can falling supply explain the rising return to college for younger men a cohort based analysis although the college high school wage gap for younger u s men has doubled over the past 30 years the gap for older men has remained nearly constant in the united kingdom and canada the college high school wage gap also increased for younger relative to older men using a model with imperfect substitution between similarly educated workers in different age groups we argue that these shifts reflect changes in the relative supply of highly educated workers across age groups the driving force behind these changes is the slowdown in the rate of growth of educational attainment that began with cohorts born in the early 1950s in all three countries

no price like home global house prices 1870 2012 how have house prices evolved in the long run this paper presents annual house price indices for 14 advanced economies since 1870 based on extensive data collection we are able to show for the first time that house prices in most industrial economies stayed constant in real terms from the 19th to the mid 20th century but rose sharply in recent decades land prices not construction costs hold the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices in the long run residential land prices have surged in the second half of the 20th century but did not increase meaningfully before we argue that before world war ii dramatic reductions in transport costs expanded the supply of land and suppressed land prices since the mid 20th century comparably large land augmenting reductions in transport costs no longer occurred increased regulations on land use further inhibited the utilization of additional land while rising expenditure shares for housing services increased demand

drawn into violence evidence on what makes a criminal from the vietnam draft lotteries draft lottery number assignment during the vietnam era provides a natural experiment to examine the effects of military service on crime using exact dates of birth for inmates in state and federal prisons in 1979 1986 and 1991 we find that draft eligibility increases incarceration for violent crimes but decreases incarceration for nonviolent crimes among whites this is particularly evident in 1979 where two sample instrumental variable estimates indicate that military service increases the probability of incarceration for a violent crime by 0 34 percentage points and decreases the probability of incarceration for a nonviolent crime by 0 30 percentage points we conduct two falsification tests one that applies each of the three binding lotteries to unaffected cohorts and another that considers the effects of lotteries that were not used to draft servicemen jel k42 h56

class size education and wages we use micro data for england and wales to examine the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at 16 and on wages later in life we find that class size has a sizeable and significant effect on the decision to stay on this finding is very robust wage equations show the effect of staying on is significantly positive for wages combining this with the effect of class size on the staying on decision reveals that class size significantly affects future wages reduced form models lead to much less accurate and insignificant estimates

globalization labor markets and policy backlash in the past the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have many things in common both periods recorded fast growth convergence and labor market integration between oecd members both periods witnessed intense debate about who gained and who lost from globalization furthermore the earlier period saw a retreat from global liberalism long before the interwar deglobalization disaster did globalization of that time plant seeds of its own destruction are there lessons for the present

egyptian consumers willingness to pay for carbon labeled products a contingent valuation analysis of socio economic factors abstract carbon emissions from products contribute to anthropogenic climate change because of the growing concern over the environmental impact of production and consumption of consumer goods carbon footprint information started to appear on labels of several products in this paper we use both parametric and non parametric econometric models in order to estimate egyptian consumers willingness to pay wtp for carbon labeled products contingent valuation methods based on log logistic log normal and weibull regression models revealed that consumers in egypt are willing to pay a price premium of approximately 75 egyptian pounds ep for carbon labeled products based on the single bound dichotomous choice sbdc model and up to 90 ep based on the double bound dichotomous choice dbdc model from a socio economic perspective results have also revealed that income age gender and educational level have a significant influence on the respondent s wtp implications of this study highlight the fact that understanding consumers preferences for eco friendly products may play an important role in formulating environmental policy changes to face complex problems as diverse as environmental pollution or global climate change

trade and factor movements with three factors and two goods abstract with three factors and two goods there are two extreme and one middle factor regardless of technical complementaries in the individual production functions the extreme factors must be enemies and the middle factor the other factor s friend with constant product prices

