female labour supply and marital status decisions a life cycle model this paper studies the interdependence between and the determinants of life cycle marital status and labour force participation decisions of women a dynamic utility maximization model is presented and estimated using longitudinal data on women from the panel study of income dynamics the mle method employed involves solving a dynamic programming problem further a minimum distance estimator is proposed which allows for the incorporation of wage data in a computationally simple way the estimates are used to predict changes in the life cycle patterns of employment marriage and divorce due to differences in education race the female s earnings and her potential husband s earnings the estimation results indicate that the utility gains to marriage are decreasing in the female s wage rate and increasing in her potential husband s earnings while the opposite is found for gains to working ignoring the endogeneity of marital status decisions is shown to lead to an underestimation of own and husband s wage effects on female labour supply

sources of intra industry wage dispersion how much do employers matter observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation in bls industry wage surveys establishment based wage differentials controlling for occupation account for 20 70 percent of intra industry wage variation this corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean almost as large as interindustry wage variation investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital

duopolistic vertical restraints abstract in an industry where competition exists at the wholesale level vertical restraints are not necessarily desirable from the standpoint of the manufacturers when vertical restraints are employed it is never in the form of retail price maintenance but rather in the form of franchise fee pricing when the products produced by the manufacturers are only slightly differentiated the producers may benefit from the double marginalization that arises with linear pricing such double marginalization results in higher retail prices which relieve competitive pressures

the turnover of teachers a competing risks explanation in this paper we analyze the decision by teachers to leave the profession in a dependent competing risks framework the econometric model allows for a flexible semiparametric specification of the duration dependence structure and of the unobserved heterogeneity distribution in each exit specific hazard function our results obtained for a large sample of uk teachers affirm the importance of teacher salaries and opportunity wages in the turnover decision of teachers and illustrate the insight gained from differentiating between multiple destinations or exit types

explanations of the inconsistencies in survey respondents forecasts a comparison of the point forecasts and the probability distributions of inflation and output growth made by individual respondents to the us survey of professional forecasters indicates that the two sets of forecasts are sometimes inconsistent we evaluate a number of possible explanations and find that not all forecasters update their histogram forecasts as new information arrives this is supported by the finding that the point forecasts are more accurate than the histograms in terms of first moment prediction c 2009 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the effect of salaries and opportunity costs on duration in teaching evidence from michigan this paper demonstrates that salaries and opportunity costs have important influences on how long teachers stay in teaching the empirical work is based on a new longitudinal dataset providing information on the careers of 7800 michigan public school teachers the generalized least squares estimation technique accommodates censored observations time varying covariates and fixed effects one implication of the result is that predictions from the current generation of teacher supply and demand models are likely to be misleading copyright 1989 by mit press

how vouchers could change the market for education small probability that vouchers will in the foreseeable future be adopted on a large scale in any school district or state at the moment only three states have adopted publicly funded voucher programs and all of these programs are limited in scale nonetheless in recent years over 40 state legislatures have considered proposals to provide some type of voucher program or tuition tax credit for at least some families in a given state or school district and the children s scholarship fund see http www scholarshipfund org has helped create or expand privately funded voucher programs in numerous cities as vouchers become a more significant part of education policy debates the time is right to consider what we know and do not know about the likely effects of adopting various voucher schemes in the balance of this paper i describe both empirical and theoretical work on education that speaks to this topic i argue that we cannot confidently predict the outcomes that would result from various voucher schemes and i also stress that debates over vouchers per se are not informative details concerning funding targeting and discretion in the use of vouchers should greatly affect the outcomes associated with any particular voucher program still empirical evidence on the performance of public versus private schools as well as numerical results from existing simulation models suggest that policymakers should be able to design voucher programs that would be helpful to minority students in large cities public schools in large cities often perform poorly in minority neighborhoods and this is especially true in economically disadvantaged areas

