bookbuilding and strategic allocation in the bookbuilding procedure an investment banker solicits bids for shares from institutional investors prior to pricing an equity issue the banker then prices the issue and allocates shares at his discretion to the investors we examine the books for 39 international equity issues we find that the investment banker awards more shares to bidders who provide information in their bids regular investors receive favorable allocations especially when the issue is heavily oversubscribed the investment banker also favors revised bids and domestic investors investment banks commonly build a book before pricing an equity issue in the united states it has been standard practice for a number of years in many other countries where fixed price offerings were traditionally used the bookbuilding procedure is becoming increasingly common especially for international equity issues 1 under the formal bookbuilding procedure the investment banker solicits indications of interest from institutional investors such indications consist of a bid for a quantity of shares and might include a maximum price i e a limit price or other details the investment banker uses the information to construct a demand curve the issue price is not set according to any explicit rule but rather based on the banker s interpretation of investors indications of interest he generally sets the price at a level at which demand exceeds supply and then allocates shares to the bidders at his discretion thus the

are public sector workers more risk averse than private sector workers available evidence suggests that stability of employment is greater in the public sector than in the private sector the value that individuals place on tbis stability depends on tbe individual s degree of risk aversion economic reasoning suggests tbat otber tbings equal tbose individuals witb a high degree of aversion to risk will be more likely tban otbers to seek employment in the public sector this paper tests tbat hypothesis tbrougb tbe use of probit analysis and a measure of risk aversion developed in ibe university of micbigan s panel study of income dynamics the results tend to confirm tbe bypotbesis implying tbat a policy of intersectoral equality of pay for comparable jobs would result inanexcesssupplyof workers to tbe public sector

public private sector wage differentials in canada evidence from the 1991 and 1982 surveys of consumer finance this paper extends the work of gunderson and shapiro and stelcner that considered wage differentials between public and private sector workers in canada using the 1971 and 1981 censuses respectively here the survey of consumer finances from 1991 and 1982 is used which allows for better distinction between public and private sector workers the estimated public sector premium is decomposed into an endowments component and a residual term estimates are corrected for sample selection bias with respect to the choice between full time and part time work in the two sectors tests for bias caused by self selection into the private and public sectors revealed no such bias as a benchmark the overall wage premium calculated for 1981 compares very well with that of shapiro and stelcner during the 1980s no significant increases in the public sector wage premium for males are found but the female premium increased significantly this may be due to changes in pay equity legislation in the public sector relative

why did semiconductor price indexes fall so fast in the 1990s a decomposition i introduction by any measure price deflators for semiconductors fell at a staggering pace over much of the last decade as shown in the top part of table 1 fisher price indexes for integrated circuits ics a broad class of semiconductor devices that includes logic and memory chips fell an average of 36 per year from 1993 to 1999 as shown in the bottom part those price declines were generated primarily by sharp declines in the price index for microprocessors mpus the logic chips that serve as the central processing unit in personal computers pcs the price deflator for ics fell even faster in the second half of the decade pushed down by faster declines in the mpu price index jorgenson 2001 noted the acceleration and hypothesized that the development and deployment of semiconductors could have been a key driver in the economy wide resurgence in economic growth that began in the mid 1990s empirical work based on macroeconomic growth models supported his hypothesis by showing that the semiconductor industry accounted for nearly three fourths of the acceleration in multifactor productivity that occurred over the 1990s see for example gordon 2001 jorgenson 2001 jorgenson and stiroh 2000 mckinsey global institute 2001 oliner and sichel 2000 triplett 1999 these sharp declines are typically attributed to the rapid rate of product innovation that characterizes this sector a recent example may be found in triplett 2004 informal measures of quality change as in aizcorbe et al 2003 suggest that product innovation is the primary driver behind the price declines typically seen for these devices indeed the industry is credited with one of the fastest rates of product innovation and technical change within manufacturing as chipmakers generate wave after wave of ever more powerful chips for prices not much higher than those of existing chips at the same time that the quality of mpus is increasing manufacturers are also getting better at producing them and the attendant reductions in the manufacturing cost per chip could also have contributed to the observed declines in the price index as is well known the semiconductor production process is subject to important learning economies along several dimensions see for example gruber 1994 hatch and mowery 1998 most of the empirical literature on learning by doing in the semiconductor industry has focused on memory chips a homogenous commodity good sold in fairly competitive markets for mpus intel s dominance of the market has generated large margins so that cost savings from learning by doing may not necessarily be passed along to consumers in the form of lower prices the presence of large margins in and of itself has potential implications for price measurement although quality increases and reductions in cost per chip are associated with increases in productivity changes in margins are not over the 1990s intel s margins shrank as increased competition from its rivals and weaker than expected demand for pcs in 1995 and beyond put downward pressure on prices this decline in intel s margins could have potentially distorted standard price indexes because those indexes implicitly assume perfect competition 1 so for example falling margins could lead one to incorrectly interpret the resulting price decline as a productivity improvement 2 although it is unlikely that intel s margins fell sufficiently fast to explain much of the absolute price declines over the decade those declines may nonetheless have had a nontrivial effect on the acceleration that began in 1995 to better understand the trend and inflection point in semiconductor prices this article decomposes movements in the constant quality price index into changes in the index associated with productivity growth and those associated with margins a further decomposition of the productivity related component into quality change owing to rapid rates of product innovation versus changes in cost per chip perhaps related to learning by doing is also done

allocation of initial public offerings and flipping activity abstract there is a general perception that the large trading volume in initial public offerings is mostly due to flippers that are allocated shares in the offering and immediately resell them on average however flipping accounts for only 19 of trading volume and 15 of shares offered during the first two days of trading institutions do more flipping than retail customers and hot ipos are flipped much more than cold ipos institutions do not quickly flip cold ipos to take advantage of price support activities by the underwriter explicit penalty bids are rarely assessed against flippers

total factor productivity and the measurement of technological change tfp is interpreted in the literature in different mutually contradictory ways changes in tfp are shown to measure not technological change only the super normal returns to investing in such change returns that exceed the full opportunity cost of the activity thus in the limit technological change can proceed with unchanged tfp measuring the effects of technological change instead requires counterfactual estimates reasons why changes in tfp are imperfect measures of super normal returns are also studied reasons connected with the timing of output responses the treatment of r d in the national accounts the omission of resource inputs and two types of aggregation la productivite totale des facteurs et la mesure du changement technologique la productivite totale des facteurs ptf est interpretee dans la litterature de manieres differentes et mutuellement contradictoires on montre que les changements dans la ptf ne mesurent pas le changement technologique mais seulement les rendements supra normaux sur les investissements dans de tels changements des rendements qui depassent le plein cout d opportunite de cette activite donc a la limite le changement technologique peut proceder sans que la ptf change mesurer les effets du changement technique reclame des evaluations d hypotheses de rechange les raisons pour lesquelles les changements dans la ptf sont des mesures imparfaites des rendements supra normaux sont aussi etudiees raisons connectees avec la reponse des niveaux de production le traitement de la r d dans les comptes nationaux l omission des intrants de ressources et deux types d agregation