taking versus taxing an analysis of conscription in a private information economy most countries currently man their militaries through conscription i e a draft conventional wisdom suggests that by lowering the budgetary cost of the military a draft reduces distortionary taxation especially when military needs are large we find that this intuition is misguided when income taxes are set optimally voluntary enlistments lead to less distortionary taxation than a draft because the tax base left behind by a volunteer army tends to be more productive than that after a draft for reasonable parameter values drafts are more distortionary and less socially desirable when military needs are large

changes in returns to education in latin america the role of demand and supply of skills using micro data for the urban areas of argentina brazil chile colombia and mexico the authors document trends in men s returns to education during the 1980s and the 1990s and estimate the role of supply and demand factors in explaining the changes in skill premia they propose a model of demand for skills with three production inputs corresponding to workers with primary secondary and university level education further the authors demonstrate that an unprecedented rise in the supply of workers having completed secondary level education depressed their wages relative to workers with primary level education throughout latin america this supply shift was compounded by a generalized shift in the demand for workers with tertiary education

the long term impact of military service on health evidence from world war ii and korean war veterans during the world war ii and korean war era the u s military freely distributed cigarettes to overseas personnel and provided low cost tobacco products on domestic military bases in fact even today the military continues to sell subsidized tobacco products on its bases using a variety of instrumental variables approaches to deal with nonrandom selection into the military and into smoking we provide substantial evidence that cohorts with higher military participation rates subsequently suffered more premature mortality more importantly we show that a large fraction 35 to 79 percent of the excess veteran deaths due to heart disease and lung cancer are attributable to military induced smoking

assessing policies to equalize opportunity using an equilibrium model of educational and occupational choices abstract the inter generational correlation of education in the u s is tremendous for instance in psid data from 1990 young males with college educated parents had a 70 chance of attending college but those with high school drop out parents had only a 15 chance in this paper we analyze the impact of college attendance bonus schemes designed to increase college attendance rates and pv of lifetime income of youth from disadvantaged backgrounds of course policies that increase the supply of skilled labor may reduce the college wage premium see heckman et al heckman james lochner lance and taber christopher explaining rising wage inequality explorations with a dynamic equilibrium model of labor earnings with heterogeneous agents review of economic dynamics 1 1998a 1 58 heckman james lochner lance and taber christopher general equilibrium treatment effects a study of tuition policy american economic review 88 2 1998b 381 386 this may have the unintended consequence of wiping out most of the gains to the targeted groups the strength of such equilibrium effects on wages depends on the substitutability between different types of labor thus it is important to evaluate education subsidies within an equilibrium framework that allows for flexible patterns of substitution across factor inputs this is exactly what we do here using an overlapping generations equilibrium model of the u s labor market fit to psid data from 1968 to 1996 the model allows for imperfect substitution among types of labor differentiated by education gender age and ten 1 digit level occupations a much finer differentiation than has been considered in prior work we find that very large college attendance bonuses are necessary to equate college attendance rates between youth whose parents had only high school degrees or were high school dropouts and youth whose parents attended at least some college the size of these bonuses far exceeds any reasonable measure of college costs suggesting the costs the bonuses overcome are primarily psychic or effort costs for example youth from disadvantaged backgrounds may be poorly prepared for college this suggests that bonuses targeted at college age youth are probably a very inefficient way to reduce inequality earlier intervention is likely called for

education and crime over the life cycle we compare two large scale policy interventions aimed at reducing crime subsidizing high school completion and increasing the length of prison sentences to this purpose we use a life cycle model with endogenous education and crime choices we apply the model to property crime and calibrate it to u s data we find that targeting crime reductions through increases in high school graduation rates entails large efficiency and welfare gains these gains are absent if the same crime reduction is achieved by increasing the length of sentences we also find that general equilibrium effects explain roughly one half of the reduction in crime from subsidizing high school