school board politics school district size and the bargaining power of teachers unions this paper presents a public choice theory of the bargaining power of teachers unions the theory predicts that the power of the unions rises with the size of a district the theory is tested by examining the relationship between district size and various bargaining outcomes for a sample of 771 california school districts in 1999 2000 as hypothesized teachers salaries rise and the ratio of teachers per pupil falls with increasing district size the paper also considers several alternative explanations for these results

job exit behavior of older men a dynamic programming model of job exit behavior and retirement is constructed and estimated using the method of simulated moments the model and estimation method allow for both unobserved individual effects and unobserved job specific match effects the model is estimated using two different assumptions about individual discount factors first a static model with the discount factor equal to zero is estimated then a dynamic model with the discount factor equal to 95 is estimated in both models it is found that bad health age and lack of education increase the probability of retirement the dynamic model performs better than the static model and has different implications for retirement behavior the job specific effects are an important source of unobserved heterogeneity copyright 1991 by the econometric society

coexistence of strategic vertical separation and integration abstract this paper gives conditions under which vertical separation is chosen by some upstream firms while vertical integration is chosen by others in the equilibrium of a symmetric model a vertically separating firm trades off fixed contracting costs against the strategic benefit of writing a two part tariff exclusive dealing contract with its retailer coexistence emerges when more than two vertical cournot oligopolists supply close substitutes when vertical integration and separation coexist welfare could be improved by reducing the number of vertically separating firms the scope for coexistence diminishes when assumptions on contract observability and commitment are relaxed

the quality and distribution of teachers under the no child left behind act the heart of accountability under the no child left behind nclb act is an attempt to change the existing incentives in schools with the ultimate objective that all students meet a proficiency standard existing research indicates that nothing is more important to high achieve ment as having effective teachers implying that the impact of new incentives on teachers will be central to any consideration of the accountability statutes tracing the impacts of nclb on the stock and distribution of teachers is none theless a difficult and uncertain task the belief that the quality of teachers matters a great deal to the quality of education received by students has actually proven hard to substantiate and the reasons for this difficulty are key to assessing the impacts of no child left behind a substantial body of research going back to the coleman et al 1966 report has attempted to link commonly used measures of teacher quality such as experience degree level and state teacher certification to student outcomes surprisingly except for perhaps the first few years of classroom experience no robust connection has appeared for example hanushek and rivkin 2006 review various studies attempting to identify characteristics of effective teachers one

common marketing agency as a device for facilitating collusion in a variety of markets firms voluntarily and independently delegate control over certain aspects of marketing to common agents in this article we present an explicit model of agency delegation where firms noncooperatively select agents name output prices and choose compensation schemes we exhibit an equilibrium in which all strategic variables not merely the marketing choices delegated to agents but prices as well are selected perfectly cooperatively this cooperative equilibrium is very simple and attractive each firm sets the collusive output price and employs a commission scheme to compensate the agent although each

bargaining unit composition and the returns to education and tenure using data on collectively bargained outcomes in pennsylvania schools in 1983 89 the authors find a strong relationship between the returns to education and tenure and the distribution of those attributes in the bargaining unit for instance the higher the median level of teacher tenure in a district the greater was the pay gap between teachers with low and high tenure this relationship was very strong in districts with vigorous community support for union activities and weak or nonexistent in districts with low union support the authors argue that consistent with the median voter model the unions in this study pushed hardest to advance the interests of their typical members and that they were most effective in doing so where the community was generally supportive of unions

combining economic forecasts a method for combining forecasts may or may not account for dependence and differing precision among forecasts in this article we test a variety of such methods in the context of combining forecasts of gnp from four major econometric models the methods include one in which forecasting errors are jointly normally distributed and several variants of this model as well as some simpler procedures and a bayesian approach with a prior distribution based on exchangeability of forecasters the results indicate that a simple average the normal model with an independence assumption and the bayesian model perform better than the other approaches that are studied here

