physical appearance and earnings further evidence the literature contains numerous studies on earnings differentials based on age race and gender comparatively few studies have examined differences in labour market success related to physical appearance using three waves of data collected at two organizations this paper tested for earnings differentials among workers based on their self reported appearance significant earnings premiums for attractiveness were found for women but not for men

physical appearance and wages do blondes have more fun abstract this study contributes to the economics literature that links physical characteristics to labour market outcomes by investigating the influence of hair colour on women s own wages and also their spouse s wages using u s panel data we find that blonde women receive large wage premiums

the economic value of teeth abstract this paper examines the effect of oral health on labor market outcomes by exploiting variation in fluoridated water exposure during childhood the politics surrounding the adoption of water fluoridation by local governments suggests exposure to fluoride is exogenous to other factors affecting earnings exposure to fluoridated water increases women s earnings by approximately 4 percent but has no detectable effect for men furthermore the effect is largely concentrated amongst women from families of low socioeconomic status we find little evidence to support occupational sorting statistical discrimination and productivity as potential channels with some evidence supporting consumer and possibly employer discrimination

devaluation and the j curve some evidence from ldcs within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance it is argued that the flows of goods respond only with time lags to changes in the exchange rate the j curve terrn is used to describe the movement over time of the trade balance it may deteriorate at first and improvement may come later this paper presents a method by which one could detect the existence of the j curve the method is applied to four developing countries the empirical evidence supports the pattern of movemnent described by the j curve a major policy option for a country facing a persistent balance of payments deficit is said to be devaluation of its currency within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance or the balance of payments for example proponents of the elasticities approach describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for an improvement in the trade balance in terms of elasticities of demand and supply referred to as the marshall lerner condition while there is abundant empirical evidence to suggest that these conditions are indeed met at least for industrial countries there have been circumstances under which 2 devaluation has not been successful for example one might wonder why the u s trade balance deteriorated so much in 1972 despite the devaluation of the dollar in 1971 this unfavorable effect of devaluation on the trade balance is termed the j curve phenomenon received for publication august 23 1984 revision accepted for publication november 26 1984 the university of wisconsin milwaukee i would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the initial draft of this paper 1 proponents of the absorption approach e g alexander 1952 describe how devaluation may change the terms of trade increase production and switch expenditures from foreign to domestic goods thus improving the trade balance international monetarists argue that devaluation reduces the real value of cash balances and or changes the relative price of traded and nontraded goods thus improving both the trade balance and the balance of payments 2 for an cstimate of the elasticities see houthakker and magee 1969 and warner and kreinin 1983 the former study provides the elasticities estimates under fixed exchange rates and the latter under floating rates this content downloaded from 157 55 39 17 on wed 31 aug 2016 04 39 37 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms

the impact of body weight on occupational mobility and career development this paper examines the relationship between individuals weight and their employment decisions over the life cycle i estimate a dynamic stochastic model of individuals annual joint decisions of occupation hours worked and schooling the model allows body weight to affect non monetary costs switching costs and distribution of wages for each occupation and also allows individuals employment decisions to affect body weight i use conditional density estimation to formulate the distributions of wages and body weight evolution i find that heavier individuals face higher switching costs when transitioning into white collar occupations earn lower returns to experience in white collar occupations and earn lower wages in socially intensive jobs simulating the model with estimated parameters decreased occupational mobility accounts for 10 percent of the obesity wage gap while contemporaneous wage penalties for body weight are small the cost over the life cycle is substantial an exogenous increase in initial body mass by 20 percent leads to a 10 percent decrease in wages over the life course

is there a penalty for registered women is there a premium for registered men evidence from a sample of transsexual workers abstract in this paper we study the earnings of transsexual workers using a large administrative sample drawn from the dutch labor force in particular we make two comparisons first we compare transsexual workers to other women and men and find that they earn more than women and less than men second we compare transsexual workers before and after their administrative gender transition and find that male to female transsexual workers earn less as registered women and female to male transsexual workers earn as much if not marginally more as registered men these patterns hold for annual and hourly earnings and do not change when we account for individual fixed effects together our results are consistent with a labor market model in which transsexual workers are discriminated against as a registered female as well as a lgbt worker

the colorblind crowd founder race and performance in crowdfunding the dearth of minority entrepreneurs has received increasing media attention but few academic analyses in particular the funding process creates challenges for either audit or correspondence methods making it difficult to assess the role or type of discrimination influencing resource providers we use a novel approach that combines analyses of 7 617 crowdfunding projects with an experimental design to identify whether african american men are discriminated against and whether this reflects statistical taste based or unconscious bias on the part of prospective supporters we find that african american men are significantly less likely than similar white founders to receive funding and that prospective supporters rate identical projects as lower in quality when they believe the founder is an african american male we conclude that the reduction in perceived quality does not reflect conscious assumptions of differences in founder ability or disamenity but rather an unconscious assumption that black founders are lower quality in two additional experiments we identify three means of reducing this bias through additional evidence of quality via third party endorsements i e awards evidence of prior support through evidence that african american founders have succeeded previously and by removing indicators of the founder s race the online appendix is available at https doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2017 2774 this paper was accepted by toby stuart entrepreneurship and innovation