consumer acceptance valuation of and attitudes towards genetically modified food review and implications for food policy abstract an increasing set of evidence has been reported on how consumers could potentially react to the introduction of genetically modified food studies typically contain some empirical evidence and some theoretical explanations of the data however to date limited effort has been posed on systematically reviewing the existing evidence and its implications for policy this paper contributes to the literature by bringing together the published evidence on the behavioural frameworks and evidence on the process leading to the public acceptance of genetically modified gm food and organisms gmos in doing so we employ a set of clearly defined search tools and a limited number of comprehensive key words the study attempts to gather an understanding of the published findings on the determinants of the valuation of gm food both in terms of willingness to accept and the willing to pay a premium for non gm food trust with information sources on the safety and public health and ultimate attitudes underpinning such evidence furthermore in the light of such evidence we formulate some policy strategies to deal with public uncertainly regarding to gmos and especially gm food

going to college to avoid the draft the unintended legacy of the vietnam war between 1965 and 1975 the enrollment rate of college age men in the united states rose and then fell abruptly many contemporary observers e g james davis and kenneth dolbeare 1968 attributed the surge in college attendance to draft avoidance behavior under a policy first introduced in the korean war the selective service issued college deferments to enrolled men that delayed their eligibility for conscription these deferments provided a strong incentive to remain in school for men who wanted to avoid the draft for example the college entry rate of young men rose from 54 percent in 1963 to 62 percent in 1968 the peak year of the draft moreover both the college entry rate and the number of inductions dropped sharply between 1968 and 1973 as the draft was being phased out although these parallel trends are suggestive they do not necessarily prove that draft avoidance raised the education of men who were at risk of service during the vietnam war such an inference requires an explicit specification of the counterfactual what would have happened to schooling outcomes in the absence of the draft in this paper we use trends in enrollment and completed schooling of men relative to those of women to measure the effects of draftavoidance behavior during the vietnam war our maintained hypothesis is that in the absence of gender specific factors such as the draft the relative schooling outcomes of men and women from the same cohort would follow a smooth trend in light of the sharp discontinuity in military induction rates between 1965 and 1970 we look for similar patterns in the relative enrollment rate of men and in the relative college graduation rate of men from cohorts that were at risk of induction during this period

when labor s lost health family life incarceration and education in a time of declining economic opportunity for low skilled men the economic progress of us men has stagnated in recent decades the labor force participation rate of men ages 25 54 peaked in the mid 1960s and has declined since then according to the bureau of labor statistics while men s real median earnings have been flat since the early 1970s these population averages mask considerably larger declines in participation among less educated and non white men as well as substantial increases in wage inequality in this paper we seek to illuminate the broader context in which prime age men are experiencing economic stagnation we explore changes for prime age men over time in education mortality morbidity disability program receipt family structure and incarceration rates we focus on prime age men namely those ages 25 54 and on the years 1980 2016 or 2017 when possible encompassing much of the period of reduced economic progress for low skilled men

demand for education and labor market outcomes lessons from the abolition of compulsory conscription in france before 1997 education was a way for young french men to avoid military service in the army after the abolition of compulsory conscription in 1997 this incentive to stay on in education disappeared we show that the decrease in the benefit of pursuing education for men was followed by a fall in their educational achievement relative to women and by a decrease in their relative entry wages these results suggest that high school dropout rates could be reduced by policies increasing the immediate benefits of pursuing education and that it would yield a substantial improvement in early labor market outcomes

explaining the worldwide decline in the length of mandatory military service 1970 2010 compulsory military service has declined considerably since 1970 this explained by changes on both the extensive and intensive margins by governments while the decision to use conscription for military purposes has been studied extensively in this paper we examine empirically the factors underlying the decline in the duration of military service obligations employing data from the economic freedom of the world index observed at 5 year intervals from 1970 to 2010 we find that the probability of a shorter military service time is positively associated with smaller country populations smaller lagged army sizes increases in primary schooling among young males and having common law legal origins our empirical approach also highlights how the elderly population exhibits a nonlinear relationship with the length of conscriptees time in uniform

