rationality of preliminary money stock estimates earlier studies have presented mixed evidence on the rationality of the federal reserve s preliminary money stock estimates the authors investigate the rationality of m1a m1 m2 and m3 for both seasonally and not seasonally adjusted data they find preliminary growth rates of these aggregates to be rational for not seasonally adjusted data but irrational when data are seasonally adjusted using monte carlo studies the authors conclude that irrationality in seasonally adjusted data arises from the specific seasonal adjustment procedure used by the federal reserve as a result researchers conducting similar tests may want to focus exclusively on not seasonally adjusted data copyright 1995 by mit press

rent seeking and the transformation of employment relationships the effect of corporate restructuring on wage patterns determinants and inequality a key debate in research on corporate restructuring is whether this widespread and extensive transformation process made contemporary employment relationships more open with firms relying largely o

gender sorting and the glass ceiling in high tech firms with few exceptions studies have conceived of the glass ceiling as reflecting internal promotion biases in this article the authors argue that glass ceiling patterns can also be the result of external recruitment and hiring processes using data on people applying by means of the internet for jobs at 441 small and medium sized high tech firms they find evidence that the glass ceiling is produced by both internal and external hiring processes on the supply side females are sorted into lower level job queues than males on the demand side screening biases against women also are evident but a series of what if simulations suggest that demand side screening processes play a comparatively minor role in producing the glass ceiling pattern these results suggest that bias remediation policies designed to equalize gender differences in hiring chances are likely to be less effective than recruitment and outreach policies designed to improve gender disparities in candidate pools

interorganizational determinants of promotion client leadership and the attainment of women attorneys explanations of gender inequality typically emphasize individual characteristics the structure of internal labor markets or pressures from the institutional environment extending the structuralist and institutional perspectives this article argues that the demographic composition of an organization s exchange partners can influence the demographic composition of the focal organization when the focal organization is dependent upon its partners specifically law firms with women led corporate clients increase the number of partners who are women attorneys data on elite law firms and their publicly traded clients support a bargaining power hypothesis whereby law firms promote women attorneys when their corporate clients have women in three key leadership positions general legal counsel chief executive officer and board director these effects are stronger when the law firm has few clients reinforcing the hypothesis that interorganizational influence is more vital when a focal organization is depe

money supply announcements and interest rates another view in this paper i use a new approach to analyze the impact of money supply announcements on the bond market before 1980 the only available work on this subject consisted of a few unpublished papers by conrad 1978 sivesind 1978 and urich 1979 1 more recently published papers by grossman 1981 and urich and wachtel 1981 have appeared roley 1982 extends the grossman study to incorporate data after the federal reserve policy statement of october 6 1979 both grossman and urich and wachtel are primarily concerned with the question of money market efficiency using survey data made available by money market services of san francisco and data on treasury bill yields each finds that the market responds quickly to unanticipated changes in the money supply but that anticipated changes have no effect on interest rates in addition grossman finds that when he adds other variables such as past changes in the money

monetary misperceptions output and inflation dynamics we revisit the contribution of misperceived money to business cycles and in particular to the inertial dynamics of inflation following a monetary policy shock we establish three things first the difference between preliminary and revised money data captures monetary misperceptions well second misperceived money is quantitatively substantial and also matters significantly for economic activity and third imperfect information about monetary aggregates can help the standard nk model exhibit inertial inflation dynamics

an empirical model of labor supply in a life cycle setting this paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of labor supply using theoretical characterizations derived from an economic model of lifetime behavior a two step empirical analysis yields estimates of intertemporal and uncompensated substitution effects which provide the information needed to predict the response of hours of work to life cycle wage growth and shifts in the lifetime wage path

contribution of demand shifts to industrial so 2 emissions in a transition economy evidence from china abstract for the past 20 years sulfur dioxide so2 emissions control has been a goal in china whose economy has been characterized as fast growing and in enormous transition as a prerequisite for effective future so2 emissions control a detailed investigation is needed to uncover and assess the contributions to changes in so2 emissions of key underlying drivers associated with china s evolving demand structure using structural decomposition analysis sda considering industrial characteristics and sector interactions this study identifies the underlying drivers behind china s demand structure shifts as well as their contributions to changes in industrial so2 emissions the results show that the change in total final demand was the largest driver of the increase in so2 emissions resulting in an increase of 36 64 million tons mt so2 emissions during the time period 1997 to 2012 from the final demand perspective the change in capital formation was the largest contributor resulting in an increase of 16 78 mt so2 emissions and accounting for 45 of the increase due to final demand shifts the construction industry was the primary trigger of industrial so2 emissions growth caused by shifts in final demand with an induced amount impact on other industries of so2 emissions of 10 14 mt the key drivers capturing shifts in final demand were mainly capital formation in the construction industry capital formation and exports in technology intensive industries and consumption in the services industries the recommendation is that to control industrial so2 emissions china should depend first on its economic transition that includes technology improvements and industry structure optimization for both final demand and production