beauty and the labor market the authors examine the impact of looks on earnings using interviewers ratings of respondents physical appearance plain people earn less than average looking people who earn less than the good looking the plainness penalty is 5 to 10 percent slightly larger than the beauty premium effects for men are at least as great as for women unattractive women have lower labor force participation rates and marry men with less human capital better looking people sort into occupations where beauty may be more productive but the impact of individuals looks is mostly independent of occupation suggesting the existence of pure employer discrimination copyright 1994 by american economic association

skills in the city this paper documents the allocation of skills across cities and estimates the impact of agglomeration on the hedonic prices of worker skills we find that large cities are more skilled than are small cities but only to a modest degree we also show that the increase in productivity associated with agglomeration as measured by the urban wage premium is larger for workers with stronger cognitive and people skills in contrast motor skills and physical strength are not rewarded to a greater degree in large cities urbanization thus enhances thinking and social interaction rather than physical abilities these results are robust to a variety of estimation strategies including using nlsy variables that control for worker quality and a worker msa fixed effect specification

tests for parameter instability in regressions with i 1 processes this article derives the large sample distributions of lagrange multiplier lm tests for parameter instability against several alternatives of interest in the context of cointegrated regression models the fully modified estimator of phillips and hansen is extended to cover general models with stochastic and deterministic trends the test statistics considered include the supf test of quandt as well as the lm tests of nyblom and of nabeya and tanaka it is found that the asymptotic distributions depend on the nature of the regressor processes that is if the regressors are stochastic or deterministic trends the distributions are noticeably different from the distributions when the data are weakly dependent it is also found that the lack of cointegration is a special case of the alternative hypothesis considered an unstable intercept so the tests proposed here may also be viewed as a test of the null of cointegration against the alternative of no cointegration the tests are applied to three data se

the impact of obesity on wages abstract previous studies of the relationship between body weight and wages have found mixed results this paper uses a larger data set and several regres sion strategies in an attempt to generate more consistent estimates of the effect of weight on wages differences across gender race and ethnicity are explored this paperjnds that weight lowers wages for white females ols esti mates indicate that a difference in weight of two standard deviations roughly 65 pounds is associated with a difference in wages of 9 percent in absolute value this is equivalent to the wage effect of roughly one and a half years of education or three years of work experience negative cor relations between weight and wages observed for other gender ethnic groups appear to be due to unobserved heterogeneity i introduction several previous studies have found among females a negative cor relation between body weight and wages there exist three broad categories of ex planations for this finding the first explanation is that obesity lowers wages for example by lowering productivity or because of workplace discrimination the sec ond is that low wages cause obesity this would be true if poorer people consume

determinants of international trade flows this paper models and estimates import demand and demand for export functions for 19 industrial countries although primary emphasis is placed on the period of generalized floating exchange rates 1972 through 1980 estimates are also provided for the fixed exchange rate years 1957 1970 thus making possible a comparison between the two eras aside from the conventional income and price variables the paper assesses the effect of variations in the exchange rate and in the expected exchange rate on real trade flows additionally it estimates an unrestricted lag structure of the effect of price and exchange rate variations on imports

the right look conservative politicians look better and voters reward it previous research has established that good looking political candidates win more votes we extend this line of research by examining differences between parties on the left and on the right of the political spectrum our study combines data on personal votes in real elections with a web survey in which 2 513 non finnish respondents evaluated the facial appearance of 1 357 finnish political candidates we find that political candidates on the right are better looking in both municipal and parliamentary elections and also have a larger beauty premium in municipal but not in parliamentary elections we discuss possible explanations for these patterns based on the fact that municipal candidates are relatively unknown jel code d72 j45 j70

education choices and returns on the labor and marriage markets evidence from data on subjective expectations in this paper we analyze the role of expected labor and marriage market returns as determinants of the college enrollment decisions of mexican high school graduates moreover we investigate whether the relative weights of these factors differ by gender we use data on individuals expectations regarding future labor market outcomes which we directly elicited from the youths and two different measures of marriage market returns first marriage market returns are proxied by the net supply of potential partners in the youths local marriage markets second we use data which elicits youths beliefs about their future spouse s earnings conditional on their own education level we find that labor market as well as marriage market returns are important determinants of the college enrollment decision however boys and girls preferences differ in terms of the relative role of the two determinants in that the relative weight of labor market versus marriage market returns is larger for boys than for girls

the determinants of earnings a behavioral approach we survey the determinants of earnings and propose a framework for understanding labor market success we suggest that the advantages of the children of successful parents go considerably beyond the benefits of superior education the inheritance of wealth or the genetic inheritance of cognitive ability we suggest that noncognitive personality variables such as attitudes towards risk ability to adapt to new economic conditions hard work and the rate of time preference affect both earning and the transmission of economic status across generations

beauty in the classroom are german students less blinded putative pedagogical productivity due to professors pulchritude peculiar or pervasive given that instructional student ratings measure differences in pedagogical productivity this study examines whether perceived attractiveness of german university teachers impact on these differences apart from some refinements and adjustments to idiosyncracies of the german system of higher learning the quantitative analysis widely follows the strategy of the seminal work by hamermesh and parker 2005 based on us data in comparison to findings for the usa perceived attractiveness of teachers is found to have if at all only a weakly significant and quantitatively less important impact on the evaluation outcomes

