wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

reassessing the gender wage gap in madagascar does labor force attachment really matter abstract in the labor economics literature it has been argued that differences in labor force attachment across gender are important to explain the extent of the gender wage gap however measures of women s work experience are particularly prone to errors given discontinuity in labor market participation using proxy measures such as potential experience may lead to biased estimates of the returns to human capital such biases cannot be ignored since these returns are used in the standard decomposition techniques to measure the extent of gender based wage discrimination by matching two original surveys conducted in madagascar in 1998 a labor force survey and a biographical survey we built a unique data set that enabled us to combine the original information gathered from each of them particularly the earnings from current employment and the entire professional trajectories our results lead to a reassessment of the returns to human capital as potential experience always exceeds actual experience for b

gender and wages a cohort study of primary school teachers this study uses cohort data to analyse the observed or gross salary differential between male and female primary school teachers the teachers in this sample who are all employed in state sector schools in the same geographic locality are observed 20 years after first entering the teaching profession the main finding is that two fifths of the differential cannot be explained by gender differences in the levels of experience qualification and mobility within our sample and so is attributed to labour market discrimination and other unobservable gender influences

women s discrimination in developing countries a new data set for better policies summary based on a new data set this paper develops two innovative indicators to measure gender inequalities in developing countries the indicators measure different aspects of constraints imposed on women by social institutions that is laws norms traditions and codes of conduct that exist in societies for centuries the paper finds that social institutions are the most important single factor determining women s participation in economic activities outside the household

interrupted work careers depreciation and restoration of human capital the quantitative effects and even the existence of a human capital depreciation phenomenon have been a subject of controversy in the recent literature prior work however was largely cross sectional and the longitudinal dimension if any was retrospective using longitudinal panel data on married women in nls we have now established that real wages at reentry are indeed lower than at the point of labor force withdrawal and the decline in wages is greater the longer the interruption another striking finding is a relatively rapid growth in wages after the return to work this rapid growth appears to reflect the restoration or repair of previously eroded human capital the phenomenon of depreciation and restoration is also visible in data for immigrants to the united states however while immigrants eventually catch up with and often surpass natives returnees from the nonmarket do not fully restore their earnings potential

selection investment and women s relative wages over time in theory growing wage inequality within gender should cause women to invest more in their market productivity and should differentially pull able women into the workforce our paper uses heckman s two step estimator and identification at infinity on repeated current population survey cross sections to calculate relative wage series for women since 1970 that hold constant the composition of skills we find that selection into the female full time full year workforce shifted from negative in the 1970s to positive in the 1990s and that the majority of the apparent narrowing of the gender wage gap reflects changes in female workforce composition we find the same types of composition changes by measuring husbands wages and national longitudinal survey iq data as proxies for unobserved skills our findings help to explain why growing wage equality between genders coincided with growing inequality within gender

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

panel estimates of male female earnings functions this paper applies single and simultaneous equation fixed effects fe and random effects re panel data estimation techniques to obtain male and female earnings function parameters using the panel study of income dynamics psid the paperfinds that earnings appreciation with experience and depreciation with labor market intermittency are comparable for men and women further skill atrophy rates increase not decrease once one controls for heterogeneity and endogeneity finally the unexplained male female wage differential declines from 40 percent to 20 percent when one adjusts for heterogeneity adjusting for endogeneity depends very much on the choice of instruments however when adjusting for endogeneity the gender earnings gap falls and approaches zero percent these results hold for two separate subsamples so that the estimates appear robust independent of sample selectivity

does marriage really make men more productive this paper presents new descriptive evidence regarding marital pay premiums earned by white males longitudinal data indicate that wages rise after marriage and that cross sectional marriage premiums appear to result from a steepening of the earnings profile data from a company personnelfile that includes information on job grades and supervisor performance ratings reveal large marital status pay differences within a narrow range of occupations managers and professionals and environments a single firm married workers tend to be located in higher paying job grades there are very small pay differentials within grades married men receive higher performance ratings than single men as a result they are much more likely to be promoted controlling for rated performance however eliminates the promotion differential sanders korenman is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at princeton university and is a faculty associate of the office of population research at princeton university and a research affiliate of the national bureau of economic research nber david neumark is an assistant professor of economics at the university of pennsylvania and a research affiliate of the nber korenman wishes to acknowledge the hewlett foundation and the harvard university center for population studies for financial support the authors are grateful to james medofffor making available an extract from the company personnelfile questions regarding data availability should be directed to professor james