on decomposing the wage gap a critical comment on blinder s method 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

competition and screening with motivated health professionals two hospitals compete for the exclusive services of health professionals who are privately informed about their ability and motivation hospitals differ in their ownership structure and in the mission they pursue the non profit hospital sacrifices some profits to follow its mission but becomes attractive for motivated workers in equilibrium when both hospitals are active the sorting of workers to hospitals is efficient and ability neutral allocative distortions are decreasing in the degree of competition and disappear when hospitals are similar the non profit hospital tends to provide a higher amount of care and offer lower salaries than the for profit one

decomposition of productivity and unit costs labor productivity output per hour in the private nonfarm business sector is reported to have been rising at an annual rate of about 1 percent since 1973 at the same time output per hour in the nonfinancial corporate sector is estimated to have been increasing at a 13 4 percent annual rate given that the nonfinancial corporate sector is about two thirds of the aggregate these statistics imply that output per hour elsewhere in private business has not increased on average for more than two decades because it seems unlikely that major sectors of the economy have failed to become more efficient over the years it would be useful to try to identify at a more disaggregated level those segments of the economy with persistently dismal measured productivity performance this paper presents such a disaggregation the decompositions are by legal form of organization with gross industry breaks within the corporate sector and by detailed industry for expository convenience we refer to the former as the sectoral decomposition and the latter as the industry decomposition

computers and productivity are aggregation effects important this paper examines the empirical implications of aggregation bias when measuring the productive impact of computers to isolate two specific aggregation problems relating to aggregation in variables and aggregation in relations we compare various production function estimates across a range of specifications econometric estimators and data levels the results show that both sources of bias are important especially as one moves from the sector to the economy level and when the elasticity of all types of non computer capital are incorrectly restricted to be equal in terms of computers however the estimated elasticity is surprisingly stable between industry and sector regressions and does not appear to be biased by the incorporation of a restrictive measure of non computer capital the data consistently show that computers have a large impact on output

risk reputation and ipo price support immediately following an initial public offering underwriters often repurchase shares of poorly performing offerings in an apparent attempt to stabilize the price using proprietary nasdaq data i study the price effects and determinants of price support some of the key findings are 1 stabilization is substantial inducing price rigidity at and below the offer price 2 i find no evidence that stocks with larger information asymmetries are stabilized more strongly 3 larger underwriters stabilize more perhaps to protect their reputations with investors and 4 investment banks with retail brokerage operations stabilize much more than other banks inconsistent with the view that stabilization benefits primarily institutional investors

information technology and growth the rapid diffusion of information technology it is a direct consequence of the swift decline in the price of computer related equipment which has led to a vast and continuing substitution of it equipment for other forms of capital and labor this substitution generates substantial returns for the economic agents who undertake it investments and restructure their activities in order to increase the role of it there is little evidence however that substitution is accompanied by technical change as this term is used by economists while this appears highly paradoxical to technologists who think of substitution of a more it intensive mode of production for a less itintensive mode as a change in technology it is entirely consistent with the economic framework developed by robert m solow 1957 what do economists mean by technical change and how could this exclude the substitution of a more it intensive production process for one that is less it intensive substitution represents movement along a given production function while technical change corresponds to a shift in the production function substitution takes place if the introduction of computer intensive equipment produces benefits that are fully captured or internalized by the users of it and their suppliers technical change occurs only if more

input and output inventories abstract this paper presents a new stage of fabrication inventory model with delivery usage and stocks of input materials that distinguishes between gross production and value added it extends the linear quadratic model of output inventories by adding the joint determination of input inventories empirically input inventories are more important than output inventories maximum likelihood estimation of the decision rules yields correctly signed and significant parameter estimates using data for nondurable and durable goods industries but the overidentifying restrictions of the model are rejected the value added specification dominates because adjustment costs on materials usage are critical to fitting the data

returns to nursing education 1970 84 using four large micro data sets this paper examines the returns to investments in education by registered nurses during the period 1970 84 wage models are estimated by a maximum likelihood technique that accounts for selection bias no wage difference existed between associate and diploma degree nurses modest hourly wage premiums were found for baccalaureate bs compared with associate degree nurses returns to positions of responsibility were substantial however when career patterns of promotion were examined in a multinomial logit model and although statistically significant differences existed in favor of the baccalaureate nurses the differences were small blacks made substantial gains over the period while males consistently earned large wage premiums

price stabilization as a bonding mechanism in new equity issues abstract underwriters have an incentive to overstate investor interest in order to persuade some investors to purchase shares at a price in excess of their initial estimate of the fair value we show that this incentive is eliminated when the underwriter commits to secondary market price stabilization destroying the underwriter s incentive to overstate interest reduces the total surplus captured by initial investors in initial public offerings further efficiency gains are associated with penalty bid systems that permit the underwriter to make the stabilization commitment selectively price stabilization can thus be viewed as a bonding mechanism that improves the efficiency of the primary equity market

the nonprofit sector and industry performance abstract despite the importance of nonprofit industries in the economy little analysis has been conducted as to whether the behavior of such industries differs from that of for profit industries extending previous firm level analyses we propose a neoclassical theory with an endogenous nonprofit sector our analysis implies that nonprofit firms have a competitive advantage over for profit firms so that marginal changes in the industry operate through the for profit sector as such marginal industry behavior is identical to that of a for profit industry and nonprofit regulations may have a limited impact or even no impact on overall industry performance our theory has the methodological advantage that standard for profit analysis applies directly to nonprofit firms because they can be analyzed as for profit firms with lower costs we discuss aspects of the empirical literature that test this theory of nonprofit activity

stagflationary effect of government bond financing in the transforming chinese economy a general equilibrium analysis abstract this paper studies how the method of government debt financing affects the macroeconomic performance of the transforming chinese economy the investigation is conducted within the context of an endogenous growth model that incorporates the major institutional features of the chinese economy using this framework we evaluate the effects on the growth rate of output and inflation if the chinese government relies more on bonds and less on money creation for budget deficit and debt repayment financing it is shown that although this policy change can reduce the growth rate of the money supply it can generate a stagflationary effect reducing the rate of output growth while raising the rate of inflation if the initial fraction of government deficit and debt repayment financed by bonds is sufficiently small and the tax rate on labor income is sufficiently low