short criminals stature and crime in early america abstractwe consider the extent to which an individual s height affected the age at which he entered into criminal activity in early america using data on prisoners incarcerated in pennsylvania s nineteenth century prisons we show that prisoners were short relative to the contemporary population then using weibull continuous time duration econometric models we show that age at entry into criminal activity was negatively associated with an individual s height after controlling for several individual characteristics the results are consistent with recent research showing that shorter individuals face less attractive legitimate labor market opportunities because lower stature is associated with lower cognitive ability and because of general discrimination against shorter people

determinants of international trade flows the case of developing countries abstract the question of magnitude and the time path of the trade flows to changes in the exchange rates and to changes in the price level is of emitent practical importance to assess the above proposition a distributed lag structure is imposed on the relative prices and on the effective exchange rate as the determinants of trade flows then import and export demand functions are estimated for a sample of developing countries using the almon procedure the empirical findings appeared to sustain orcutt s early conjecture that trade flows adjust differently to different price stimuli more precisely it was found that imports and exports reactions were quicker and the total response time was shorter when an exchange rate rather than relative prices caused a change in international prices

labor market consequences of poor attitude and low self esteem in youth in a recent national survey that asked employers to rank the importance of particular applicant traits for nonsupervisory and production positions applicant s attitude was the only trait that was reported to be very important in fact academic performance years of schooling completed teachers recommendations and industry based credentials certifying applicant skills all ranked lower bowles et al 2000 a second independent survey of employers in holzer and wissoker 2000 also suggests that more weight is placed on a good attitude than on basic skills among new hires of low skilled workers in this article i assess the role of pre labor market attitude and self esteem in explaining disparities observed in the labor market experiences of a sample of high school graduates the apparent importance employers ascribe to attitude and self esteem gives clear reason to expect that such a relationship exists i demonstrate that such survey responses are corroborated by real economic consequences for those with poor attitude and self esteem using longitudinal data on a 1972 cohort of high school graduates i show that high school students who reveal negative attitudes and self esteem subsequently attain fewer years of postsecondary education relative to their high school cohort are less likely to be employed 14 years following high school and where working for pay earn less accounting directly for the labor force participation decision i also document a higher incidence of unemployment among these individuals furthermore i find evidence that negative attitudes and self esteem are associated with jobs later in life that require the individual to spend time working with things as opposed to people for example and that those who exhibit poor pre labor market attitude and self esteem are subsequently more closely supervised at work and given less discretion in their daily activities all told attitude and self esteem in youth are shown to have important and long lasting economic implications in the following section i briefly discuss related literatures specifically two areas of the literature are considered the effect of joblessness on self esteem and the relationship between other noncognitive skills or worker attributes and labor market outcomes section ii then introduces the data and methods used in investigating the relationships in question empirical results are reported in section iii and are followed by some discussion and concluding remarks i previous literature this article is closely related to two areas of existing literature first there exists a small body of literature that documents a relationship between labor market activity and self esteem however this literature has heretofore focused more on the damage of joblessness to an individual s perception of self worth than on the direction of causality considered here for example goldsmith et al 1995 1996a find relationships between contemporaneous joblessness and self esteem and historic joblessness and subsequent self esteem respectively arguably the causality between attitudes and jobless spells is not clearly in one direction or the other in this article i contribute clear evidence of the reverse causation causation running from attitude and self esteem to future labor market outcomes second there is a growing body of literature on the importance of noncognitive skills in wage determination this literature suggests that measures of aggression and withdrawal osborne 1999 individual motivation goldsmith et al 2000 behavioral problems in high school cawley et al 2001 one s locus of control or outlook on life goldsmith et al 1997b osborne 1999 bertrand and mullainathan 2001 coleman and deleire 2003 and mental health bartel and taubman 1979 1986 frank and gertler 1991 mullahy and sindelar 1993 each have predictive power with respect to wages that employer surveys suggest that attitude is highly valued alone leads one to anticipate that attitude be related to earnings

crude oil prices and exchange rates causality variance decomposition and impulse response abstract this paper examines the short run and long run dynamic relationship between the u s imported crude oil prices and exchange rates the monthly data of the u s crude oil imports from five source countries during january 1996 and december 2009 are examined empirical results indicate that the exchange rates granger caused crude oil prices in the short run while the crude oil prices granger caused the exchange rates in the long run furthermore oil prices were affected by the exchange rate changes at a minimal level however in the medium run and the long run oil price shocks had a significant impact on exchange rate changes exchange rate shock has a significant negative impact on crude oil prices while the impulse response of the exchange rate variable to a crude oil price shock was statistically insignificant finally the impact of extreme price volatility in june 2008 on exchange rates was significant when world oil prices are stabilized currency fluctuations and uncertainty can be minimized

the rise of obesity in europe an economic perspective obesity in europe is rising this paper investigates the economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity we present new empirical evidence showing that family background is related to obesity among young european adults this evidence provides a strong basis for intervention on equity grounds particularly targeted towards children the case for intervention on efficiency grounds is less clear cut and in most cases the evidence is relatively weak we find insufficient evidence that information deficiencies are important as the majority of europeans appear to be aware of the bad consequences of obesity on health we also find that the potential health insurance externality non obese effectively subsidizing obese individuals is small in support of policy intervention we show that there are product and labour market imperfections obese employees earn less than the non obese we also find that there is a remarkably high proportion of individuals with self control problems who fail to stick to their self declared weight related plans regulations that affect fast food advertisements and the location and access to fast food vending machines and establishments may help these individuals in controlling their weight giorgio brunello pierre carl michaud and anna sanz de galdeano