on credible delegation by oligopolists a discussion of distribution channel management several papers in the recent marketing literature have suggested that delegation in distribution e g the use of independent middlemen helps manufacturers to precommit strategically to profit enhancing competitive actions further the literature suggests that the profitability of such actions depends on market structure we challenge these conclusions here this is done in two steps first we perform an analysis of the entire class of models which have been used in the literature using internally consistent assumptions about market structure and contracting the only subgame perfect equilibrium is one in which all distribution channels have infinitely many levels of delegation obviously this is not what we see in the real world next we relax a key hidden assumption namely that all intra channel agreements are observable to competitors without this assumption the usual results unravel unless channel members can offer credible guarantees that unobservable agreements do not exist the strategic effects of delegation disappear since these guarantees are virtually impossible to maintain credibly we would expect to reject the hypothesis in the earlier literature relating channel structure to competition in an empirical study controlling for observability we conclude that mechanisms other than strategic ones must be responsible for the existence of delegated channels and make some suggestions about promising avenues for future theory research in channel structure

wage tenure and wage growth variation within and across establishments we estimate employer specific wage tenure and wage growth differentials using a unique bureau of labor statistics establishment survey of full time white collar workers employer wage and tenure differentials conditional on worker characteristics are substantial in these data education potential experience and tenure are highly correlated within an establishment high wage establishments generally employ higher quality workers and the most skilled men and professionals typically work with the most skilled women and nonprofessionals there is significant variation in wage growth rates across employers and high wage growth establishments tend to have longer tenure all else equal

vertical integration in a monopolistically competitive industry abstract this paper considers forward vertical integration by a monopolist producer of an intermediate good when the downstream industry is monopolistically competitive alternative methods of vertical control are considered in addition to the usual input mark up these include franchise fees royalties and resale price maintenance it is found that these methods in combination achieve perfect or near perfect replication of the outcome under full vertical integration the case where downstream products are differentiated by location in a circular space is studied in detail and alternative outcomes are ranked according to their social desirability

the spanish retail petroleum market new patterns of competition since the liberalization of the industry in this paper we study the recent development of the spanish automotive fuels market in the context of a long process of liberalization and competition our aims are twofold first to overview the market s current patterns of competition while taking into account the political structural and strategic aspects that have marked the industry s recent evolution second to study in depth one competitive strategy that nowadays significantly influences competition and final prices the vertical relationships between operators and service stations our analysis draws attention to several indicators that may demonstrate the success of the opening and liberalization process increased levels of competition have stimulated the sector s growth development and modernization and given national firms an excellent platform for competing with newcomers furthermore studying the vertical agreements has produced interesting results we have found that relative price differences among brands increase in line with perceived quality differences and that the vertical separation of refineries and retailers eases price competition in the final market the empirical evidence was backed up with a database of 4164 spanish service stations

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

excessive retailing at the bertrand equilibria in oligopolistic markets where competition is in prices producers may prefer to be represented by agents that sell their products even if those agents do not provide any direct services to promote the sale of the product and even if contracting is costly contracting with the agents serves as a medium to relieve competitive pressures in the product market the benefit that a single firm derives from contracting is an increasing function of the number of firms that have already contracted with agents hence if the contracting cost is relatively low there exists a unique equilibrium where all firms contract with agents

the failure of input based schooling policies in an effort to improve the quality of schools governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them by concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement this paper provides a review of the us and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies it then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources finally alternative performance incentive policies are described

the bargaining power of teachers unions and the allocation of school resources abstract this paper examines how district size affects the bargaining power of teachers unions and the allocation of school resources our identification strategy exploits the fact that 33 states mandate collective bargaining while 5 states prohibited it in states that mandate collective bargaining we find that beginning salaries and the premium paid to experienced teachers increase with district size while the teacher pupil ratio declines with district size in contrast in states that prohibit collective bargaining we find a negative relationship between district size and the premium paid to experienced teachers district size also has a stronger positive effect on beginning salaries and a weaker negative effect on teacher pupil ratios in states that prohibit collective bargaining collectively our results suggest that more powerful unions bargain for more generous returns to teacher seniority at the expense of staffing ratios and base salaries