employer recruitment strategies and the labor market outcomes of new hires i introduction employers and job seekers are brought together for potential matches through their recruitment and job search activities employers may post help wanted signs run newspaper advertisements or seek referrals from private employment agencies job seekers may speak with friends and relatives solicit the aid of the state employment agency or simply walk in and apply these recruitment and search activities help both parties acquire information about each other and the more information they obtain prior to entering an employment agreement the higher the likelihood of a good employment match the crucial role of information in the labor market has been recognized since stigler 1962 but despite a voluminous literature on job matching and organizational behavior in labor markets we know far less about employers recruitment strategies than about job seekers search strategies as granovetter 1995 notes while people are finding jobs employers are finding people to fill them and their behaviors strategies and purposes play a central but often neglected role in the process of matching people to jobs this imbalance in research effort is explained more by a dearth of adequate data describing employer recruitment behavior than by lack of scholarly interest indeed labor economists sociologists psychologists and human resource management specialists have spent the last half century exploiting the meager existing data sets in efforts to learn about employer recruitment behavior in this article i address several empirical questions concerning employer recruitment using the multi city study of urban inequality mcsui a large cross sectional survey of employers in four metropolitan areas of the united states that has not been exploited for a detailed analysis of the relationships among recruitment strategies starting wages and vacancy duration despite the richness of the data set for this purpose the mcsui data contain detailed information on firm and job characteristics and most important for the purpose of this article indicators of the recruitment methods these employers used when hiring the most recently hired worker the data allow a number of interesting questions to be addressed concerning the link between employer recruitment choices and starting wages vacancy duration and the skill levels of new hires because there has been relatively little empirical research done by labor economists on employer recruitment this work with a relatively large representative sample of employers should enhance our understanding of a number of basic questions i consider three of these first i present evidence describing which recruitment methods employers use and how these vary by firm characteristics vacancy characteristics and the skill requirements of jobs i estimate a multivariate probit model with a separate equation for each of 10 recruitment choices in addition to providing information about the relationship of each recruitment method with each of the covariates this method has the attractive feature of allowing for an analysis of the relationships among the unobserved determinants of recruitment choice to my knowledge this methodology is new to the recruitment literature second i present regression evidence showing how vacancy duration varies by recruitment choices some recruitment methods can be expected to be faster than others in generating job applicants however an employer must invest time in screening the applicant pool so the recruitment methods that generate applicants quickly do not necessarily fill vacancies quickly therefore the link between recruitment methods and vacancy durations is an empirical question third i present evidence concerning the relationship between starting wages and recruitment methods in particular i augment standard log wage specifications based on the human capital model with recruitment choices and find that the recruitment variables have explanatory power even in the presence of all of the usual controls

small businesses and liquidity constraints in financing business investment evidence from shanghai s manufacturing sector abstract when firms experience financial hierarchy external finance if at all available is substantially more expensive than internal finance factors such as transaction costs agency problem and asymmetric information have created such a hierarchy stiglitz and weiss 1981 argue that asymmetric information between firms and potential suppliers of external finance creates adverse selection and moral hazard problems in the credit market in developed market economies this problem of a higher cost of external finance is commonly thought to be more serious for small firms because they are more disadvantaged than their larger counterparts in accessing external finance due to several factors 1 public information on small firms is generally not available and leads to the even greater problem of asymmetric information i e more severe adverse selection and moral hazard problems these information problems have excluded small firms from bond and share markets 2 due to the lack of available means of external finance small firms rely more heavily on bank loans than their larger counterparts in addition as small firms are more interested in cultivating stable relationships with a few banks in order to secure a stable supply of credit these banks become virtual monopolies by lending to small businesses and exercise their market power in lending to small firms most of existing research considers only small firms in market economies little research has been done to understand the relationship between firm size and investment financing in any economy in transition this paper makes a contribution to the literature by studying the relationship between firm size and liquidity constraints by using a firm level data of manufacturing enterprises in shanghai during the period of 1989 1992 we consider whether small manufacturing firms in shanghai are constrained by the availability of liquidity compared with their larger counterparts when they are financing their fixed investment in a transforming economy such as china or other similar transition economies external finance relies heavily on loans from banks that are fully owned by the state due to historical reasons allocations of credit are always biased in favor of state owned enterprises such a lending bias imposes an extra cost on small chinese enterprises in financing investment as the majority of them are not state owned in such an environment our empirical results show that small manufacturing firms in shanghai are actually less liquidity constrained than their larger counterparts in financing their fixed investment this surprising result is rather different from what people normally predict based on the experience in market economies we suggest three possible explanations for this peculiar finding 1 the composition of various firm size classes plays an important role in explaining the result non state enterprises which are fast growing and efficient dominate the small firm classes their successes in the markets helps them to generate enough internal funds to smooth their investment over time 2 the presence of heavy indebtedness of large state owned enterprises may deprive them of sufficient cash available for investment decision given that state owned enterprises have been making heavy losses the central and regional governments have a liquidity problem in satisfying their huge liquidity demands 3 small enterprises in non state sectors can rely on the informal credit market to obtain funds for investment although they are excluded from the state banking system however the further trade liberalization in terms of eliminating tariffs and quotas caused by china s bid of joining the wto will erode the profits of these small enterprises as imported goods will be supplied at lower prices in addition further reforms in financial sectors may also affect the supply of external finance to small enterprises in nonstate sectors the consequence may lead to a tight liquidity constraint for small enterprises in china

why do ipo underwriters allocate extra shares when they expect to buy them back i argue that overallocation is used as a marketing strategy to increase the offer price and aftermarket price of an initial public offering ipo i show that when there is weak demand it can be optimal for the underwriter to oversell an issue and take a naked short position the issuing firm benefits from a higher expected offer price this is in spite of the fact that in equilibrium allocating more shares when there is weak demand requires greater underpricing when there is strong demand

theories of non profit institutions abstract as thoughtful modelling and empirical research of non profit enterprises continues to grow two general views of non profit organizations are emerging one view is that non profit firms are inefficient and wasteful another view is that non profit firms are a response to market failure and thus may improve efficiency the purpose of this paper is to explore the theoretical and empirical work that represents the current divided state of thinking in this area

working in public and private firms abstract we develop a theoretical framework for comparing incentives labor productivity and the allocation of effort in public versus private enterprises we incorporate socializing an activity which yields utility for workers and affects a firm s output into a multitask model of work organization we establish the two following results first the optimal workers compensation policy displays a larger incentive intensity in the private firm than in the public firm second labor productivity in the private firm may be higher or lower than in the public firm both results fit well with the findings of empirical work

would nonprofit workers accept to earn less evidence from france this article focuses on wage differentials between french nonprofit for profit and public sectors considering the public sector allows testing more extensively the labour donation theory preston 1989 the findings support this theory because nonprofit workers accept to earn significantly less than they would earn in the for profit and public sectors they also suggest differences in the motivations of workers in these sectors nonprofit workers are attracted to their work for reasons transcending material compensation

whither the nonprofit wage differential estimates from the 1990 census this article provides new estimates of the nonprofit for profit wage differential in the u s economy using observations on 4 1 million private sector employees from the 1990 census i find either zero or slightly positive economy wide wage differences between nonprofit and for profit employees in a standard earnings equation format significant wage differentials are found at the disaggregated occupation and industry level and provide a basis for testing hypotheses explaining nonprofit for profit wage differences