intermarriage and the labor market outcomes of asian women the impact of intermarriage with natives on labor market outcomes of immigrants is not homogeneous across ethnic groups wages of asian women are compared with non asians both ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimates of the effects of intermarriage on the wages of asian women are negative and significant non asian women earn a wage premium that becomes insignificant when controls for selection into marriage are introduced one possible explanation for the intermarriage penalty for asians is an income effect of having a high earning native husband intermarriage penalties rise with husband s education assimilation patterns of intermarried asians indicate that they have lower initial wages market hours and employment but exhibit faster rates of growth over their years of stay the results are robust across asian subgroups and husband s ethnicity jel j16 j12 j31 j61

stature skills and adult life outcomes evidence from indonesia abstractwe investigate the effect of height on earnings occupational choices and a subjective measure of wellbeing among indonesian men we explore the extent to which height captures the effects of endowments set before entry in the labour market physical and cognitive skills co determined with stature early in life do not explain much of the height earnings premium directly yet human capital more broadly including cognition educational attainment and other factors related to childhood conditions explains around half of the height premium and does so through occupational sorting indeed taller workers tend to have more education and educated workers tend to work in more lucrative occupations that require brain and social skills not brawn the unexplained share of the height earnings premium may reflect a specific role of stature on social interaction labour market advantages or self assurance we also find a height premium in happiness half of which simply accounts for the educational and e

astronomics in action the graduate earnings premium and the dragon effect in singapore white u s and latin american currencies portray images of national independence heroes singapore s 2 dollar bill the most widely circulated since there is no smaller denomination shows students in a classroom listening to a professor with a university in the background underneath there is just one word education singapore s obsession with education miami herald 8 september 2009 i introduction since the groundbreaking work of mincer 1974 many academics have looked closely at the question of what the return to education might be 1 however because of the lack of data the literature does not have much to say about singapore even though a lot of research has been done for advanced countries throughout the world 2 3 in this paper we employ a recent survey from the singapore national youth council to study one aspect of this topic the return to university education in singapore having a university education is usually perceived to be good for one s career although the extent to which this is true has been a constant point of contention 4 this debate had relied largely on anecdotes instead of econometric research understandably so because data is not easily available therefore this paper hopes to offer some evidence on the causal link between university education and earnings outcome in singapore however identification is a formidable challenge as in any research that aims to estimate the return to education although the positive association between education and earnings is a virtually ubiquitous fact prima facie evidence of income gaps may misrepresent what the true return to education is because individuals tend to make educational choices according to their abilities such income gaps would contain not only the return that is due to education the quantity of interest but also the return on unobserved abilities which is the confounding effect over the years economists have sought to disentangle the causal effect of education from the confounding effect of unobserved abilities in the data but the existing estimation approaches are not easily adaptable here for example methods that employ within twin comparisons or changes in compulsory schooling laws cannot be implemented owing to data limitations and the lack of important schooling reforms in singapore 5 in fact the dataset used here was compiled for a different purpose than economics which is to provide a better understanding of singapore s youths from a sociological perspective given these issues a new estimation approach has to be considered in this paper we propose to exploit a consequence li liu and zhang 2012 of chinese traditions generating the so called dragon effect to study the causal link between university education and income in singapore chinese is the largest ethnic group and malays indians and eurasians are the main ethnic minorities according to chinese traditions there are 12 creatures in the chinese zodiac where each represents a lunar year in a 12 year cycle among them the dragon is the most auspicious creature and babies born in a dragon year are believed to be superior 6 because of this conviction the dragon year has seen upswings in the rate of birth not just in singapore but also in places where chinese culture is prevalent 7 for example figure 1 plots the birth rate from 1970 in singapore based on resident women aged between 15 and 49 8 while the fertility rate was plunging early on it did increase momentarily during the dragon year of 1976 there was another sharp increase in 1988 9 and then in 2000 which marks the highly auspicious year of the golden dragon figure 1 omitted the positive relationship between the birth rate and the dragon year provides the rationale behind the identification strategy used here as the dragon cohort is larger than usual competition for entry into university would be more intense leading to what is known as the dragon effect