rising wage inequality and the u s gender gap the u s labor market has recently experienced two dramatic trends a falling male female pay gap and a rising level of labor market inequality after decades of near constancy at about 60 percent the ratio of women s to men s pay has risen steadily since the late 1970 s at the same time there were substantial increases in overall wage inequality for both men and women lawrence f katz and kevin m murphy 1992 blau and kahn 1993 wage inequality rose both within and between education and experience groups and this has been interpreted as reflecting primarily higher returns to both measured and unmeasured labor market skills katz and murphy 1992 chinhui juhn et al 1993 this paper addresses the connection between these two important developments when analyzing gender differentials in pay economists commonly focus on malefemale differences in skills and on differences in the treatment of equally qualified men and women i e discrimination both of these may be considered gender specific factors influencing the pay gap research on these gender specific factors suggests that women tend to be less skilled than men on average and to be located in lower paying industries and occupations this in turn suggests that overall wage structure can also have an important effect on the gender pay gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labor market skills measured and unmeasured and the rents received for employment in particular sectors of the economy for example since women on average have less experience than men an increase in the return to experience as in fact occurred over the 1970s and 1980s would cause the gender pay gap to rise even if women s relative level of experience and their gender specific treatment by employers remained the same similarly an increase in the returns to employment in male occupations and industries would widen the gender differential all else equal in earlier work we found overall wage inequality to be very important in explaining international differences in the gender pay gap blau and kahn 1992 1994 in particular we addressed a paradox on the one hand u s women compare favorably to those in other countries in terms of their relative qualifications and occupational status further the united states has had a longer and often stronger commitment to equal pay and equal employment policies than most other industrialized countries yet the gender pay gap in the united states is larger than in most of these countries an important part of the explanation for this pattern is the high level of wage inequality i e high returns to skill in the united states which puts an exceptionally large penalty on being below average in the wage distribution our results suggest that the u s gap would be similar to that in countries like sweden or australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their level of wage inequality the implication of our earlier research on international differences in the gender gap is that in recent years american women have been swimming upstream in a labor market that was growing increasingly unfavorable to low wage workers in the face of this rising inequality women s relative skills and treatment have to improve merely for the pay gap to remain constant still larger gains are necessary for it to be reduced blau institute of labor and industrial relations university of illinois champaign il 61820 and nber kahn institute of labor and industrial relations university of illinois we thank claudia goldin and participants at the nber labor studies meeting and the university of illinois and cornell labor economics workshops for helpful comments and jennifer berdahl for excellent research assistance portions of this work were completed while the authors were visiting fellows at the australian national university canberra

a dynamic model of entry deterrence it has been recognized in a number of recent studies on oligopoly and potential competition that a firm may deter entry by engaging in different types of irreversible investments this paper reports on an investigation of this issue in a dynamic setting the established firm is assumed to build up a stock of knowledge and goodwill by investing in r d and sales promotion and these stocks are assumed to erode over time the established firm then has to decide whether or not to deter entry and eventually when to permit a potential competitor to enter the market

understanding the family gap in pay for women with children as the gender gap in pay between women and men has been narrowing the family gap in pay between mothers and nonmothers has been widening one reason may be the institutional structure in the united states which has emphasized equal pay and opportunity policies but not family policies in contrast to other countries that have implemented both the authors now have evidence on the links between one such family policy and women s pay recent research suggests that maternity leave coverage by raising women s retention after childbirth also raises women s levels of work experience job tenure and pay

agricultural graduate earnings the impacts of college career and gender survey data were used to identify determinants of starting and current salaries of agricultural graduates from kansas state university from 1976 97 salaries were significantly influenced by major field advanced degrees job location gender and family variables motivation for accepting a job and job mobility salary structures were estimated separately for male and female alumni women earned less than men after controlling for observed differences between the two groups decomposition of the salary differential revealed that gender salary differences were primarily due to differences between sexes in starting salaries field of study job experience and higher returns to married men careers of agricultural alumni have changed rapidly over the past several decades as the food economy has entered the information age goodman employers of agricultural graduates have increased their emphasis on computer people and teamwork related skills litzenberg and schneider andelt barrett and bosshamer given the major changes in the career expectations and experiences of agricultural alumni up to date information on salaries and career experiences is a vital ingredient for sound forward looking college and career decisions the purpose of this study is to identify and quantify the determinants of both starting and current august 1997 salaries of agricultural alumni with the use of a large survey sample of twenty two graduating classes 1976 to 1997 from the college of agriculture at kansas state university ksu this recent and extensive sample provides new insight on how starting salaries have changed over time and how sal

swimming upstream floating downstream comparing women s relative wage progress in the united states and denmark applying a new decomposition method to u s psid and danish longitudinal sample data the authors compare how u s and danish gender wage gaps developed between 1983 and 1995 in denmark they find the wage gap widened because the worsening in women s relative returns to observable human capital attributes as well as in their ranking relative to men in unobserv able productive attributes more than offset their wage gains from improved observable qualifications relative to men s in the united states in contrast the gender convergence in qualifications offset adverse influences including in creasing wage dispersion throughout the labor market to result in a narrowing of the gap the largest increase in the gap in denmark was experienced by women in the top earnings decile and the largest decline in the gap in the united states affected those at the top and in the middle of the distribution

taste based or statistical discrimination the economics of discrimination returns to its roots we briefly review the evolution of empirical work on discrimination we discuss why traditional regression based approaches neither convincingly measure market discrimination nor disentangle the relative importance of animus versus statistical discrimination in explaining such discrimination as exists we describe the development of modern correspondence studies we argue that these studies have the promise to credibly identify the presence of discrimination if not its magnitude can inform us about the underlying mechanism generating discrimination and can also point to avenues for new theoretical and empirical work on discrimination we discuss two articles with exemplary applications of these new methods at least since becker 1957 economists have been deeply interested in the presence of discrimination in markets in the 1970s and into the 1980s there was an active debate in the literature about whether discrimination was better described by becker s taste based discrimination model or by arrow and phelps statistical discrimination model that debate gave way to a theoretical literature that advanced each model separately and to an empirical literature focused on documenting the presence of disparities and the effects of policies designed to counteract discrimination only recently has the literature returned to the question of whether taste based or statistical discrimination is a more appropriate description of the phenomenon the two articles that follow are good examples of the move towards an understanding of the mechanisms underlying discrimination in this article we attempt to place the literature s recent direction into context and to show how it is a natural place for economists studying discrimination to arrive given where we began in the economics of discrimination becker explored ways in which individual tastes for discrimination might interact in a market setting to produce discriminatory outcomes for market participants becker described three models each considering a different source of discriminatory tastes employers co workers and customers the economics of discrimination included deep insights about discrimination becker clarified the distinction between individual tastes for discrimination and market discrimination he clarified the difference between segregation and market discrimination and he showed how the market might produce incentives for those with discriminatory tastes to avoid interaction with those towards whom they harbour animus 1