incentives work getting teachers to come to school we use a randomized experiment and a structural model to test whether monitoring and financial incentives can reduce teacher absence and increase learning in india in treatment schools teachers attendance was monitored daily using cameras and their salaries were made a nonlinear function of attendance teacher absenteeism in the treatment group fell by 21 percentage points relative to the control group and the children s test scores increased by 0 17 standard deviations we estimate a structural dynamic labor supply model and find that teachers respond strongly to financial incentives our model is used to compute cost minimizing compensation policies jel i21 j31 j45 o15

do alternative opportunities matter the role of female labor markets in the decline of teacher quality abstract this paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented using standardized test scores undergraduate institution selectivity and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality in contrast the quality of young women becoming professionals increased the roy model of self selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality

is it better to average probabilities or quantiles we consider two ways to aggregate expert opinions using simple averages averaging probabilities and averaging quantiles we examine analytical properties of these forecasts and compare their ability to harness the wisdom of the crowd in terms of location the two average forecasts have the same mean the average quantile forecast is always sharper it has lower variance than the average probability forecast even when the average probability forecast is overconfident the shape of the average quantile forecast still offers the possibility of a better forecast using probability forecasts for gross domestic product growth and inflation from the survey of professional forecasters we present evidence that both when the average probability forecast is overconfident and when it is underconfident it is outperformed by the average quantile forecast our results show that averaging quantiles is a viable alternative and indicate some conditions under which it is likely to be more useful than averaging probabil

probation length and teacher salaries does waiting pay off tenure policies for elementary and secondary school teachers is a controversial issue in many states but there is virtually no empirical evidence on how tenure affects teacher labor markets this paper begins to fill this research void by using cross state variation in tenure policies to identify the effects if any of the length of the probationary period on entry level teacher salaries using data from the schools and staffing survey the authors investigate whether districts in states with longer probationary periods offer higher wages to teachers as a way to compensate for the extended evaluative period results suggest that they do although effects are concentrated in districts that are most likely to be competing for teachers with districts in neighboring states with shorter probation periods the authors also find that the relationship between probation length and wages is stronger for experienced teachers and in districts that engage in collective bargaining

evaluating density forecasts with applications to financial risk management density forecasting is increasingly more important and commonplace for example in financial risk management yet little attention has been given to the evaluation of density forecasts the authors develop a simple and operational framework for density forecast evaluation they illustrate the framework with a detailed application to density forecasting of asset returns in environments with time varying volatility finally the authors discuss several extensions copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

dynamic labour force participation of married women and endogenous work experience this paper presents and estimates a dynamic model of married women s labour force participation and fertility in which the effect of work experience on wages is explicitly taken into account because current participation alters future potential earnings the investment return to work will be an important factor in the current work decision in any forward looking behavioural model the model is estimated using the national longitudinal surveys mature women s cohort we use the estimates of our model to predict changes in the lifecycle patterns of employment due to changes in schooling fertility husband s income and the magnitude of the experience effect on wages we find that although work experience increases the disutility of further work the effect is overwhelmed by the positive effect of experience on wages leading to persistence in the employment patterns of these women in addition we find that an increase in young children and in husband s income substantially reduces participation while increased schooling has a powerful positive impact on participation this paper presents an estimable structural dynamic model of married women s labour force participation and fertility in which wages are stochastic and work experience or cumulative participation is endogeneous the model is structural in the sense that the parameters which are estimated are contained in the fundamental relationships governing behaviour namely the utility function and the constraints the model is contained in the class of models which describe the life cycle capital accumulation process with endogeneous labour supply such as weiss 1972 and heckman 1976 it is closest in spirit to that of weiss and gronau 1981 1 the basic feature of their model and ours is that labour market participation affects future wages which then affects future participation the investment return to current work will necessarily be taken into account in any forward looking optimizing model as weiss and gronau note estimates of labour supply models have ignored the inherent behavioural dynamics associated with a positive wageexperience profile there is no adequate empirical treatment of the human capital investment dimension of the labour force participation decision in the literature heckman and willis 1977 have studied a sequential discrete choice model of the labour force participation of married women in a reduced form framework their work