do women choose different jobs from men mechanisms of application segregation in the market for managerial workers this paper examines differences in the jobs for which men and women apply in order to better understand gender segregation in managerial jobs we develop and test an integrative theory of why women might apply to different jobs than men we note that constraints based on gender role socialization may affect three determinants of job applications how individuals evaluate the rewards provided by different jobs whether they identify with those jobs and whether they believe that their applications will be successful we then develop hypotheses about the role of each of these decision factors in mediating gender differences in job applications we test these hypotheses using the first direct comparison of how similarly qualified men and women apply to jobs based on data on the job searches of mba students our findings indicate that women are less likely than men to apply to finance and consulting jobs and are more likely to apply to general management positions these differences are partly explained by women s preference for jobs with better anticipated work life balance their lower identification with stereotypically masculine jobs and their lower expectations of job offer success in such stereotypically masculine jobs we find no evidence that women are less likely to receive job offers in any of the fields studied these results point to some of the ways in which gender differences can become entrenched through the long term expectations and assumptions that job candidates carry with them into the application process

monetary information and monetary neutrality abstract the monetary theory of business fluctuations in market clearing models constructed under the rational expectations assumption as advanced by lucas and others involves the idea that suppliers and demanders will typically misinterpret movements in the general level of prices as representing more or less favorable relative opportunities for real activities the present paper examines the consequences of agents possessing contemporaneous monetary information of a potentially noisy variety for the non neutrality of unanticipated monetary events within such an equilibrium business cycle model this modification of the information structure has the strong testable implication that real activity will be uncorrelated with contemporaneous monetary data

hierarchical rank and women s organizational mobility glass ceilings in corporate law firms this article revives the debate over whether women s upward mobility prospects decline as they climb organizational hierarchies although this proposition is a core element of the glass ceiling metaphor it has failed to gain strong support in previous research the article establishes a firm theoretical foundation for expecting an increasing female disadvantage with an eye toward defining the scope conditions and extending the model to upper level external hires the approach is illustrated in an empirical setting that meets the proposed scope conditions corporate law firms in the united states results confirm that in this setting the female mobility disadvantage is greater at higher organizational levels in the case of internal promotions but not in the case of external hires

up or out contracts a signaling perspective a firm will typically gather information concerning its own workers that is not available to other potential employers while other firms will attempt to reduce this information asymmetry by observing the actions of the initial employer i argue that this process can be important in environments characterized by up or out contracts in that the retention decision can serve as a signal of productivity the article investigates this argument in an environment where up or out contracts are employed because they provide workers with an incentive to accumulate general human capital and where learning takes place in a diffuse fashion

data revisions are not well behaved we document the empirical properties of revisions to major macroeconomic variables in the united states our findings suggest that they do not satisfy simple desirable statistical properties in particular we find that these revisions do not have a zero mean which indicates that the initial announcements by statistical agencies are biased we also find that the revisions are quite large compared to the original variables and they are predictable using the information set at the time of the initial announcement which means that the initial announcements of statistical agencies are not rational forecasts

comparing structural decomposition analysis and index to analyze and understand historical changes in economic environmental employment or other socio economic indicators it is useful to assess the driving forces or determinants that underlie these changes two techniques for decomposing indicator changes at the sector level are structural decomposition analysis sda and index decomposition analysis ida for example sda and ida have been used to analyze changes in indicators such as energy use co2 emissions labor demand and value added the changes in these variables are decomposed into determinants such as technological demand and structural effects sda uses information from input output tables while ida uses aggregate data at the sector level the two methods have developed quite independently which has resulted in each method being characterized by specific unique techniques and approaches this paper has three aims first the similarities and differences between the two approaches are summarized second the possibility of transferring specific techniques and indices is explored finally a numerical example is used to illustrate differences between the two approaches

can we improve upon preliminary estimates of payroll employment growth we explore the feasibility of improving upon the preliminary estimates of payroll employment growth from the u s bureau of labor statistics by predicting subsequent revisions to these estimates using the preliminary estimates themselves and other information available concurrently results of statistical tests suggest that the preliminary estimates can be improved upon that is they are not efficient forecasts of the revised estimates the improvement of preliminary estimates as indicators of estimates of employment growth following annual benchmarks is particularly large the unanticipated component of the revision based on the annual benchmarks is reduced by more than 22

changing interest rate responses to money announcements 1977 1983 abstract this paper investigates when and how the response of interest rates to money announcements changed in recent years the response of both short and long rates rises in october 1979 but drops during 1981 during mid 1982 the response of long rates raises again but without a change in the response of short rates despite a number of ex post explanations for these shifts none of the major hypotheses of why interest rates respond to money announcements provides a complete ex ante explanation of these response shifts