litigation costs and returns to experience we develop a model linking maximum damage awards available to plaintiffs in wrongful termination lawsuits workers propensity to sue as a function of experience and returns to experience using equal employment opportunity commission data on protected worker discrimination complaints and labor market data from the current population survey we examine how returns to experience among protected workers changed around the passage of the civil rights act of 1991 we show that employers reactions to employment protections may induce redistributive effects furthermore these effects operate not merely across groups of differing protected status but also within groups of identical protected status

the trend in the male female wage gap in the united states despite the rise in the feminist movement the enactment of equal opportunity legislation and the rapid increase in women s labor force participation a substantial sex differential in wages has persisted in the united states for at least 4 decades measured by hourly earnings of year round workers this wage gap was 31 in 1955 widened to a 35 37 range by the 1960s and early 1970s and then narrowed to 33 by 1982 this paper examines the extent to which changes in the characteristics of men and women in the labor force and other factors can account for the observed pattern the main finding is that increases in women s labor force participation were initially associated with a declining skill level of employed women relative to employed men where skill is measured by years of schooling and job tenure more recently the work experience of employed women has been increasing which helps account for the recent narrowing trend in the wage gap during the 1970s the wage gap probably woul have narrowed m

assortative marriage and the effects of government homecare subsidy programs on gender wage and participation inequality we develop a model of the labor market where firms incur an adjustment cost when one of their workers quits and males and females form households assortatively by skill we show how this environment can lead to an economy where females earn less and drop out more frequently than equally skilled males in equilibrium even when males and females constitute ex ante identical populations we then examine how different government homecare subsidy schemes may affect such gender inequality in the labor market we show that the effect of government homecare subsidy schemes on gender inequality depends crucially on the form in which the subsidy is given and to whom it is allocated

women and affirmative action abstract this paper reviews evidence indicating that as it has been enforced so far affirmative action has contributed negligibly to women s progress in the workplace affirmative action can be modeled as a tax on employers whose female employment growth falls below a certain rate clearly if labor supply shifts result in female employment growth greater than the regulatory standard the tax constraint will not be binding as we shall see this may help explain an affirmative action program that is generally ineffective for women although it has been effective for minorities federal anti bias policies in general and the system of affirmative action goals in particular have been accused of instituting employment quotas this paper reviews evidence on the homogenization of the workplace predicted by the quota theory as well as considering more direct evidence on whether affirmative action goals are really quotas in lambs clothing i shall also review the slim evidence on the most fundamental and co

the distribution of the male female earnings differential 1970 1990 the authors examine the male female earnings differential between 1970 and 1990 their objective is to provide consistent estimates that can be compared and interpreted over time and to assess the sensitivity of their results to alternative specifications the authors find that women made modest gains over the period standard decomposition techniques reveal that gender differences in observable characteristics do not explain much of the earnings differential most of the improvement in women s relative earnings has come by a decline in the unexplained component the authors also find that the differential varies systematically across age and education groups and across high and low income women coauthors are dwayne benjamin andree desaulniers and mary grant

the wages of motherhood better or worse data from two british cohort studies show that women with children have lower wages than childless women we develop an innovative decomposition of this family gap the crude pay gap between mothers and childless women in their thirties was similar in 1978 and 1991 but low pay in part time work became more important in explaining this gap and human capital less so we find that among full time employees women who broke their employment at childbirth were subsequently paid less than childless women in contrast mothers who maintained employment continuity were as well paid as childless women but neither were as well remunerated as men copyright 1999 by oxford university press

a theory of expropriation and deviations from perfect capital mobility there are many reasons why commodity trade fails to equate the rewards to factors of production in different countries consequently there is an incentive for factor movements between countries while movements of factors especially capital are important in the world economy they have not been sufficient to equate factor returns among countries the failure of capital flows to equate returns to capital is frequently attributed to political risks and left outside the sphere of economic analysis specifically investments abroad especially in ldc s are said to be more subject to the risk of expropriation or at least to unpredictable changes in the tax and exchange control regime adopted by the host country fears of foreign investors have often been realised williams i975 estimates that about 20 of the value of foreign investments carried into or made during i956 72 in ldc s was expropriated without compensation in this period in the past researchers in disciplines other than economics have been responsible for most of the analysis of expropriations we argue that an important set of economic considerations affect the nature of these impediments to capital mobility and this paper provides a theory of expropriation based on maximising behaviour by host countries and investors we use this theory to identify industry and national characteristics increasing the threat of expropriation and implying large deviations from equal returns on capital and to examine host country and home country policies minimising distortions from the threat of expropriation three broad conclusions follow from the analysis first the threat of expropriation can significantly distort the international allocation of capital even if the act of expropriation is relatively rare in the extreme acts of expropriation would never occur in a world of perfect foresight and rational decision making yet actions by investors to ensure that countries do not expropriate would be distorting second the ability of a country s government to expropriate foreign investments may actually reduce its welfare furthermore a host may be better off if home governments can retaliate against an expropriating country indeed an increase in the penalty imposed on an expropriating country may increase its welfare a government s power to expropriate after investments are made may alasdair smith and an associate editor made numerous valuable suggestions we would also like to thank g m grossman r w jones l a sjaastad n h stern and j e stiglitz for comments much of eaton s work on this paper was completed while he was a visitor at the graduate institute for international studies geneva an earlier version of this paper appeared under the same title as rpds