has job stability declined yet new evidence for the 1990 s we update the evidence on changes in job stability through the mid 1990s using recently released current population survey data for 1995 that parallel earlier job tenure supplements in the aggregate job stability declined modestly in the first half of the 1990s moreover the relatively small aggregate changes mask rather sharp declines in stability for workers with more than a few years of tenure nonetheless the data available to this point do not support the conclusion that the downward shift in job stability for more tenured workers and the more modest decline in aggregate job stability reflect long term trends

the strategic choice of managerial incentives do firms with separate owners and managers maximize profits we address this question for an oligopoly where managers compete in quantities or prices as in the cournot or bertrand models and owners choose their managers incentives we find that there is a strategic aspect in the problem of selecting incentives and that profit maximizing behavior does not result in particular in the oligopoly we study the behavior of firms competing in quantity price more closely resembles perfectly competitive collusive behavior than cournot bertrand behavior

do wages rise with job seniority many previous studies have found a strong positive effect of job seniority tenure on wages this paper re examines the evidence using a simple instrumental variables scheme to deal with the fact that tenure is likely to be related to unobserved individual and job characteristics that affect the wage we use the variation of tenure over a given job match as the principal instrumental variable for tenure the variation in tenure over the job is uncorrelated by construction with the fixed individual and job match specific components of the error term of the wage equation our main finding is that the partial effect of tenure on wages is small and that general labour market experience and job shopping account for most wage growth over a career the strong cross section relationship between tenure and wages is due primarily to heterogeneity bias prior researchers see mincer and jovanovic 1981 bartel and borjas 1981 borjas 1981 cline 1979 and mellow 1981 and many others have established that job seniority has a strong positive relationship with wage rates in a cross section or a cross section time series of individuals in this paper we re evaluate the evidence concerning the partial effects on wages of job seniority tenure and total labour market experience the extent to which wages rise with tenure is important for several reasons first and foremost the wage tenure profile is a fundamental question about the structure of earnings over careers second the wage tenure profile is a key determinant of the extent to which the earnings power of individuals is tied to specific jobs and it is important for assessment of the losses suffered by displaced workers hamermesh 1984 third evidence that wages rise with job tenure has been used to explain the decline in quits with tenure since the wage growth on the current job lowers the probability that the worker will locate a superior alternative a growing theoretical literature surveyed in parsons 1984 has taken the evidence of a strong wage tenure profile at face value and sought to provide an explanation for the relationship the most prominent explanation is the theory of specific human capital oi 1962 becker 1962 mincer 1974 parsons 1972 kuratani 1973 and hashimoto 1980 in which the growth of wages with tenure holding experience constant is attributed to the worker s share of investments in firm specific skills more recently lazear 1981 has presented a supervision model of wage growth in which firms defer compensation as a means of inducing workers not to shirk freeman 1977 and harris and holmstrom 1982 provide an explanation for wage growth based on an insurance motive salop and salop 1976 nickell 1976 and guasch and weiss 1982 present adverse selection models of wage growth in which firms use a wage tenure profile as a

returns to seniority among public school teachers returns to seniority account for a substantial share of public k 12 expenditures over the first ten to 15 years of a career public school teachers enjoy average wage growth at least equivalent to that of other white collar workers explanations for this structure in terms of human capital or costly monitoring lack theoretical and empirical support a steeper wage tenure profile reduces turnover but it is doubtful that the costs of turnover are high enough to make this an optimal use of school resources we conclude that the structure of teacher pay in public education is more consistent with rent seeking than efficient contracting