the impact of china s economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth this paper presents a method for assessing the relative importance of price increases and strengthened individual incentives due to the introduction of the responsibility system for the post 1978 increase in china s agricultural productivity data on post 1978 chinese agricultural performance suggest that a little over three quarters of the measured productivity increase is due to payment system changes and the remainder to price increases we also use our method to calculate incentive indices giving an estimate of the fraction of their marginal product that peasants received under the pre 1978 regime

stabilization syndication and pricing of ipos we argue that in the after market trading of an ipo the underwriting syndicate by standing ready to buy back shares at the offer price price stabilization compensates uninformed investors ex post for the adverse selection cost they face in bidding for ipos this domi nates ex ante compensation by underpricing the reason is that stabilization exploits ex post information about investor demand whereas underpricing must be based on ex ante infor mation however liquidity and syndication costs constrain the use of stabilization which in equilibrium generates some underpricing as well we develop a model that formalizes this intuition and generates several empirical implications

wage determination of registered nurses in proprietary and nonprofit nursing homes this study explores why registered nurses employed in nonprofit nursing homes earn higher wages than those employed in proprietary facilities previous studies have explained this finding in a property rights context where higher wages were posited to result from the weaker incentives for cost minimization accompanying nonprofit status this paper tests an alternative explanation of sectoral wage differences which is predicated on the reason for the coexistence offor profit and nonprofit firms in a given industry informational constraints concerning the quality of care are posited to cause the long term health care market to fail to provide care at the upper levels of a quality of care continuum nonprofits are viewed as a response to this form of market failure acting to fulfill customers demand for higher quality and higher cost long term care with attendant demand for higher quality nurses than in for profit homes both the observed sectoral pattern in selectivity and wage decompositions based on selectivity corrected wage regressions call into question the property right explanation yet are consistent with an asymmetric information explanation

corporate culture in the nonprofit sector a comparison of fringe benefits with the for profit sector one explanation that may be given for why nonprofit organizations pay lower wages than do other organizations is that nonprofits are more pleasant places to work indeed some authors have proposed that nonprofit organizations should make an effort to promote a working environment that reflects the beliefs of the organization this paper uses several proxies for whether an organization is a pleasant place in which to work and tests for whether nonprofits are more likely to offer such pleasant working conditions analysis shows that nonprofits are not more likely to offer these conditions in many instances

union effects in low wage services evidence from canadian childcare empirical evidence presented in this paper based on survey data for canadian childcare workers in 1991 contradicts most stereotypes of the childcare labor market although childcare labor was low wage the authors find that the union impact on wages 15 and fringe benefits was in line with union effects found in other better compensated work and they find substantial returns to education occupational level and firm specific experience the returns to the skill related attributes were blunted somewhat in the union sector except where such returns stood to benefit the median union voter the findings suggest that monetary incentives can be used to encourage improvements in the education experience and skill acquisition of childcare workers unions can improve wages and benefits for childcare workers just as they can for most other workers suggesting the viability of union organizing in this sector despite the traditional barriers to organizing low wage service sector workers in small firms u nion organizing in the growing lowwage female dominated service sector is often regarded as key to offsetting the decline in union membership that is occurring in the areas of traditional union strength the recent success of the service

the demand for stocks an analysis of ipo auctions we analyze a unique dataset that includes the full demand schedules of 27 israeli ipos that were conducted as nondiscriminatory uniform price auctions to the best of our knowledge this is the first time the whole demand schedule for any asset is described the demand schedules are relatively flat around the auction clearing price the average elasticity is 27 the elasticity is low when the return distribution contains a large unique component we also find a significant average abnormal return of 4 5 on the first trading day and a positive correlation between the abnormal return and the elasticity of demand article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

investment specific technological change and growth accounting greenwood et al 1997 long run implications of investment specific technological change american economic review 87 3 342 362 and 2000 the role of investment specific technological change in the business cycle european economic review 44 91 115 and hercowitz 1998 the embodiment controversy a review essay journal of monetary economics 41 217 224 have claimed that the jorgenson form of growth accounting is conceptually flawed and severely understates the importance of technological progress embodied in new capital goods for explaining growth to the contrary this paper shows that in its technology aspects their model is a special case of the jorgensonian growth accounting model what they call investment specific technological change is shown to be closely related to the more familiar concept of total factor productivity tfp growth statements about the one can be translated into statements about the other empirically differences between their conclusions and those of growth accounting studies about the extent to which embodiment explains us economic growth are found to relate more to data than to methodology

a selectivity model of employer size wage differentials this article investigates wage differentials for employees of different size firms utilizing an econometric methodology that allows the size of employer to be treated as endogenous in the context of discrete ordered employer size data as a result we are able to estimate i employer size wage gaps which are corrected for selectivity bias and ii the magnitude and direction of the selection bias decompositions of the resulting wage differentials are computed with comparisons of the conditional on sorting across employer size and unconditional wage gaps

post reform industrial productivity performance of china new evidence from the 1985 industrial census data i introduction during the last decade china implemented a series of economic reforms that followed what many observers agreed was a period of stagnation in industrial productivity 1 the first wave of chinese economic reforms 1978 79 following the economic opening to the west under the four modernizations began after the third plenum of the eleventh central committee of the communist party of china announced a new policy of economic modernization in december 1978 a major goal of the new policy was to improve productivity toward this end the party would 1 allow the formation of private enterprises 2 permit state owned and collective enterprises to retain a portion of their profits 3 devolve a greater degree of decision making to factory managers and drastically reduce the scope of planning 4 introduce material incentives such as bonuses to labor and 5 place increased reliance on markets for inter industry resource allocation it is important to note that at this time in the early 1980s real reform was limited to the agricultural sector as discussed in perkins 1988 the second wave of reforms occurred in 1983 84 with the announcement of sweeping changes for the urban industrial sector these reforms included four major measures 1 a reduction in the number of leadership positions in enterprises 2 a further expansion of enterprise managers authority 3 the substitution of an income tax for remission of profits to the state and 4 removal of the ceiling on bonuses naturally it is important to know whether or not these reforms improved chinese industrial productivity since the early 1980s both chinese and western economists have conducted many empirical studies on china s post reform economic performance however the results from these studies are far from conclusive for example the world bank 1983 1985 field 1984 yeh 1984 chen 1986 chen and sang 1986 pan 1986 and tidrick 1986 have reported that input accumulation accounts for nearly all of output increases in industry as a whole in the early 1980s in particular tidrick 1986 found that china s performance has been extremely disappointing total factor productivity in the state owned industrial sector declined at an annual rate ranging from 0 10 percent to 1 20 percent for the period 1978 83 in contrast more recent studies such as those by kuan et al 1988 and jefferson 1988 have found that china s post reform industrial productivity was significantly improved most notably kuan et al 1988 found that chinese industrial productivity in the state owned sector grew at an average annual rate ranging from 2 7 to 3 1 percent for 1980 84 and from 15 3 to 18 2 percent for 1984 85 this difference in the findings reported in the literature is striking and requires further investigation one explanation is that the various studies are based on different data sets time periods models and data construction methods for example tidrick 1986 used aggregate time series data for state owned industry for the period 1952 83 while kuan et al 1988 used aggregate time series data including only independent accounting units within the state owned industrial sector for the period 1953 85 perkins 1988 reviewed china s overall post reform economic performance using data at the national level he found that during 1976 85 total factor productivity in china grew at an annual rate of 3 79 percent accounting for over 40 percent of china s net material product he concluded that reform and productivity growth thus led the way to higher overall growth and that agriculture and the collectively organized small scale industrial enterprises play an important role in the accelerated productivity growth of the reform periods perkins however hastened to point out that his conclusion is based on impressionistic evidence and is in no sense definitive and suggested that disaggregated data on outputs and inputs by sector or individual industries are required to identify those sectors that accounted for most of the rise in productivity perkins 1988 628