the gender pay gap fringe benefits and occupational crowding using data from the 1991 national longitudinal survey of youth the authors estimate earnings equations for each of seven occupational categories and the aggregate sample when fringe benefits are excluded from the compensation measure a gender coefficient is statistically significant that is women are found to have received significantly lower compensation than men within six of the seven occupational categories the exception being the most female dominated category when an index of compensation that includes fringe benefits is used however a gender coefficient is significant in only one category which contains relatively heterogeneous jobs gender specific regressions are used to estimate what part of the earnings gap between men and women is due to differences in traits the results indicate that occupational assignment is the primary determinant of the pay gap a result that is consistent with a crowding explanation of that gap

growth entry and exit of firms a dynamic model of industry equilibrium is presented which shows how growth entry and exit of firms are interrelated by taking into account the fact that a firm s profitability is to some degree subject to random shocks the simultaneous occurrence of entry and exit can be explained formally in addition by also taking internal growth costs into account it is shown that excess profits can persist in long run equilibrium even in perfect competition and with constant returns to scale the model is consistent with the facts that industry growth comes mainly from existing firms and that most firms grow at rates which do not systematically depend on their scale of operations i introduction

worker effort decisions and efficient gender specific wage tenure profiles i introduction during the past thirty years women have increased their labor force participation female labor market intermittency has decreased and women s total labor market experience and years of tenure with the current employer have increased what these trends imply about the evolution of the gender gap in wages depends in part on gender differences in returns to tenure it is therefore surprising that economists have all but ignored the empirical finding that women have higher returns to tenure than do men over a significant portion of their working lives one reason why this finding has been ignored or treated as an anomaly may be the lack of theoretical constructs which predict an inverse gender gap in returns to tenure several labor market models predict that women should have lower returns to tenure than men human capital theory offers the most frequently cited explanation of flatter earnings profiles for female workers according to human capital theory gains from specialization and exchange lead to one household member specializing in home production and the other in market work since only women bear children historically the outcome of the exchange has been that women have specialized in home production indeed all surveys of time use indicate that women spend on average two to three times as long on housework as men as a consequence of this allocation women anticipate intermittent labor force participation and fewer years overall in the labor force than men this pattern too is borne out in national surveys which invariably find shorter average tenure and fewer total years of labor market experience for women than for men women typically have shorter completed job spells as well hall 1982 table 5 presents evidence that the gender gap in completed job duration is quite large he estimates that 63 8 percent of men but only 49 6 percent of women hold jobs with eventual tenure of at least five years with 37 3 and 15 1 percent of men and women respectively holding jobs with eventual tenure of at least twenty years because of the greater intermittency and shorter anticipated work history for women than men women will find it optimal to acquire less human capital than men 1 lesser quantities of general human capital tends to flatten both the observed earnings experience profile and the observed earnings tenure profile two factors contribute to this pattern first skills deteriorate during periods out of the labor market as in mincer and polachek 1974 which flattens the earnings experience profile for women relative to men second women anticipating discontinuous work histories select into occupations with flatter earnings profiles to minimize the penalty to labor force withdrawals as in polachek 1981 the effects of firm specific human capital on gender differences in wage tenure profiles vary across models for example kuhn 1993 constructs an elegant game theoretic model of gender differences in training and wages if women have a higher exogenous exit rate than men in equilibrium they will be placed in jobs with lower levels of firm specific training with a positive relation between training and productivity and a common share rate of the costs and benefits of specific training for men and women the wage tenure profiles of men will be steeper than those for women in contrast becker and lindsay 1994 argue that firm specific human capital leads to higher returns to tenure for women than men becker and lindsay assume that men and women have the same level of firm specific training however women have greater variance in their opportunity cost of remaining with a firm and so are more likely than men to separate inefficiently by giving women a greater share of both the costs and benefits of firm specific human capital through a steeper wage tenure profile firms reduce undesirable turnover although human capital arguments dominate the literature on gender differences in the labor market other models of wage growth predict flatter wage tenure profiles for women