what is the role of openness for china s aggregate industrial so2 emission a structural analysis based on the divisia decomposition method abstract having observed the weaknesses in previous structural analyses on the role of environmental kuznets curve ekc the author proposes a detailed analysis using a rich data set of provincial level production and so2 emission intensity of 13 industrial sectors the latter represent more than 98 of the total industrial production in each chinese province for the period 1991 2001 through the use of the log mean divisia index decomposition method the variations in province level industrial so2 emissions with regard to the 1990 baseline level are decomposed into the contribution from three components scale composition and technical effects the following analysis seeks to explain how trade openness affects aggregate industrial so2 emission through its impact on the structural determinants for these three components of region specific environmental variations

bending the pipeline executive search and gender inequality in hiring for top management jobs we study the sources of women s underrepresentation in hiring for top management jobs by focusing on the context of executive search using data that include proprietary information on 10 970 individuals considered by a search firm we examine the sources of the low proportion of women placed in senior roles contrary to received wisdom we find limited evidence that demand side screeners strongly contribute to gender disadvantage in this setting what gender differences exist tend to play out at the start of the hiring process and are driven both by supply side and demand side actors once considered for a position women are no less likely than men to be hired though they are slightly less likely to be interviewed by the search firm our findings highlight the theoretical importance of disentangling candidates self steering behavior from the pipeline bending of hiring agents we discuss the implications of our results for understanding gender inequality at upper echelons of the labor market this p

the class pay gap in higher professional and managerial occupations this article demonstrates how class origin shapes earnings in higher professional and managerial employment taking advantage of newly released data in britain s labour force survey we examine the relative openness of different high status occupations and the earnings of the upwardly mobile within them in terms of access we find a distinction between traditional professions such as law medicine and finance which are dominated by the children of higher managers and professionals and more technical occupations such as engineering and it that recruit more widely moreover even when people who are from working class backgrounds are successful in entering high status occupations they earn 17 percent less on average than individuals from privileged backgrounds this class origin pay gap translates to up to 7 350 11 000 lower annual earnings this difference is partly explained by the upwardly mobile being employed in smaller firms and working outside london but it remains substantial even net

tests of equilibrium macroeconomics using contemporaneous monetary data abstract this paper uses contemporaneous monetary data to carry out econometric tests of the equilibrium approach to modelling the relation between monetary disturbances and macroeconomic fluctuations the theoretical analysis introduces into an equilibrium macroeconomic model the availability of preliminary data on current monetary aggregates and the process of accumulation of revised monetary data the econometric analysis tests two hypothesis derived from this extended model one hypothesis concerns the neutrality of perceived monetary policy the econometric results imply rejection of this hypothesis the other hypothesis concerns the non neutrality of errors in preliminary monetary data the econometric results fail to reject the contrary of this hypothesis these tests provide strong evidence against the reality of the equilibrium approach

turnover and promotion of lawyers an inquiry into gender differences this paper analyzes the turnover and promotion of male and female lawyers using data on two cohorts of lawyers one which entered law firms between 1969 and 1973 and the other entering between 1980 and 1983 this study considers whether law firm promotion decisions have differed for women and if so whether these differences have declined over time a competing risks duration model is employed to capture the link between the lawyer s decision to stay or leave and the firm s decision to grant or deny promotion we find that over the entire sample period women are considerably less likely to be promoted and slightly more likely to leave the firm without being promoted however we also find that the parametric differential between men and women in partnership hazards has been reduced substantially and in the most general of our specifications eliminated across the two cohorts in contrast the gap between male and female job turnover rates does not appear to change over time we find that the gap between males and females in the cumulative partnership rate at seven years of experience falls from 32 to 14 percent the turnover gap increases about 0 2 percent with females slightly more likely to exit from the firm in the later period

the information content of weekly money supply announcements this paper analyzes the information content of weekly money supply announcements and the use of this information in the market determination of interest rates a short term rational expectations model of the financial market is constructed which incorporates the reaction of the federal reserve to deviations from target money supply and provides a context for analyzing the impact of announcements in the model the federal reserve attempts to maintain target growth rates in the money supply by compensating for past deviations from target announcements which contain an unanticipated movement in the money supply lead the public to expect that the federal reserve will change the rate of growth in the short run to compensate the revision of expectations about future short term money supply leads the public to revise their expectations about short term interest rates the implications of the model are empirically tested using data from a survey of expected changes in the money supply and u s treasury bill data the results support the implications of the model that is weekly money supply announcements do contain new information for the market determination of interest rates and it is only the unanticipated component of the announcement which is important

forecastable money growth revisions a closer look at the data the data for preliminary and revised u s money growth data are reexamined the findings contrast with those of the previous literature which has concluded that the data revisions behave like classical measurement errors this paper finds that the revisions are forecastable which contradicts the random measurement hypothesis as well as the efficient forecast hypothesis although ill behaved in this manner it is possible that the announcements represent observations rather than forecasts however the evidence suggests that they are a mixture of the two this finding offers a potential explanation for the failure of the data to show significant real effects of money growth revisions