desperation or desire the role of risk aversion in marriage i introduction attitudes toward risk are an important determinant of a vast array of decisions such decisions include ones with a big impact on life the choice of education the choice of career investment decisions and even when and if to get married or divorced most empirical studies of behavior implicitly assume risk preferences are identical across households such a research strategy undoubtedly results in appreciably different predictions of behavior than would occur if risk preferences are permitted to vary while an increasing number of surveys are asking respondents questions that allow for construction of a measure of interpersonal variation in risk that is based on economic theory there is still a paucity of empirical studies that explicitly investigate the impact of risk preferences on behavior 1 i use information on risk preferences from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 nlsy79 to predict how interpersonal variation in these preferences affects the time to marriage decision because of the uncertainty inherent in searching for a partner and the uncertainty of the future quality and state of the marriage itself risk attitudes likely directly impact the timing of marriage risk preference variables are constructed from a series of hypothetical gambles over lifetime income that were offered to respondents in the nlsy79 i examine how the risk preference variables affect the hazard rate into marriage and find that the more risk averse marry sooner l also exploit sibling data from the nlsy79 to examine the robustness of the empirical results by controlling for unobserved family effects that might be correlated with risk attitudes and find qualitatively similar results in addition i find that risk preferences affect the timing of marriage differentially for the sexes with a larger and more statistically significant effect of risk preferences on the hazard rate into marriage for men one possible explanation for this finding is that women value risk aversion as a desirable characteristic in a spouse to explore this possibility i analyze spouse characteristics by the risk aversion of the respondent i find that spouse quality in terms of education and other measurable traits is generally lower for more risk averse men than for more risk loving men this finding is in accordance with a prediction of a search model the reservation price is decreasing in risk aversion spouse quality of more risk averse women is usually but not always lower than for more risk loving women suggesting that the effect of a woman s own risk aversion on time to marriage may be more complex than suggested by a search model overall the results suggest that risk preferences have some causal influence on the timing of marriage whether it be from a supply side standpoint such as in the case of a basic search model or from a demand side standpoint where risk aversion is a desirable trait this article contributes to a sparse literature that employs empirical measures of risk aversion many of these studies ask how demographic characteristics affect risk attitudes 2 a few ask how these measures of risk aversion affect behaviors like the propensity to smoke or invest in risky assets 3 these studies are however cross sectional and do not employ survival analysis as does this article to my knowledge only two existing studies light and ahn 2008 schmidt 2008 employ an empirical measure of risk aversion to investigate the relationship between risk preferences and the marriage market schmidt focuses on fertility but also considers marital timing of employed women and light and abn focus on divorce timing the findings of both studies are consistent with mine 4 my study adds to schmidt s by considering all women and men and exploring the differences between the genders including a discussion of how spousal characteristics might differ by the risk aversion of respondents

viewpoint replication in economics this examination of the role and potential for replication in economics points out the paucity of both pure replication checking on others published papers using their data and scientific replication using data representing different populations in one s own work or in a comment several controversies in empirical economics are used to illustrate how and how not to behave when replicating others work the incentives for replication are examined and proposals aimed at journal editors and authors are advanced that might stimulate an activity that most economists applaud but few perform

beauty productivity and discrimination lawyers looks and lucre we propose models with an ascriptive characteristic generating earnings differentials and causing sectoral sorting allowing us to distinguish among sources producing such differentials we use longitudinal data on a large sample of graduates from one law school and measure beauty by rating matriculation photographs 1 betterlooking attorneys who graduated in the 1970s earned more than others after 5 years of practice an effect that grew with experience 2 attorneys in the private sector are better looking than those in the public sector differences that rise with age these results support theories of dynamic sorting and customer behavior

self affirmation through the choice of highly aesthetic products just as good looks bestow an unconscious beauty premium on people high aesthetics bestows an unrecognized benefit on consumer goods specifically choosing a product with good design affirms the consumer s sense of self choice of a highly aesthetic product was compared with choice of products superior on other attributes including function brand and hedonics to show that only aesthetics influences a consumer s personal values in study 1 a prior self affirming task leads to a decrease in choice share of a highly aesthetic option studies 2 and 3 mimic prior research on self affirmation with however choice of a highly aesthetic product replacing a traditional self affirmation manipulation choosing a product with good design resulted in increased openness to counter attitudinal arguments and reduced propensity to escalate commitment toward a failing course of action there are numerous implications of this form of self affirmation from public policy to retail therapy

the effects of openness trade orientation and human capital on total factor productivity abstract we study the effects of openness trade orientation and human capital on total factor productivity for a pooled sample of developed and developing countries total factor productivity emerges from a parsimonious specification of the aggregate production function potential determinants of total factor productivity include measures of openness trade orientation and human capital higher openness benefits total factor productivity outward oriented countries experience higher total factor productivity over and above the positive effect of openness human capital generally contributes positively to total factor productivity in poor countries however human capital interacts with openness to achieve a positive effect

what drives the formation of global oil trade patterns abstract in this paper the spatial characteristics of current global oil trade patterns are investigated by proposing a new indicator moran f meanwhile the factors that influence the formation of oil trade patterns are identified by constructing four different kinds of spatial econometric models the findings indicate that most oil exporters have an obvious export focus in north america and a relatively balanced export in europe and the asia pacific region besides supply and demand factors technological progress and energy efficiency have also significantly influenced the oil trade moreover there is a spillover effect of trade flow among different regions but its impact is weak in addition oil importers in the same region have the potential to cooperate due to their similar import sources finally promotion of oil importers r d investments can effectively reduce the demand for global oil trade

fund raising success and a solicitor s beauty capital do blondes raise more funds abstract this study uses a door to door fund raising field experiment to explore the returns to physical appearance on fund raising success interestingly blonde females earn more on average than brunette counterparts however the returns to physical appearance depend critically on the race of a potential donor

the dynamic relationship between the dollar and components of u s trade the dynamic response of the nominal trade account to changes in the value of the u s dollar has been posited to follow a j curve pattern recent experience calls this into question the aggregate nominal trade balance is decomposed here into four components both prices and volumes of imports and exports time series specification tests and granger tests of causal priority are employed to identify the existence and nature of the response of each individual component to dollar movements surprisingly weak and delayed responses of both import prices and volumes are found suggesting a new view of trade balance evolution

beauty and the sources of discrimination we analyze discrimination against less attractive people on a tv game show with high stakes the game has a rich structure that allows us to disentangle the relationship between attractiveness and the determinants of a player s earnings unattractive players perform no worse than attractive ones and are equally cooperative in the prisoner s dilemma stage of the game nevertheless they are substantially more likely to be eliminated by their peers even though this is costly we investigate third party perceptions of discrimination by asking subjects to predict elimination decisions subjects implicitly assign a role for attractiveness but underestimate its magnitude