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

the quiet revolution that transformed women s employment education and family the modern economic role of women emerged in four phases the first three were evolutionary the last was revolutionary phase i occurred from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s phase ii was from 1930 to 1950 phase iii extended from 1950 to the late 1970s and phase iv the quiet revolution began in the late 1970s and is still ongoing three aspects of women s choices distinguish the evolutionary from the revolutionary phases horizon identity and decision making the evolutionary phases are apparent in time series data on labor force participation the revolutionary phase is discernible using time series evidence on women s more predictable attachment to the workplace greater identity with career and better ability to make joint decisions with their spouses each of these series has a sharp break or inflection point signifying social and economic change these changes moreover coincide by birth cohort or period the relationship between the development of modern labor economics and the reality of women s changing economic role is explored the paper concludes by assessing whether the revolution has stalled or is being reversed women who graduated college in the early 1980s did not opt out but recent cohorts are too young to evaluate this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

distributional changes in the gender wage gap using panel study of income dynamics psid data the authors analyze changes in wage differentials between white men and women over time and across the entire wage distribution the authors decompose distributional changes in the gender wage gap to assess the contribution of observed characteristics measuring individual productivity they find that the gender wage gap narrowed by 16 at the lowest decile and by less than 5 at the highest decile the decomposition results indicate that changes in the gender wage gap are mainly attributable to changes in educational attainment at the top of the wage distribution with a sizable part due to work history changes at the bottom the findings further reveal that the accuracy of the results depends on the direction in which the decompositions are performed

lowering standards to wed spouse quality marriage and labor market responses to the gender wage gap this paper examines the effect of the female to male wage ratio relative wage on women s spouse quality marriage and labor supply over three decades exploiting task based demand shifts as a

limit price entry prevention when complete information is lacking abstract this paper extends an earlier paper by the author in which there were two economic agents an established firm and a potential entrant operating under complete information each agent being assumed to know the profit functions of both firms the present paper extends some of the results of the earlier work to a model in which it is not known with certainty to either agent what the profit functions would be after the entrant would come into the market

trends in the male female wage gap the 1980s compared with the 1970s 1 introduction an interesting pattern emerges when contrasting men s and women s wage growth in the 1970s and 1980s from 1979 to 1989 female wages grew 1 7 per annum faster than male wages this wage growth in the 1980s resulted in a 17 narrowing of the gender wage gap on the other hand from 1969 to 1979 female wages grew at a rate only 0 39 per year faster than male wages resulting in very little narrowing of the gender wage gap blau 1998 as noted by smith and ward 1989 these contrasting trends puzzled many because it is well known that female work behavior shot up more dramatically in the 1970s than in the 1980s if female wage growth is related to increasing labor force activity one would have expected the male female wage gap to narrow more in the 1970s than in the 1980s the purpose of this paper is to identify some of the reasons why the male female wage gap narrowed more quickly in the 1980s than in the 1970s despite a deceleration of the growth in female labor force activity in the 1980s what appears to be the case is that predominantly younger and less experienced females entered the labor force in the 1970s the entry of women with relatively little human capital brought down the growth in women s average human capital o neill 1985 so that despite the upsurge of women s labor force participation in the 1970s women s average human capital relative to men s increased more slowly in the 1970s than in the 1980s this relatively slower growth in women s human capital appears to have played itself out in the 1980s both because the number of women joining the labor force slowed and because women s labor force attachment as measured by the proportion of potential work years actually worked increased blau 1998 with these trends average female human capital increased in the 1980s resulting in greater overall wage gains because of the stark differences between the 1970s and 1980s this paper concentrates on distinguishing the factors that contribute to men s and women s wage growth in the two decades despite the substantial literature on the male female wage gap the interdecade difference in the trend has not been adequately examined in what follows this paper uses the panel study of income dynamics psid to illustrate the effects of the demographic changes alluded to above 1 first it presents wage trends for the 1970s and 1980s second it provides direct measures of changes in human capital growth within each decade third to illustrate the importance of these demographic trends especially how new young labor market entrants bring down wages it shows that the higher relative female wage growth in the 1980s is reduced and the relatively slower female wage growth in the 1970s is enhanced when one controls for individual human capital characteristics these effects are illustrated first by including actual experience type variables in a regression whose coefficients measure wage growth and second by eliminating new entrants from 1970s and 1980s regression analysis the paper shows that with these controls increases in female average growth in both the 1970s and 1980s were more comparable than previously thought 2 recent literature on trends in the male female wage gap this is not the first paper to recognize the trend in male female wage convergence o neill 1985 blau and beller 1988 smith and ward 1989 goldin 1990 katz and murphy 1992 wellington 1993 o neill and polachek 1993 blau and kahn 1997 and blau 1998 all note that women s wages have risen relative to men smith and ward 1989 find that female relative wages rose between 1920 and 1980 when adjusting for worker skills goldin 1990 piecing together various data sources finds a similar long term narrowing according to her the ratio of female to male earnings in the economy as a whole rose from 0 46 to 0 56 during the period 1890 to 1930 but was virtually stable from 1950 to around 1980 p

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

empirical models of political risks in u s oil production operations in venezuela in 9 of the years between 1961 and 1978 venezuelan regimes took actions adverse to the profitability of u s oil companies local production operations in this study 2 time series discriminant models were developed for classifying each of the 18 years according to the occurrence of such action in the first model adverse government action was found more likely to occur following years of economic decline and periods when u s companies earned high profits from petroleum investments in venezuela in the second model government action tended to occur after periods of relative deprivation experienced by venezuelans to illustrate the use of discriminant models in forecasting political risks hypothetical scenarios were formulated from which projections were made through 1985 of the likelihood of government action against those u s oil companies operations remaining since the nationalization of petroleum

