explanatory value of the solow growth model is substantially enhanced by allowing for country specific i e local production functions

non linearity in the inflation growth relationship in developing economies evidence from a semiparametric panel model using data on developing economies we estimate a flexible semiparametric panel data model that incorporates potentially nonlinear effects of inflation on economic growth we find that inflation is associated with significantly lower growth only after it reaches about 12 percent which is notably lower than the comparable estimate obtained from a threshold model our results also suggest that models with restrictive functional form assumptions tend to underestimate marginal effects of inflation on economic growth we also document significant variation in the effect of inflation on growth across countries and over time

male female disparity in starting pay empirical studies of the earnings of male and female workers persistently reveal a gap that is unexplained by the economic variables in these models this gap has been given two interpretations in the literature one holds that the gap reflects non market forces which distort the equilibrium relation among the wages of competing workers discrimination according to this view prevents female workers from being offered jobs commensurate with their qualifications and crowds them into low productivity occupations 2 the alternative interpretation holds that some substantial portion of the gap is an artifact the result of missing variables biased parameters or measurement error these researchers view the labor market as highly competitive and were it possible to correct for all these statistical problems the measured wage gap would largely vanish 3 this research belongs to the latter category we argue that a portion of the measured gap at least that observed between the earnings of young men and women during their first few years with their employers reflects sex related differences in the shares of investment in firm specific human capital borne by workers of each group moreover these variations in investment levels are freely chosen by women and in no way imply long run deficits in their earning power on the contrary the model predicts steeper earnings profiles of women who undertake this firm specific investment thus women s earnings are predicted eventually to overtake and surpass those of equally qualified men this theory was developed in earlier research by becker and lindsay 2 based on a model of hashimoto 11 12 and extensions by parsons 21 we argued that young women for nondiscriminatory reasons elect to shoulder a larger share of this investment than young men the explanation for this is developed in two stages the first derives the terms under which both male and female workers share the investment with their employers the second argues that female workers will be led by these considerations to bear a larger share workers of both sexes agree to enter into inflexible wage contracts with employers specifying a share of the investment i e a wage deduction from current mvp and a post investment wage the advantage to such contracts lies in the solution to an assymetric information problem the

who benefits from financial development new methods new evidence abstract this paper takes a fresh look at the impact of financial development on economic growth by using recently developed kernel methods that allow for heterogeneity in partial effects nonlinearities and endogenous regressors our results suggest that while the positive impact of financial development on growth has increased over time it is also highly nonlinear with more developed nations benefiting while low income countries do not benefit at all we also conduct a novel policy analysis that confirms these statistical findings in sum this set of results contributes to the ongoing policy debate as to whether low income nations should scale up financial reforms

the solow model with ces technology nonlinearities and parameter heterogeneity this paper examines whether nonlinearities in the aggregate production function can explain parameter heterogeneity in the solow growth regressions nonlinearities in the production technology are introduced by replacing the commonly used cobb douglas cd aggregated production specification with the more general constant elasticity of substitution ces specification we first justify our choice of production function by showing that cross country regressions favour the ces over the cd technology then by using an endogenous threshold methodology we show that the solow model with ces technology is consistent with the existence of multiple regimes copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

pricing decisions of the newspaper monopolist in nearly every city in the united states there is only one daily newspaper of general interest given the prevalence of monopoly it seems anomalous that newspapers are typically sold well below cost compaine 5 19 for example reports that sales revenue is only 28 7 percent of total cost moreover it appears that price is below marginal cost since the sales revenue does not cover the cost of the ink and paper used in producing the newspaper 2 if the newspaper publisher were selling only newspapers he or she would be in dire straits but in reality the publisher has two products to sell the newspaper itself and advertising space within the newspaper although very few newspaper customers are also purchasers of advertising space there is an important interaction between the circulation of the newspaper and the sale of advertising space the higher the circulation of the newspaper the greater the demand for advertising and the more advertising there is in the newspaper the greater the circulation of the newspaper 3 as a consequence the publisher has a more complicated pricing problem since the prices of advertising space and of the newspaper have feedback effects upon one another in the next section of this paper we shall derive the publisher s optimal prices for advertising space and for the newspaper under fairly general conditions one purpose of this analysis is to show that there are two meaningful measures of demand elasticity in section iv we discuss some of the associated empirical problems that this poses and relate this to two existing newspaper demand studies

bootstrap based bias correction for dynamic panels abstract the within or least squares dummy variable estimator is inconsistent for homogeneous dynamic panel models with fixed time dimension t we present a bias correction for this estimator based on an iterative bootstrap procedure monte carlo simulations show that for panels with small to moderate t this procedure provides a good alternative for existing dynamic panel data estimators

a semi parametric analysis of two sided markets an application to the local daily newspapers in the usa summary this paper considers an empirical semiparametric model for two sided markets contrary to existing empirical literature on two sided markets we specify network effects and probability distribution functions of net benefits of the two sides nonparametrically we then estimate the model by nonparametric instrumental variables regression for local daily newspapers from the usa we show that semiparametric specification is supported by the data and the network effects are neither linear nor monotonic with a numerical illustration we demonstrate that the mark up of the newspaper on each side changes drastically with the nonlinearly specified network effects from the case with linear network effects copyright 2015 john wiley sons ltd

threshold effects of inflation on economic growth in developing countries abstract this paper introduces a generalized panel threshold model by allowing for regime intercepts the empirical application to the relation between inflation and growth confirms that the omitted variable bias of standard panel threshold models can be statistically and economically significant