customer and supplier driven externalities the purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence helpful for distinguishing different types of externalities we pursue this by extending the productionfunction framework of robert e hall 1990 and caballero and lyons 1990 1992 to exploit two key dimensions of the data disaggregate input output relationships and differences between estimates emphasizing time series versus cross sectional aspects of the data we obtain three main results first from the within estimates using annual data which emphasize the time series properties common across sectors we find a strong reduced form relationship between industry productivity and the activity level input growth of customers in sharp contrast supplier activity levels are insignificant the second result derives from between estimates which emphasize the cross sectional dimension of the data here we find the opposite is true there is a strong reduced form relationship between industry productivity and the activity level of suppliers but no relationship with customer activity levels we interpret the first two results as suggesting that over shorter horizons the linkage between an industry and its customers is pivotal in the transmission of external effects while in the long run external effects are mostly related to intermediate goods linkages the third result concerns the transition from short to long run we find that as the number of periods over which the variables are averaged is incrementally increased from one year toward the full sample period 27 years the significance of customers versus suppliers smoothly reverses itself the remainder of the paper is organized in four sections section i presents the core model and the econometric methods for disentangling the external effects section ii describes the data and estimation section iii presents the main results and our conclusions are presented in section iv

it and productivity in u s manufacturing do computer networks matter i introduction how computers affect productivity is a long standing research question many recent studies argue that information technology it particularly computers is a significant source of u s productivity the specific mechanism remains elusive detailed data on the use of computers and computer networks have been scarce this article uses new plant level data on computer networks collected by the u s census bureau to estimate the effect of computer networks on labor productivity across u s manufacturing plants the computer network use supplement cnus to the 1999 annual survey of manufactures asm focused on the use of computer networks rather than the presence of computers alone linking the cnus data to current and previous information for the same plants collected in the 1999 asm and the 1997 and 1992 census of manufactures cm allows us to examine the relationship between productivity and the use of computer networks our work differs from others in several important aspects first this is the first study linking the use of computer networks to labor productivity using data for approximately 30 000 plants representing the u s manufacturing sector most previous studies examining the link between productivity and computers or other it in the united states focus on the presence of computers using either data on the stock of computer capital or on current it or computer investment as proxies for the computer stock only one previous study mcguckin et al 1998 examined the link between productivity and how computers were used that study was limited to five u s two digit manufacturing industries covered in the 1988 and 1993 surveys of manufacturing technology smt collected by the u s census bureau and did not separate the use of computer networks from other uses of computers and advanced technologies second we extend the existing model relating it to productivity by including materials as a separate input our dependent variable is a gross output measure of labor productivity although gross output is an appropriate measure of the theoretical output particularly at the plant level most previous plant level studies for the united states use a value added measure and exclude materials as a factor input possibly making their results subject to omitted variable biases third we model the probability that a plant has a computer network as a function of its performance and conditions in prior periods this probability is of interest in its own right it also makes possible the fourth distinguishing feature of our work testing for possible endogeneity problems associated with the computer network variable if good plants are more likely to have computer networks we must account for these characteristics to get a more accurate estimate of the effect of networks our research has five principal findings first average labor productivity is higher in manufacturing plants with networks than in plants without networks second computer networks have a positive and significant effect on labor productivity after controlling for other important factors such as capital intensity and other plant characteristics third the choice of theoretical model has empirical consequences previous studies using value added models appear to overstate the effect of it on productivity by factors of two to three fourth plants with lower relative productivity in previous periods are more likely to have computer networks fifth computer networks have a positive and significant effect on labor productivity even after taking account of possible endogeneity of the computer network variable ii background computers play an important role in the strong economic performance of the u s economy according to many recent studies this role is particularly important during the surge of productivity growth in the late 1990s as discussed in oliner and sichel 2000 jorgenson and stiroh 2000 jorgenson 2001 stiroh 2001 and triplett and bosworth 2000

modeling charitable contributions of time and money abstract public goods theory predicts that government spending on charity can perfectly crowd out charitable contributions empirical research has found little support for the perfect crowd out hypothesis however the empirical work only measures part of a contributor s total contribution gifts of money contributors also volunteer labor this article extends the public goods model to the case in which individuals contribute both time and money to a charity that in turn produces a public good the model suggests that charitable contributions of time and money are perfectly substitutable in equilibrium this result offers new interpretations for existing empirical observations and suggests a new test of the crowd out hypothesis the implications of the model are empirically tested using a national survey of charitable activity

bookbuilding how informative is the order book we examine the institutional bids submitted under the bookbuilding procedure for a sample of international equity issues we find that information in bids which include a limit price especially those of large and frequent bidders affects the issue price oversubscription has a smaller but significant effect for ipos public information affects the issue price to the extent that it is reflected in the bids oversubscription and demand elasticity are positively correlated with the first day aftermarket return and demand elasticity is negatively correlated with aftermarket volatility our results support the view that bookbuilding is designed to extract information from investors

new growth accounting this article opens the black box of total factor productivity by decomposing this all in one index into various input embedded and input free productivities in a new growth accounting framework the new method identifies different channels through which growth drivers affect economic growth and finds the most effective way to boost the economy which is unidentified in standard method this new approach uses a varying coefficient stochastic frontier model which integrates the standpoints of the endogenous growth theory and the induced innovation theory into a reduced form productivity analysis the new growth accounting is then applied to study the impacts and contributions of r d investments international trade and structural transformation to world agricultural growth during the period of 1962 to 2014 the empirical results provide new evidence to support the endogenous growth theory and the induced innovation theory indicating the necessity of using the new growth accounting method