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

convergence in the gender wage gap in australia over the 1980s identifying the role of counteracting forces via the juhn murphy and pierce decomposition the paper utilises the juhn murphy and pierce 1991 decomposition to shed light on the pattern of slow male female wage convergance in australia over the 1980s the analysis allows one to distinguish between the role of wage structure and genderspecific effects the central question addressed is whether rising wage inequality counteracted the forces of increased female investment in labour market skills i e education and experience the conclusion is that in contrast to the us and the uk australian women do not appear to have been swimming against a tide of adverse wage structure changes

gender differences in pensions the causes of gender differences in pensions are examined for retirees and employees using the 1982 newly entitled beneficiary survey and the 1979 and 1988 may current population surveys for both retirees and the employed population much of the gender gap in coverage is accounted for by gender differences in labor market characteristics while children and marriage have a negative effect on female coverage among retirees even after controlling for labor market characteristics the negative effect is not observed among more recent groups of female employees finally recent convergence of male and female labor market characteristics contributed to a decline in the coverage gap during the 1980s

an analysis of women s return to work decisions following first birth women s labor force participation has increased sharply over the last two decades particularly for married women with young children this suggests women are spending less time out of the labor force for child bearing and rearing using the detailed information available in the nlsy i explore women s decisions to return to work within one year of their first child s birth focusing on the effect of child care costs consistent with economic theory women facing lower child care costs are more likely to return to work as are women with higher potential wages and lower family income from other sources jel j0

strategic entry deterrence in analyzing deterrence of large scale entry two classes of entry barriers may be distinguished an innocent entry barrier is unintentionally erected as a side effect of innocent profit maximization in contrast a strategic entry barrier is purposely erected to reduce the possibility of entry two types of innocent barriers may also be distinguished a postentry absolute advantage has the property that if entry did occur the established firm would be at a profit advantage over the entrant examples are superior technology or product design patents and lower input prices a preentry asymmetry advantage arises from the fundamental preentry asymmetry between established firm and potential entrant before the entrant makes his entry decision the established firm has already committed resources this prior existence gives first move advantages the preentry asymmetry is independent of symmetry or asymmetry in the rules the equilibrium concept of the postentry game that might ensue even if the postentry game will be played according to nash cournot or entrant as leader rules the preentry leadership

community college enrollment college major and the gender wage gap the literature on the narrowing of the gender wage gap during the 1980s considers among other factors the closing of the male female differential in post secondary education this paper looks specifically at the role played by the dramatic relative increase in women s enrollment in two year colleges with independent cross sections developed using nlsy data the authors find that the gender wage gap narrowed by 0 0469 log points between 1985 and 1990 and by 0 0932 log points between 1989 and 1994 the more pronounced decrease observed for 1989 94 is largely explained by erosion of male female differences in weeks worked job tenure and full time employment a more novel finding is evidence that while change in the quantity of education provides essentially no explanatory power disaggregating education by two year and four year providers and by major field of study accounts for 8 5 11 of the closing of the wage gap over the 1989 94 period

why are the returns to schooling higher for women than for men many studies have found that the impact of schooling on earnings is greater for females than for males despite the fact that females tend to earn less both absolutely and controlling for personal characteristics this study investigates possible reasons for this effect using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 one explanation is that education appears to have a double effect on the earnings of women it increases their skills and productivity as it does with men and in addition it appears to reduce the gap in male and female earnings attributable to factors such as discrimination tastes and circumstances the latter appear to account for about half of the differential in the returns to schooling

the impact of unionization on male female earnings differences in canada the impact of unionization on male female earnings differences in canada is analyzed using data spanning 1981 to 1988 a period in which the male female unionization gap narrowed considerably gender differences in union density union wages and nonunion wages are decomposed into characteristics related and discriminatory components we find that the drop in the gender unionization gap prevented an increase of 7 percent in the overall wage differential between men and women also male female earnings differences in the nonunion sector make a substantially larger contribution to the gender earnings gap than do those in the union sector

dynamic entry deterrence in the uk pathology services market this paper describes work on a dynamic model of entry deterrence applied to the uk national health service nhs market for pathology services the model based on a game theoretical framework is concerned with decision support applications presented in this paper is a case study analysis of a geographical region in which a provider of pathology services is concerned at the prospect of being exposed to competition from a new entrant the incumbent provider may undertake strategic investments to create a stock of knowledge and goodwill with the intention of dissuading others from entering the market the effect of a new entrant is modelled as perturbation of a pre existing stable nash cournot equilibrium in an oligopolistic market and is influenced by market forces subject to government regulation the original contribution of this study is to identify the nature of these potential strategic investments and their interaction with cash flows recent historical data and managerial analysis are used to characterise market growth an estimate of the incumbent provider s market share which is at risk can be found by examining the local geographical distribution of providers and purchasers of pathology services on the basis of this analysis we propose a method for obtaining the strategic investment profile which minimises the total investment required to deter entry

fixed costs limit pricing and investments in barriers to entry abstract the paper analyses how investments in r d and sales promotion can give rise to barriers to entry it is argued that the classification of barriers to entry suggested by j s bain is not very suitable for a theoretical analysis and an alternative classification is suggested this alternative classification is then used to treat the so called niche production concept