is more always better a survey on positional concerns abstract we use survey data to provide some empirical information about concerns regarding relative standing respondents chose between a world where they have more of a good than others and one where everyone s endowment of the good is higher but the respondent has less than others questions asked about education attractiveness and intelligence for one s child and oneself income vacation time approval and disapproval from a supervisor and papers to write half of the respondents preferred to have 50 less real income but high relative income concerns about position were strongest for attractiveness and supervisor s praise and weakest for vacation time

the j curve revisited an empirical examination for the united states abstract this paper examines empirical evidence for trade prices and quantities for the united states to determine whether j curve effects have occurred in recent history empirical estimates of exchnage rate pass through and trade volume responses to exchange rate changes for the 1967 to 1987 period indicate that the often told tale of trade balance deterioration and then improvement the j shaped adjustment path has not typically been experienced by the united states expenditures on imports have typically increased following dollar depreciations primarily as a result of relatively inelastic import volume responses export earnings have been seen to rise only marginally during these same dollar depreciations due to increases in export prices and the subsequent reductions induced in export volume the long run merchandise trade balance adjustment path is seen to resemble a sine wave rather the a j

can gender parity break the glass ceiling evidence from a repeated randomized experiment this paper studies whether the gender composition of recruiting committees matters we make use of the unique evidence provided by spanish public examinations where the allocation of candidates to evaluating committees is random we analyse how the chances of success of 150 000 female and male candidates for positions in the four main corps of the spanish judiciary from 1987 to 2007 were affected by the gender composition of their evaluation committee we find that a female male candidate is significantly less likely to be hired whenever she he is randomly assigned to a committee where the share of female male evaluators is relatively greater evidence from multiple choice tests suggests that this is due to the fact that female majority committees overestimate the quality of male candidates

exchange rate of the us dollar and the j curve the case of oil exporting countries abstract this study examines the effects of changes in the exchange rate of the us dollar on the trade balances of three oil exporting countries namely iran venezuela and saudi arabia an exchange rate pass through model is applied to allow changes in the exchange rate of the dollar to affect prices of traded goods then the impact of changes in prices on the quantities of imports and exports of these economies is estimated the results suggest a partial exchange rate pass through to these countries import and export prices in terms of the us dollar while the three countries raise the price of their primary export namely crude oil in response to a depreciation of the dollar saudi arabia s long run pricing strategy in securing a larger market share stands in contrast to that of the two other opec members the sum of the estimated long run price elasticities of demand for imports and exports is found to exceed unity for iran and venezuela but less than unity for saudi arabia

why do married men earn more productivity or marriage selection injae lee using data from the current population survey march supplement 1999 this study examines why married men earn more than men who have never married we find that the marriage wage premium cannot be attributed to the unobservable higher earnings capability of married men instead wage gains from marriage are explained by the degree of specialization within the household our findings cast doubt on the argument that the selection of high ability men into marriage is the cause of the marriage wage premium jel j12 j31 i introduction labor economists have devoted considerable effort to explaining why married men earn higher wages than men who have never married a number of theoretical hypotheses have been advanced to explore the nature of this marriage wage premium the dominant theory is the productivity hypothesis which argues that marriage makes men more productive becker 1991 married men have greater opportunities to specialize in labor market activities when their wives specialize in home production the marriage wage premium reflects a productivity gap between married and never married men stemming from different conditions for human capital accumulation in market work a competing argument is the selection hypothesis nakosteen and zimmer 1987 1997 this reverses the direction of causality proposing that men with a higher earnings capability are valued more in the marriage market and are thus more likely to marry the marriage premium mirrors the marriage selection pattern married men are more productive not because they become more productive after marriage but because they were more productive before marriage 1 while there is compelling evidence that married men have higher earnings than never married men hill 1979 the relative merits of the productivity and selection arguments in explaining the existence of the marriage premium remain to be established nakosteen and zimmer 1987 argue that the marriage premium is a statistical artifact arising from a sorting process in which high wage males tend to be selected into marriage when selection effects are accounted for in their wage regression the marriage premium remains numerically large but becomes statistically insignificant however korenman and neumark 1991 show that the selection hypothesis is an incomplete explanation of the marriage premium they find that less than one half of the marriage premium vanishes when unobservable individual factors affecting both wages and marriage are removed the remaining premium is interpreted as the productivity enhancing effects of marriage later studies examine the validity of the productivity explanation using measures for the household division of labor such as a wife s labor market hours and the number of children in the household the studies investigate the effects of household specialization on a husband s earnings according to the productivity hypothesis men whose wives specialize in home production should have a larger premium than men whose wives work in the labor market the evidence for this is mixed daniel 1992 and gray 1997 find that the marriage premium is negatively associated with the wife s labor market hours whereas loh 1996 and jacobsen and rayack 1996 find little evidence that the marriage premium is explained by productivity differences past work tries to clarify the relationship between marriage household specialization and a husband s earnings but it does not allow us to reach an empirical consensus about the cause of the marriage premium in this article we present a new empirical framework to test the relative merits of two competing but not mutually exclusive hypotheses first we develop a switching regression model with endogenous marriage selection the selection hypothesis is founded on the premise that a man s attractiveness as a potential mate depends upon his observed earnings as well as unobservable individual traits that are positively related to his earnings potential