working in the for profit versus not for profit sector what difference does it make an inquiry on preferences of voluntary and involuntary movers we investigate the drivers of the for profit not for profit wage differential by comparing judgments of job characteristics of workers who voluntarily or involuntarily moved from the former to the latter sector we define voluntary movers as those who applied for a job in a not for profit organization and when successful resigned from a for profit position while involuntary movers have either been laid off by their company or resigned without already having a job offer in the not for profit sector we observe that a large share of voluntary movers do not end up with higher wages but surprisingly do have higher job satisfaction after the change the vast majority of voluntary movers find significantly higher time flexibility improved relationships with stakeholders and closer conformity to educational skills in their new jobs our findings support the forprofit not for profit compensating differential hypothesis and shed light on mechanisms that are beyond the job donation behavior of intrinsically motivated workers

computers productivity and input substitution i introduction the last two decades has been a puzzling time for many productivity analysts while computer prices fell at extraordinary rates and firms invested hundreds of billions of dollars in new computer equipment aggregate productivity growth remained sluggish this computer productivity paradox has generated a large literature that examines the economic impact of the computer revolution 1 this paper offers a simple solution to the computer productivity paradox by making careful distinction between computers as an output from one sector and an input to other sectors data for 35 manufacturing and service sectors for 1947 1991 show that sectoral differences are crucial in understanding the impact of computers aggregate analysis is inappropriate since it obscures basic distinctions between a shifting production function in the computer producing sector multi factor productivity growth and movements along production functions in the computer using sectors substitution and capital accumulation once these differences are isolated the growth impact of computers is readily observable the computer producing sector experienced fundamental technological progress and now produces cheaper better computers the sectoral data show this as rapid multi factor productivity mfp growth for 1973 1991 although aggregate mfp growth remains below historic averages the computer producing sector has clearly done its part mfp growth in this sector is many times the economy average and has contributed over one third of aggregate mfp growth for 19811991 the sectoral detail shows that the slowdown in aggregate productivity would have been much more severe were it not for such large mfp gains in the computer producing sector for the other sectors of the economy computers affect growth in a more traditional although less glamorous way when the price of real computing power fell so dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s firms responded by substituting away from relatively expensive labor and non computer capital and investing heavily in cheap computers for these sectors the computer revolution affects output growth not by raising mfp but by inducing firms to accumulate computers at extraordinary rates real computer services for example grew in excess of 20 per year in 14 out of 35 sectors for 1973 1991 although virtually all sectors are rapidly accumulating computer equipment computers remain small in levels in 1991 for example computer investment was only 10 of private fixed investment so the growth contribution of computers remains small relative to sectoral aggregates of labor and non computer capital the rapid rates of accumulation however are clearly making computers a more important source of growth across sectors with this heavy investment also came the wide spread expectation that computers would fundamentally alter the way firms operate and lead to higher mfp the reality has been very different as the most computer intensive sectors show steep declines in mfp growth after 1973 with three quarters of all computers concentrated in three service sectors trade fire and other services however this finding must be interpreted with caution as griliches 1994 notes output in these sectors is largely unmeasurable and thus mfp growth will be understated nonetheless it is quite reasonable that even computer using sectors where output is easier to measure show no mfp gains computer investment creates a capital input that enters the production function like any other purchased input since constant quality deflators embody productivity improvements in investment the direct impact is seen through the rapid capital accumulation only if the adoption of computers leads to production externalities or spillovers would computer investment also increase mfp growth the data however show no evidence of this ii computers and growth the national statistics most clearly show the computer revolution in the investment data

ipo mechanisms monitoring and ownership structure1 this paper analyzes the e ect of di erent ipo mechanisms on the structure of share ownership and explores the role of underpricing and rationing in determining investors shareholdings we focus on the agency problem that results when large institutions are the only investors capable of monitoring the firm whereas small shareholders free ride on these activities the major conclusion is that some well known aspects of ipos may be explained as rational responses by the issuer to the existence of regulatory constraints in public capital markets there is a two stage o ering mechanism in which the investment banker acting in the interests of the issuer optimally rations the allotment of shares to small investors in order to capture the benefits associated with better monitoring by institutions importantly in our model the existence of underpricing and oversubscription is an indication that the issuer has received a higher ex ante price than would have been obtained through a competitive walrasian type o ering process 1998 elsevier science s a all rights reserved jel classification g24 g32 g38

u s economic growth at the industry level the u s economy has expanded rapidly in recent years with total factor productivity the source of growth most closely identified with technological gains rising sharply since the mid 1990 s see e g bureau of labor statistics 1999 william gullickson and michael j harper 1999 mun s ho et al 1999 daniel e sichel 1999 this strong aggregate performance and the well documented explosion of investment in computers and other high tech equipment have led many to believe that the united states has experienced a permanent technology led growth revival it is essential however to disaggregate estimates of economic growth to the industry level to understand the new trends in the u s economy productivity growth the ability to produce more outputs from the same inputs differs widely among industries for the economy as a whole negative productivity growth in one industry can offset positive productivity growth in another and jorgenson 1990 shows that a measure of productivity based solely on aggregate data is valid only under very stringent conditions we avoid the limitations of an aggregate measure of productivity by decomposing u s growth across industries for the period 1958 1996 by breaking down the u s economy into 37 industries 35 private industries private households and general government we identify the contribution of each industry to aggregate productivity growth this enables us to isolate the underlying sources of gains in productivity and provides a better understanding of the forces driving the u s economy economy wide productivity from an aggregate production function increased 0 45 percent per year during 1958 1996 while methodology developed by evsey domar 1961 for aggregating over industries yields an aggregate estimate of 0 48 percent over the same period however industry productivity growth ranged from 1 98 percent in electronic and electric equipment to 20 52 percent in government enterprises highlighting fundamental differences in technology and productivity growth across industries these results show that the aggregate production function provides a reasonable estimate of productivity trends over long periods but also masks important differences among industries

fdi trade and spillover efficiency evidence from china s manufacturing sector using firm data from the 1995 third industrial census of china this paper finds that the presence of foreign ownership has a positive and significant effect on domestic firms productivity moreover trading with more advanced countries helps china gain access to new technology and information which improves its productivity and enables it to compete in international markets it is found that china s imports from oecd and the four asian tigers and exports to oecd have positive effects on domestic firms productivity by dividing industries into high technology gap and low technology gap groups it is found that the spillover effects of fdi are larger for the low technology gap group than for the high technology gap group however the estimation results of the trade induced technology spillover effect support the technology gap learning theory and the significance of importing appropriate technology

productivity technology and economic growth what is the relationship the relationship between productivity technology and economic growth has been debated extensively in the endogenous growth growth accounting new economy and policy literature this paper briefly surveys the literature on total factor productivity tfp calculations the various techniques and problems associated with it we argue that tfp is not a measure of technological change and only under ideal conditions does it measure the supernormal profits associated with technological change the critical driving force of economic growth is not the super normal profits that technological change generates but rather the continuous creation of opportunities for further technological development six illustrations of when tfp fails to correctly measure these super normal profits are provided a version carlaw and lipsey s 2003b model of endogenous general purpose technology driven growth is then utilized to make some progress toward answering prescott s 1998 call for a theory of tfp the model is used to simulate artificial data and connect theoretical assumptions of returns to scale and resource costs to the conditions under which tfp miss measures the actual growth of technological knowledge