in search of the glass ceiling gender and earnings growth among u s college graduates in the 1990s gender typical educational choices and the glass ceiling are widely believed to explain why older women earn far less than observably similar men using large panels drawn from the national science foundation s nsf national survey of college graduates and other data representative of u s college graduates from the 1990s the author documents the small role of personal choices and finds evidence contrary to the predictions of both human capital and discrimination models rather than the differential wage growth rates predicted by these models she finds similar average rates of earnings growth for women and men across numerous specifications which suggests that the gender gap in earnings is determined by factors already present early in the career her findings reveal slower earnings growth in only two subsets of women young mothers who experience slower earnings growth during the early career relative to men the same age but then compensate with faster growth later in their careers and women wit

the feasibility and importance of adding measures of actual experience to cross sectional data collection we use michigan panel study of income dynamics data and data from a 2008 telephone survey of adults conducted by westat for the princeton data improvement initiative pdii to explore the importance and feasibility of adding retrospective questions about actual work experience to cross sectional data sets we demonstrate that having such actual experience data is important for analyzing women s postschool human capital accumulation residual wage inequality and the gender pay gap further our pdii survey results show that it is feasible to collect actual experience data in cross sectional telephone surveys like the march current population survey s annual supplement

interindustry wage differentials and the gender wage gap using data from the march 1988 current population survey the authors find that the wages of female workers differ significantly by industry even when the analysis controls for workers productivity related characteristics although these interindustry wage differentials are at least as large as men s and are highly correlated with them as well there are statistically significant differences between the two of the overall gender wage gap the average female worker earns about 65 as much as the average male worker 12 22 can be explained by differences between the patterns of interindustry wage differentials of men and women and 15 19 by differences in the distribution of male and female workers across industries thus the combined industry effects explain about one third of the overall gender wage gap

changing levels or changing slopes the narrowing of the gender earnings gap 1959 1999 once educational attainment and other observable characteristics have been controlled for studies show that the gender wage gap among adult full time workers is about half the size it was in 1980

the dynamics of changes in the female wage distribution in the usa a quantile regression approach this paper examines the female wage structure focusing on changes at different points in the wage distribution newly developed quantile regression methods are used in analysing data from the march current population survey the results show that while the most significant changes for the less skilled women took place at the bottom of the wage distribution for the more skilled groups changes occurred at both ends of the distribution consequently wage inequality decreased for the high school graduates and increased for the younger college graduates furthermore the more highly skilled women experienced the steepest gain in wages regardless of their position in the distribution 1998 john wiley sons ltd

fertility at work children and women s labor market outcomes in urban ghana abstract while it is commonly assumed that fertility decreases female labor supply i show theoretically that fertility can increase female labor supply if returns to financial inputs in children are sufficiently high compared to returns to time investments using six rounds of a panel survey from urban ghana i find evidence of countervailing effects behind a net zero effect of young children on women s hours of work labor supply on the extensive margin drops but women who remain in the labor force increase their hours in response to a child women s labor supply particularly increases in response to a young child if there are older siblings or other adults in the household by contrast men s labor supply does not change in response to young children

expropriation of foreign direct investments empirical evidence and implications for the debt crisis the message from the empirical tests is the following first we were not able to support the public interest hypothesis stating that selective expropriations are driven by a national welfare calculus with costs and benefits directly related to the technological characteristics of foreign firms instead the hypothesis that governments decide on expropriations with regard to their political self interest seems to be more appropriate this is true if we look at more widespread expropriations that are unspecific in terms of technological standards industries the main factor that drives politically motivated expropriations is the poor overall economic performance of a country which reinforces earlier findings e g picht 1988 351

consequences of seniority wages on the employment structure the author examines seniority wage profiles in german establishments to discern hiring patterns with respect to age and sex using the country s linked employer employee dataset liab over the per

women s lifetime labor supply and labor market experience the pattern of joining the labor force only at an advanced stage of the life cycle was widespread among american women in the 1960s and 1970s but not since the 1980s to explain this change we conduct a theoretical analysis of the interrelation between women s lifetime labor supply choices and the dynamic macroeconomic environment in our model women choose the late entry pattern only at early stages of the growth process when wages are sufficiently low and grow sufficiently rapidly as the economy grows this lifetime labor profile vanishes and women either join the labor force either early in life or not at all

credit market competition and the gender gap in labor force participation evidence from local markets abstract we exploit the exogenous variation in regional credit market competition brought on by banking deregulation to study the evolution of the gender gap in labor force participation in local us markets we find that intrastate deregulation increased substantially female labor force participation rates owing to three separate mechanisms an increase in the rates of net job creation by private firms an expansion of services producing sectors and an increase in the share of jobs requiring female specific skills this effect is robust to controlling for a range of socio economic developments as well as for a us wide gender specific trend overall intrastate deregulation reduced the gender gap in labor force participation by at least 7 5

do single mothers face greater constraints to workforce participation in non metropolitan areas increasing workforce participation among single mothers is the primary goal of recent welfare reform measures this article shows that increased workforce participation in the mid to late 1990s led to improvements in the economic well being of non metropolitan and metropolitan area families headed by single mothers differential benefits and costs of workforce participation of single mothers in non metropolitan and metropolitan areas are then examined single mothers are found to face lower costs to workforce participation and receive lower hourly earnings in non metropolitan areas than in metropolitan areas young children do however raise workforce participation costs more in non metropolitan areas copyright 2003 oxford university press