estimating long run economic equilibria with stochastic trends an asymptotic theory is provided to analyze a menu of currently existing estimators of cointegrated systems we study in detail the single equation ecm seecm approach of hendry our theoretical results lead to prescriptions for empirical work such as specifying seecm s nonlinearly and including lagged equilibrium relationships rather than lagged differences of the dependent variable as covariates simulations support these prescriptions and point to problems of overfitting not encountered in the semiparametric approach of phillips and hansen 1990

why beauty matters we decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where employers determine wages of workers who perform a maze solving task this task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness we find a sizable beauty premium and can identify three transmission channels a physically attractive workers are more confident and higher confidence increases wages b for a given level of confidence physically attractive workers are wrongly considered more able by employers c controlling for worker confidence physically attractive workers have oral skills such as communication and social skills that raise their wages when they interact with employers our methodology can be adopted to study the sources of discriminatory pay differentials in other settings

skin tone effects among african americans perceptions and reality hourly wage and employment status using the nsba and the mcsui lighter skin tone is clearly associated with higher employment rates for women and higher educational attainment for both women and men the employment rate for women with very dark skin tone in the nsba is strikingly lower than for women with lighter skin tone in contrast evidence that skin tone affects wages is limited for both sexes in both datasets those in the light category have the highest average hourly wage but this value is significantly different from those with darker skin only for men in the nsba furthermore the pattern for women based on the mcsui does not show an increasing wage from darker to lighter skin tone but instead shows that women in the medium skin tone category have the lowest average wage

specification of supply behavior in international trade supply behavior in international trade has been notoriously difficult to capture empirically indeed so few published supply studies exist that stern francis and schumacher s 1976 bibliographical survey of price elasticities in international trade devotes over 350 pages to demand estimates but barely 10 pages to supply estimates in recent years only goldstein and khan 1978 and dunlevy 1980 using simultaneous equation estimation techniques have reported estimates of supply behavior in international trade exogenous shocks to demand and supply for traded goods in general influence both quantity and price for supply estimates it is unclear a priori whether the response is more appropriately specified with quantity or price as the dependent variable however if supplying firms in an uncertain world pursue pricing strategies based on past market performance as in zabel 1981 the appropriate specification is a supply price equation in this case prices respond to lagged quantities which implies that the traditional supply quantity specification with present and past prices as explanatory variables cannot capture the dynamic supply behavior in this study we explore the hypothesis that previous attempts to estimate supply behavior have generally failed not only because of the well known problem of simultaneity bias but also because quantity rather than price was specified as the dependent variable section ii presents and discusses traditional supply quantity equations based on quarterly data for aggregate exports and imports for the united kingdom and the united states from 1947 to 1979 section iii briefly discusses the theoretical rationale of a supply price specification and presents estimates of supply price equations based on the same data section iv evaluates the empirical evidence to determine whether a supply quantity or supply price formulation is more appropriate and compares estimates of long run price elasticities of supply based on the two approaches a final section summarizes the conclusions

height skills and labor market outcomes in mexico abstract taller workers are paid higher wages a prominent explanation for this pattern is that physical growth and cognitive development share childhood inputs inducing a correlation between adult height and two productive skills strength and intelligence this paper explores the relative roles of strength and intelligence in explaining the labor market height premium among mexican men while cognitive test scores account for a limited share of the height premium roughly half of the premium can be attributed to the educational and occupational choices of taller workers taller workers obtain more education and sort into occupations with greater intelligence requirements and lower strength requirements suggesting a possible role for cognitive skill

the craft of labormetrics using a wide array of examples from the literature and from original estimates the author examines the pitfalls that make good empirical research in labor economics at least as much craft as statistical technique among the subjects discussed are the appropriateness and cleanliness of data problems of extreme observations the validity of attempts to produce exogeneity using instrumental variables natural experiments and structural models and the treatment of selectivity and unobservable individual effects the author stresses the importance of testing empirical results to ensure that they make sense and of presenting them clearly and economically

hard to get the scarcity of women and the competition for high income men in urban china reports of the difficulties of elite women in finding suitable mates have been increasing despite the growing availability and value of men in china we rationalize this leftover women phenomenon within the directed competitive search framework which uniquely allows for equilibrium crowding out within this framework we show that the leftover women phenomenon can be the result of women s aversion to men who have a lower income than themselves hereafter alm and the long predicted complementarity between women s non market traits in particular beauty and male earnings for high income h women even when high income h men are more plentiful and richer the direct effect of the greater number of desirable men can be overwhelmed by the indirect effect of competitive entry by low income l women particularly the beautiful we test for these competitive search effects using online dating field experimental census and household survey data consistent with the competitive entry of l women when sex ratio and h men s income increase the search intensity of beautiful l women for h men increases in response to this competitive entry plain h women who are constrained by their alm to search predominantly for h men also increase the search intensity however only their marriage probability decreases our evidence is consistent with intra female competitive search for spouses who can cover the labor market opportunity cost of marriage and childbirth which increases with a woman s income

weight discrimination in the german labour market abstractwe explore the effects of higher body mass index bmi or obesity on different labour market outcomes we extend the present literature by investigating the effect of obesity on i promotion likelihood and ii unemployment duration in addition to the effect on iii wages and iv probability of being employed we find an obesity penalty on wages employment likelihood promotion likelihood and unemployment duration among females in germany taking into account of endogeneity of bmi and sample selection we are also able to identify an unexplained effect of obesity on wages employment and promotion likelihood for females using decomposition techniques that can be attributed to weight discrimination