comparing the point predictions and subjective probability distributions of professional forecasters we use data from the survey of professional forecasters spf to compare point predictions of gross domestic product gdp growth and inflation with the subjective probability distributions held by forecasters we find that most spf point predictions are quite close to the central tendencies of forecasters subjective distributions tend to be asymmetric with spf forecasters tending to report point predictions that give a more favorable view of the economy than do their subjective means medians modes

a dynamic model of teacher labor supply the labor supply decisions of certified elementary and high school teachers are examined using data from a general longitudinal survey a significant decrease in the teaching participation rate tak

an economic theory of vertical restraints vertical restraints imposed by manufacturers on the prices locations and sales of retail firms represent a puzzling departure from the simple price mediated exchange of conventional markets in this article we analyze the theoretical basis for these restraints in a setting where retailers inform consumers and are imperfectly competitive and where a manufacturer has some monopoly power we identify three potential externalities affecting retailers decisions these externalities lead to the failure of simple uniform price contracts to coordinate the incentives of retailers with the objective of maximizing combined manufacturer and retailer profits we identify the packages of vertical restraints that are minimally sufficient under various conditions to neutralize the externalities and to achieve the joint profit maximum

teacher mobility and merit pay evidence from a voluntary public award program abstract this paper analyzes the effect on teacher mobility of a program that rewards excellence in teaching practices in chile successful applicants receive a 6 annual wage increase for up to 10 years and an award that publicly recognizes their excellence the paper uses a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of the public merit award the program does not alter transitions out of teaching however it increases the mobility of awardees within the school system this is consistent with the program providing a credible public signal of teacher quality

trimmed opinion pools and the crowd s calibration problem we introduce an alternative to the popular linear opinion pool for combining individual probability forecasts one of the well known problems with the linear opinion pool is that it can be poorly calibrated it tends toward underconfidence as the crowd s diversity increases i e as the variance in the individuals means increases to address this calibration problem we propose the exterior trimmed opinion pool to form this pool forecasts with low and high means or cumulative distribution function cdf values are trimmed away from a linear opinion pool exterior trimming decreases the pool s variance and improves its calibration a linear opinion pool however will remain overconfident when individuals are overconfident and not very diverse for these situations we suggest trimming away forecasts with moderate means or cdf values this interior trimming increases variance and reduces overconfidence using probability forecast data from u s and european surveys of professional forecasters we present empirical evidence that trimmed opinion pools can outperform the linear opinion pool this paper was accepted by rakesh sarin decision analysis

generalizations about using value added measures of teacher quality the extensive investigation of the contribution of teachers to student achievement produces two generally accepted results first there is sub stantial variation in teacher quality as measured by the value added to achievement or future aca demic attainment or earnings second variables often used to determine entry into the profession and salaries including post graduate schooling experience and licensing examination scores appear to explain little of the variation in teacher quality so measured with the exception of early experience together these findings underscore explicitly that observed teacher characteristics do not represent teacher quality

self selection in the market of teachers public school teachers are usually paid according to centralized earning schedules in which their income depends mainly on experience by contrast in private schools there is high wage dispersion and salaries correspond mainly to teachers performance that dichotomous labour regulation encourages teachers with better unobservable skills to self select into private schools because the likelihood of earning higher wages is higher than in public schools the other side of the coin is the self selection of bad teachers into public schools using a representative sample of chilean teachers we estimate a two sector roy model to test self selection we find evidence of negative self selection of teachers into public schools