gender wage differences in malaysia parametric and semiparametric estimation this paper is an empirical study on the labor force in peninsular malaysia parametric and semiparametric estimated wage equations which correct for sample selection bias are used to assess the returns to education and extent of gender discrimination to estimate in the semiparametric case the wage equation intercept which is needed for the oaxaca wage decomposition consistently we apply the newly developed andrews schafgans andrews d w k schafgans m m a 1998 semiparametric estimation of the intercept of a sample selection model review of economic studies 65 497 518 estimator the results suggest that discrimination favoring men in malaysia is still quite prevalent while for malays the sons of the soil the strong level of discrimination favoring malay men is negated by the semiparametric estimation results

women in the labor market and in the family t here are two themes in this paper the first an exercise in revisionist history argues that the conventional wisdom of an absence of any substantial labor market progress for women is mistaken instead throughout this century women s wages have been steadily rising relative to those of men a progress likely to accelerate in the next few decades our second theme contends that this labor market progress is not enough alongside their labor market advances the relative economic plight of many women is worsening the downside news is the increasing feminization of poverty a reflection of the growing instability of the american family

trends in the well being of american women 1970 1995 this paper examines the trends in the well being of american women over the last 25 years a time of significant changes in the relative economic status of women and in the labor market as a whole a broad range of indicators are considered to capture changes in women s well being in the family as well as in the labor market for virtually all age and education groups substantial evidence is obtained of rising gender equality in labor market outcomes notably labor force participation wages and occupational distributions broad evidence is also found of greater gender parity within married couple families as the housework time of husbands increased relative to wives and the relative wages of wives rose compared to their husbands however parallel to the recent evidence of the declining labor market position of lower skilled men there has been a similar deterioration in the economic status of less educated women especially high school dropouts their labor force participation rates and wages have risen at a much slower pace than those of more highly educated women while their incidence of single headship has increased much more rapidly these findings for less educated women serve to underscore the widening gap between more and less skilled americans of both sexes as well as to emphasize its broad dimensions

the earnings and employment of nurses in an era of cost containment previous research has shown that from the 1980s through the early 1990s nurses enjoyed substantial wage and employment gains that stemmed to some extent from increased labor demand using individual data for 1988 98 to compare nurses fortunes with those of college educated women and other workers in the health care industry the author documents that nurses experienced a decline in real wages beginning in the early 1990s at the same time that the skill premium for rns as reflected by the return to education and experience was increasing changes in measured characteristics and their returns explain very little of the decline consistent with the theory that the relative wage decrease was driven by a decline in the demand for rns and increased cost constraints the effects of hmo penetration are found to explain only a small part of the variation in wages across metropolitan statistical areas and across time

persistence of occupational segregation the role of the intergenerational transmission of preferences this article provides an explanation of the evolution and persistence of the women s segregation in jobs with less on the job training opportunities within the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of preferences job priority and family priority preferences are considered firms policy and the distribution of women s preferences are endogenously and simultaneously determined in the long run the results show though the gender gap in training will diminish it will also persist over time this is because both types of women s preferences coexist at the steady state due to the socialisation effort of parents to preserve their own cultural values

a structural explanation of recent changes in life cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the united states abstract this study documents and explains important changes in the life cycle labor supply and fertility behavior of married women in the united states from the 1950s to more recent cohorts the younger cohorts relative to the 1950s supply more labor at earlier stages of the life cycle delay motherhood to later stages without reducing the fertility rate and upon childbearing show a greater tendency to stay out of the labor force in a life cycle model for married couples in which a household makes decisions on fertility as well as labor supply consumption and savings all the behavioral changes are jointly and quantitatively explained by a combination of changes in various labor supply fertility determinants with the increased returns penalties to work non work experience being the dominant contributor the results survive a series of robustness tests including endogenizing education choice and assortative marriage

gender discrimination without gender difference theory and policy responses abstract this paper provides an explanation for the continued existence of gender discrimination in competitive labour markets and analyzes the effects of policies designed to alleviate it unlike previous explanations of gender discrimination this theory arises from the interaction between women and men within the household and does not rely on inherent asymmetries between women and men even though discrimination is seen to be related to factors which can be thought external to the labour market such as higher job turnover and labour market exit rates for women policies which target only labour market outcomes and do not deal with external factors can both lead to reduced discrimination and also alter external factors thereby reducing discrimination further however policies aimed at external factors will in general be less effective in reducing discrimination unless combined with more direct policies

the effects of the 1978 pregnancy discrimination act on female labor supply this article analyzes the effects of the 1978 pregnancy discrimination act pda on the labor force participation rates of married women by estimating a dynamic model of labor force participation results show that the pda increased the labor force participation rate of pregnant women by 8 2 percentage points of women with a child less than one year old by 3 4 percentage points and of women with older children by 1 5 percentage points counterfactual policy simulations show that the provision of unpaid leave will increase the labor force participation rate of women with older children by an additional 3 7 percentage points

the price of experience we identify a key role of factor supply driven by demographic changes in shaping several empirical regularities that are a focus of active research in macro and labor economics in particular demographic changes alone can account for the large movements of the return to experience over the last four decades for the differential dynamics of the age premium across education groups emphasized by katz and murphy 1992 for the differential dynamics of the college premium across age groups emphasized by card and lemieux 2001 and for the changes in cross sectional and cohort based life cycle profiles emphasized by kambourov and manovskii 2005 jel d91 e24 i23 j11 j24 j31