effects of property rights on labor costs of nonprofit firms an application to the day care industry this paper estimates differences in labor costs between nonprofit and for profit firms in the day care industry a theoretical model which draws on the property rights literature as well as recent theo ries of nonprofit labor markets predicts that the magnitude and sign of the nonprofit salary differential will depend on specific characteristics of the samples analyzed empirical results reveal that in th e most competitive segment of the day care industry the nonprofit salary differential is insignificant however in the less competitive government subsidized segment of the industry the nonprofit different ial is significantly positive it ranges from 5 percent to 10 percent copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

moonlighting multiple motives and gender differences this paper examines the incidence and reasons for moonlighting with a focus on gender differences the study specifies and estimates a bivariate probit model of labour supply and the decision to hold more than one job it is found that the factors leading men and women to moonlight are similar a wage decomposition analysis reveals that 93 percent of the differential between male and female moonlighters wages is not explained by differences in characteristics and little connection is found between an individual s human capital and their moonlighting wage finally it is found that moonlighters are less likely to report their income

why don t issuers get upset about leaving money on the table in ipos one of the puzzles regarding initial public offerings ipos is that issuers rarely get upset about leaving substantial amounts of money on the table defined as the number of shares sold times the difference between the first day closing market price and the offer price the average ipo leaves 9 1 million on the table this number is approximately twice as large as the fees paid to investment bankers and represents a substantial indirect cost to the issuing firm we present a prospect theory model that focuses on the covariance of the money left on the table and wealth changes our reasoning also provides an explanation for a second puzzling pattern much more money is left on the table following recent market rises than after market falls this results in an explanation of hot issue markets we also offer a new explanation for why ipos are underpriced copyright 2002 oxford university press

public and private sector wages of male workers in germany we analyze several statistical assumptions used in empirical models on public private sector wage structures based on data for germany which contain a large range of background variables usually not available in other studies we investigate the sensitivity of results to various specification and identification assumptions the standard switching regression model is extended to allow for endogeneity of education level experience and hours worked these extensions lead to considerably different parameter estimates we compare conditional and unconditional wage differentials between the public and the private sector for the various specifications these differentials are sensitive to identification assumptions but robust across specifications which do and do not allow for endogeneity of education experience and hours worked

productivity wages and intrinsic motivations there is a long standing debate in labour economics on the impact of workers intrinsic motivations on equilibrium wages one direction in economic theory suggests that intrinsically motivated workers are willing to accept lower wages and donate work for example in terms of unpaid overtime the donative labour hypothesis in the other direction intrinsic motivations are expected to increase worker productivity and in turn wages the intrinsic motivation productivity hypothesis using a new database of a sample of workers in the cooperative non profit sector we find that consistently with the motivation productivity hypothesis more motivated workers earn significantly higher wages which signals higher productivity evidence supporting the donative labour hypothesis is weaker even though a generally positive connection between motivations and work donation is confirmed we interpret these findings by arguing that the impact of the donative labour effect is dominated by the intrinsic motivation productivity effect

property rights and wages the case of nursing homes in this paper we develop the implications of the property rights theory of the firm for wage determination and test the model using data from the u s nursing home industry the main theoretical prediction is that any attenuation of property rights will lead to higher wage rates for the firm s employees the empirical evidence indicates that indeed profit maximizing nursing homes do pay the lowest wage rates for given quality labor and that the stronger the cost minimizing incentives provided by medicaid reimbursement programs the lower the wage rate paid by these nursing homes

public and private sector wages in the netherlands there is much debate in the netherlands about underpayment of public sector workers relative to private sector workers in this paper we analyze the wage structures in both sectors using an endogenous switching regression model unlike previous dutch studies we find that the earnings prospects of public sector workers are better in the public sector than in the private sector for private sector workers we find the exact opposite their earnings prospects are better in the private sector moreover the allocation over sectors points to comparative advantages

technical efficiency and ict investment in italian manufacturing firms the importance of information and communication technologies icts is a much debated question with extensive literature aimed at understanding the role of icts in increasing economic growth firm productivity and firm efficiency different methods to estimate firm efficiency are used in this study in particular both the translog and the cobb douglas production functions are used in order to estimate the impact of ict on technical efficiency te in italian manufacturing firms over the period 1995 to 2003 results show that ict investments positively and significantly affected firms te moreover group size and geographical position have a positive influence on te finally the results show that older firms are on average more efficient than newer ones

markets ready mixed concrete concrete s natural color is gray its favored uses are utilitarian its very ubiquity causes it to blend into the background but ready mix concrete does have one remarkable characteristic other than manufactured ice perhaps no other manufacturing industry faces greater transport barriers the transportation problem arises because ready mix concrete both has a low value to weight ratio and is highly perishable it absolutely must be discharged from the truck before it hardens these transportation barriers mean ready mixed concrete must be produced near its customers for the same reason foreign trade in ready mixed concrete is essentially nonexistent this article is an introduction to the basics of the market for ready mix concrete focusing mainly on its consumers and its producers in the united states but with occasional comparisons to other countries when contrasts are useful

compensation in the nonprofit sector we investigate the determinants of pay in the nonprofit sector using data for 25 55 year olds from the 1994 88 current population survey outgoing rotation groups our results are consistent with the hypothesis that compensation is primarily determined in competitive markets without labor donations to nonprofit employers one implication is that nonprofit workers receive virtually the same wages as observationally equivalent employees in similar positions with profit seeking enterprises we cannot rule out the possibility of nonprofit penalties or premiums for selected groups however the differentials are generally small and competition appears to play a dominant role in nonprofit wage setting

raw materials profits and the productivity slowdown a complementary note raise ever since the problem was first discussed in the late 1970s there has been growing evidence that the sharp productivity slowdown of the industrial countries in the last decade must have been closely linked to the specific macroeconomic shocks of that period and could not be explained by gradual processes such as the slowing down of the technological frontier or the drying up of the sources of conventional factor supplies like land or immigrant labor in no case except possibly the united states is there evidence of a sharp slowdown in productivity growth in the 15 20 year period before 1973 a simple statistical test dates at least one major kink in the productivity growth of most countries in and around the period 1973 1975 the implied link with the sharp oil and raw material price shock of that time is further borne out by the fact that the total productivity slowdown across countries at least in manufacturing seems correlated with the relative raw material price acceleration in different countries though this is not the only direct explanatory factor bruno and sachs 1985 table 12 4 in an attempt to give a theoretical rationale for the link between the events of the 1970s and the sharp productivity slowdown several candidates offer themselves the first and most obvious one for gross output measures of productivity in a material intensive sector like manufacturing is the direct substitution in production of primary inputs against costly energy and raw materials other things being equal conventional doubledeflated base weighted measures of value added productivity will in such case impart a downward bias to the slowdown