the influence of classroom characteristics on high school teacher turnover i introduction a number of authors have suggested that the u s will face a shortage of qualified teachers in the near future especially in the areas of math and science 1 school districts facing such a shortage could respond in a variety of ways for instance hiring standards could be lowered teachers could be asked to teach outside their areas of certification or funds permitting starting salaries could be increased in an effort to attract the most promising candidates still another option would be to raise teaching loads i e average class size or the number of classes taught thus making do with fewer teachers this option is particularly alluring in light of the fact that average class size has been falling rapidly in the u s over the last twenty years and yet no strong connection between smaller classes and increased student learning has been established 2 there is however a possible hidden cost that needs to be investigated before recommending such a course of action if teachers respond to larger or more frequent classes by quitting then a district that tries to solve its hiring problems in this fashion could simply be increasing its demand for new teachers this paper uses data from the new york state education department s personnel master file for the years 1979 to 1989 in order to investigate whether an increased teaching load affects the likelihood that a teacher will leave his or her district in order to obtain an unbiased sample of job lengths the sample is restricted to full time high school teachers who were newly hired in 1979 3 we estimate a discrete time hazard model in which teaching load is measured as the average class size taught by an individual the number of classes taught and the proportion of classes taught in the teacher s certified area in interpreting our results we pay special attention to whether the behavior of math and science teachers differs from that of other teachers this is an important issue because shortages of qualified teachers in these two areas are predicted to be especially acute ii background the market for teachers differs from a well functioning neoclassical labor market in that salaries are determined through a political process involving various levels of government the public and often teachers unions 4 if the demand for teachers increases as retirements and student enrollment increase then starting salaries cannot be counted on to quickly move to the market clearing level and thus a shortage of teachers becomes a possibility 5 few observers however believe that there will be an actual shortage of warm bodies the more likely scenario is that there will be a lack of teachers trained in specific areas and of high quality teachers in general see murnane et al 1991 1 2 given a limited budget what are the options available to a school district facing this type of shortage the district could settle for hiring lower quality teachers but this might be seen as an unnecessary measure with long term implications taken in response to what could be a temporary situation another option that has been suggested is to increase teacher workloads 6 whether this option is workable depends in part on the exit decisions of teachers a large number of empirical studies have investigated the determinants of teacher turnover however no work specifically directed toward capturing the effect of increased teaching responsibilities on turnover has been done 7 without knowing whether such an effect exists and what the magnitude of it might be informed policy decisions at the district level in response to a shortage of qualified teachers becomes impossible past studies have shown that the probability of a teacher leaving his or her job is high in the first few years after entering the profession falls after the third year 8 and again increases as the teacher nears retirement age murnane et al

the dynamics of teacher quality abstract an extensive literature finds that while teachers vary considerably in initial quality there are limited teacher quality dynamics except for the first few years of teaching teacher quality does not improve over the course of a teacher s career this study evaluates the importance of various modeling restrictions to the key findings of this literature using data covering all 5th grade public school teachers from the state of north carolina i replicate the findings of the previous literature using their restrictive experience assumptions however using an unrestricted experience model i find that for mathematics achievement there are high returns to later career teaching experience about twice as much dispersion in initial teacher quality as previously estimated and a pattern of negative selection where high quality teachers are more likely to exit

career paths and quit decisions evidence from teaching conventional models predict that workers consider employment opportunities and monetary rewards expected over their lifetimes when making current period decisions such as whether to quit a job this article tests the hypothesis that later career opportunities affect quit decisions by examining the relationship between teaching and school administration evidence on the extent to which administrative positions are available to teachers and the salary premia associated with them is presented discrete time logit hazard models of teacher quits estimated using data from new york state provide some support for the hypothesis though the magnitudes of the estimated effects are small

the trade off between child quantity and quality an empirical investigation of trade offs between number of children and their scholastic performance confirms that family size directly affects children s achievement though parents show no favori

do public schools hire the best applicants despite a surplus of candidates for most teaching jobs a strong academic record does little for an applicants job prospects this does not appear to result from lukewarm interest on the part of such applicants or choosiness about the positions they accept administrators lack of interest in these candidates may reflect the weakness of competitive pressures in public education policies intended to improve teacher quality need to consider incentives on both the demand and supply sides of the market

leaving teaching in the uk a duration analysis in this paper the authors analyze the decision by teachers to leave the profession their results affirm the importance of relative earnings in the tenure and turnover decisions of teachers the econometric modeling approach used yields important insights into the appropriateness of adopting a flexible semiparametric specification of the duration dependence structure and of the unobserved heterogeneity distribution in duration models copyright 1995 by royal economic society