matching and sorting in online dating using data on user attributes and interactions from an online dating site we estimate mate preferences and use the gale shapley algorithm to predict sta ble matches the predicted matches are similar to the actual matches achieved by the dating site and the actual matches are approximately efficient outof sample predictions of offline matches i e marriages exhibit assortative mating patterns similar to those observed in actual marriages thus mate pref erences without resort to search frictions can generate sorting in marriages however we underpredict some of the correlation patterns search frictions may play a role in explaining the discrepancy

marriage and the city search frictions and sorting of singles this paper develops and tests a model where cities play an important role as marriage markets the idea is simple cities are dense areas where singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas to enjoy those benefits they are willing to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices once married the benefits from meeting more potential partners vanish and married couples move out of the city attractive singles benefit most from a dense market and are therefore more likely to move to the city those predictions are tested and confirmed with a unique danish data set

the effect of adolescent experience on labor market outcomes the case of height taller workers receive a wage premium net of differences in family background the disparity is similar in magnitude to the race and gender gaps we exploit variation in an individual s height over time to explore how height affects wages controlling for teen height essentially eliminates the effect of adult height on wages for white men the teen height premium is not explained by differences in resources or endowments the teen height premium is partially mediated through participation in high school sports and clubs we estimate the monetary benefits of a medical treatment for children that increases height

statistical discrimination productivity and the height of immigrants building on the economic research that demonstrates a positive relationship between height and worker ability the author compares wage returns to height for immigrants and for natives to explore possible explanations for the positive wage height gradient using multiple data sets the article presents a robust empirical finding that the wage gains associated with height are almost twice as large for immigrants as for native born individuals this wage relationship occurs because the productivity gap between tall and short immigrants is greater than the productivity gap between tall and short native born workers the author next tests for the possibility that in the relative absence of other sources of information about immigrants employers place more importance on height for immigrants than for native born individuals the evidence does not support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination based on height

height and earnings the role of cognitive and noncognitive skills we use large scale register data on 450 000 swedish males who underwent mandatory military enlistment at age 18 and a subsample of 150 000 siblings to examine why tall people earn more we show the importance of both cognitive and noncognitive skills as well as family background and muscular strength for the height earnings relationship in addition we show that a substantial height premium remains after these factors have been accounted for which originates from very short people having low earnings this is mostly explained by the sorting of short people into low paid occupations which may indicate discrimination by stature

trust and credit the role of appearance in peer to peer lending although it is well known that appearance based impressions affect labor market and election outcomes little is known about the role appearance plays in financial transactions we address this question using photographs of potential borrowers from a peer to peer lending site consistent with the trust intensive nature of lending we find that borrowers who appear more trustworthy have higher probabilities of having their loans funded moreover borrowers who appear more trustworthy indeed have better credit scores and default less often overall our findings suggest that impressions of trustworthiness matter in financial transactions as they predict investor as well as borrower behavior a man i do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in christendom john pierpont morgan 1913 the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oup com oxford university press

an empirical examination of the structural stability of disaggregated u s import demand we present three related types of evidence on u s import demand first aggregate import demand is reestimated for comparison with previous research second we provide updated estimates of import demand for five economic classes crude foods crude materials manufactured foods semi manufactures and finished manufactures finally each of these import demand functions is tested for any evidence of structural instability and in those cases where instability is detected the demand equations are reestimated along the lines suggested by the stability tests copyright 1989 by mit press

marital matching and earnings evidence from the unmarried population in sweden social scientists have devoted substantial research to economic basis for matching of men and women in marriage a common feature of existing studies is their reliance on samples of married couples the principal shortcoming of spouse data is that spouses earnings correlations are contaminated by the partners behaviors and other events that occur after marriage and affect their earnings this study addresses that problem by exploiting a longitudinal data file from the swedish population by selecting a sample of married couples in a given year we retreat through the file to years before the marriage using data from the spouses single years we apply the correlation methodology to their earnings evidence from the model supports positive assortative mating

gender bias and credit access we extract an exogenous measure of gender bias from survey responses by descendants of u s immigrants on questions about the role of women in society we then use data on around 6 000 small business firms from 17 countries and find that in high gender bias countries female entrepreneurs are more likely to opt out of the loan application process and to resort to informal finance even though banks do not appear to actively discriminate against them these results are not driven by credit risk differences between female and male owned firms or by any idiosyncrasies in the set of countries in our sample

effects of physical activity on earnings in the brazilian labor market abstract this article investigates the effects of physical activity on earnings in the brazilian labor market analyzing workers aged between 30 and 50 years to that end quantile regression was applied to analyze microdata from the 2008 national household sample survey pnad the results showed that workers who engage in regular physical exercise exhibit better social and economic conditions compared to sedentary individuals sedentary lifestyles are typically more common among female employees than their male counterparts and this is reflected in earnings in the labor market the impact of physical activity on wages varied from 15 0 to 31 0 and was greater among the highest quantiles the lowest salaries were recorded among non white sedentary women

exchange rates and the trade balance abstract the impact of the exchange rate on the trade balance is examined for a number of developing countries non structural techniques indicate that a depreciation of the real exchange rate is not strongly associated with a significant improvement in the trade balance