an analysis of public and private sector wages allowing for endogenous choices of both government and union status a general selection model is estimated in which workers select across four labor markets private nonunion private union public nonunion and public union evidence is found of positive selection bias in the private nonunion sector and of negative selection bias in the public union sector union wage differentials in the public and private sectors as well as public private wage differentials are then calculated two different types of wage differentials are contrasted we discuss when it is appropriate to use each type of differential

sequential sales learning and cascades when ipo shares are sold sequentially later potential investors can learn from the purchasing decisions of earlier investors this can lead rapidly to cascades in which subsequent investors optimally ignore their private information and imitate earlier investors although rationing in this situation gives rise to a winner s curse it is irrelevant the model predicts that 1 offerings succeed or fail rapidly 2 demand can be so elastic that even risk neutral issuers underprice to completely avoid failure 3 issuers with good inside information can price their shares so high that they sometimes fail 4 an underwriter may want to reduce the communication among investors by spreading the selling effort over a more segmented market consider a scenario in which an issuer is selling a new security of uncertain value for example an ipo initial public offering of stock or high yield debt through an underwriter the s e c has banned variable price sales while the value of this new security is highly uncertain to individual market participants investors hold perfectly accurate information when aggregated moreover there are many potential investors and a small number of these investors can jointly determine the value of the firm or its project with high precision it would seem that in this scenario underpriced offerings would succeed and overpriced offerings would fail nevertheless this paper shows that if the distribution channels of invest ment banks are limited underpriced offerings can fail and overpriced offer ings can succeed with limited distribution channels it takes the under writer time to approach interested investors therefore later investors can observe how well an offering has sold to date or at least how successful it has sold relative to offerings previously undertaken by this underwriter

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

nonprofit and proprietary sector behavior wage differentials among lawyers this paper focuses on earnings differentials in the for profit and private nonprofit sectors with specific reference to lawyers an earnings equation for private lawyers is estimated and is used to predict what the nonprofit sector public interest lawyers could earn in the private sector the finding is that the public interest lawyers are paid substantially less that they know this and that the financial sacrifice is permanent next a job choice equation is estimated which suggests that those lawyers who choose public interest work have different preferences from those who choose private law practices the difference may help to account for the willingness of the public interest lawyers to accept lower monetary rewards further research is needed to determine whether the differences found for lawyers in the two sectors are also found in other industries and whether such differences are found only at the level of management or at lower levels the goal is improved understanding of behavioral diff

are ipo allocations for sale evidence from mutual funds combining data on brokerage commissions that mutual fund families paid for trade execution between 1996 and 1999 with data on mutual fund holdings of initial public offerings ipos i document a robust positive correlation between commissions paid to lead underwriters and reported holdings of the ipos they underwrite moreover i find that the correlation is limited to ipos with nonnegative first day returns and strongest for ipos that occur shortly before mutual funds report their holdings when the noise introduced by flipping is smallest overall the evidence suggests that business relationships with lead underwriters increase investor access to underpriced ipos during the hot initial public offering market of the late 1990s the typical initial public offering ipo was significantly underpriced and oversubscribed and the first day returns earned by investors in these ipos received considerable public attention 1 the source of these first day returns and related questions

heterogeneous firms and the organization of production firms in the same industry exhibit systematic differences in the organization of production and the structure of employment entrepreneurial ability is the specific scarce input that limits the size of a firm this input must be allocated to two activities coordinating production and monitoring workers able entrepreneurs can convert calendar time into larger supplies of coordinating effort that enable them to assemble large firms greater ability implies a higher shadow price of time which increases the implicit costs of monitoring a dispersion of entrepreneurial abilities generates an equilibrium size distribution of firms differences in monitoring costs affect the choice of worker productivities the design of products and the organization of production the monitoring cost hypothesis advanced in this paper goes a long way in explaining the equilibrium of an industry containing heterogeneous firms that differ in size and behavior

firm dynamics and industrialization in the chinese economy in transition implications for small business policy abstract this article first presents a review of the development of different types of domestic enterprises state owned enterprise soes collectiveowned enterprises coes and other enterprises oes which include mainly private enterprises compared with other transition economies coes are actually an important source of china s rapid economic growth they are vaguely defined cooperative without a well defined ownership structure there is no equivalent organizational structure similar to coes in western economies the purpose of this article is to study the empirical relationship between the size of domestic enterprises including state owned enterprises collective owned enterprises and other enterprises and their firm dynamics growth by investigating whether they grow according to gibrat s law the majority of coes and oes were formed after the economic reform the rapid growth of these non state enterprises especially coes is actually the driving force behind the rapid development of the industrial sector our empirical results suggest that gibrat s law does not hold for all types of enterprises the rejection is especially strong for coes moreover small enterprises are growing faster than their larger counterparts in terms of employment and output this conclusion leads to at least three implications 1 there has been little research into the dynamics of soes and coes in an economy in transition our results not only help stimulate further research in this area but also provide information for designing policies to speed up the economic reforms 2 until now the chinese government has not had a comprehensive small business policy given our empirical results there is an implication for government policy prescription to achieve china s development targets of rapid industrialization and lower unemployment or underemployment the chinese economy can reap more dynamic benefits by breaking up a giant and inefficient enterprise especially inefficient soe into a number of smaller enterprises in addition more small enterprises also improve competition in the marketplace and force other inefficient soes to improve their performance further research should be undertaken to examine the viability of this policy 3 because coes are the majority of small manufacturing enterprises the rapid growth of coes after their formation that are simply the opposite of the type of private organizations the center of the central and east european reforms is rather surprising to academics although some hypotheses like cooperative culture and moral framework for rights are put forward to explain their superior performance the validity of such hypotheses has not been empirically tested yet this is a fruitful area for further research

worker heterogeneity job screening and firm size a model of job screening is developed in which firms make wage offers to workers based on an imperfect evaluation of their abilities if large firms have higher costs of acquiring information about workers they screen workers with less accuracy and choose a wage compensation scheme different from the one small firms choose this generates the often observed positive correlation between firm size and wages the model also predicts that wage structure and perhaps wage dispersion will differ by firm size and that individuals who acquire more schooling will also choose to work in a larger firm these hypotheses are tested and supported using data from the national longitudinal survey

endowment effects in the field evidence from india s ipo lotteries we study a unique field experiment in india in which 1 5 million stock investors face lotteries for the random allocation of shares we find that the winners of these randomly assigned initial public offering ipo lottery shares are significantly more likely to hold them than lottery losers 1 6 and even 24 months after the random allocation this finding strongly evokes laboratory findings of an endowment effect for risky gambles and persists in samples of highly active investors suggesting along with additional evidence that this behaviour is not driven by inertia alone the effect decreases as experience in the ipo market increases but remains even for very experienced investors leading theories of the endowment effect based on reference dependent preferences are unable to fully explain these and other findings in the data