sources of convergence in the late nineteenth century abstract this paper investigates convergence for a group of seven countries during the period 1870 1914 a standard empirical growth model which includes physical and human capital accumulation proves unsatisfactory in this setting an alternative neoclassical open economy factor accumulation model is proposed which admits capital and labor migration and may be extended to include a moving frontier the model explains the observed convergence pattern in the sample and suggests that factor accumulation patterns were the prime sources of labor productivity convergence from 1870 to 1914

changes in u s wages 1976 2000 ongoing skill bias or major technological change this article examines the determinants of changes in the u s wage structure from 1976 to 2000 our main empirical observation is that changes in both the level of wages and the returns to skill over this period were primarily driven by changes in the ratio of human capital to physical capital we show that this pattern conforms extremely well to a simple model of technological adoption following a major change in technological opportunities in contrast we do not find much empirical support for the view that ongoing factor augmenting skill biased technological progress has been an important driving force over this period

factor price convergence in the late nineteenth century the authors examine a dramatic historical episode of factor price convergence in the late nineteenth century their focus is convergence between old world and new and the analysis centers on land and labor wage rental ratios boomed in the old world and collapsed in the new moving the resource rich labor scarce new world closer to the resource scarce labor abundant old world the authors use econometrics and simulations to identify proconvergence forces which include commodity price convergence factor accumulation and factor saving biases the results confirm that open economy characteristics and international market integration are important sources of convergence copyright 1996 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

implications of mandatory labeling of gm food in india evidence from the supply side abstract we assess the supply side economic implications of introducing a strict mandatory labeling policy for genetically modified gm food in india as proposed in 2006 we apply our analysis to the case of cottonseed oil and soybean oil two products that would be the first affected by such regulation we find that gm food labeling would generate adjustment and implementation costs and consumer benefits would not always be visible and would highly depend on the degree of enforcement

complementarity in a simple general equilibrium production model a simple three factor two good general equilibrium model allowing complementarity in production is examined conclusions of general equilibrium economics with two factors must be reinterpreted and qualified when complementarity is possible sign patterns of how changing factor endowments affect outputs and how changing prices affect factor payments are uncovered for a small open economy results should prove valuable to a wide range of economists interested in extending general equilibrium analysis to include complementary factors of production

birth rates and the vietnam draft during the vietnam conflict over 8 million americans served in the armed forces and almost 3 5 million were deployed to southeast asia department of veterans affairs the war is considered by some to be the defining event of that generation not just because of the number of troops deployed the largest since the second world war but because of how it affected all men of that generation those who served as well as those who were able to avoid service while a large literature has examined effects of the draft on postwar outcomes for veterans effects of the wartime mobilization on family formation during the time of the conflict have been largely ignored the mobilization led to the absence of a large number of young men from local marriage markets and this shock to sex ratios could have significantly disrupted normal family formation patterns including assortative matching and fertility behavior 1 in this paper we exploit variation across states and over time on vietnam era inductions to analyze the effects of the wartime mobilization on

military service and human capital accumulation evidence from colonial punjab this paper estimates the impact of military recruitment during world war i on human capital accumulation in colonial punjab the empirical strategy exploits the exogenous increase in recruitment by the indian army during the war higher military recruitment is found to be associated with increased literacy at the district religion level the observed improvement in the human capital stock appears to be driven by the informal acquisition of literacy skills by serving soldiers

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

native migrant labour substitution by industry and wage effects evidence from the uk unlike previous studies we estimate the native migrant substitution elasticity nme differentiated by sector to do so we employ a straightforward estimation strategy that consists of adding slo

das human kapital a theory of the demise of the class structure this paper suggests that the demise of the capitalists workers class structure was a socio economic transformation orchestrated by the capitalists in reaction to the increasing importance of human capital in sustaining their profit rates physical capital accumulation in the process of industrialization enhanced the importance of human capital in production and generated incentives for capitalists to support the provision of public education for the masses triggering the demise of the existing class structure the implications of the theory are consistent with the voting patterns on england s education reform of 1902

on the macroeconomic and welfare effects of illegal immigration abstract this paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium model with labor market frictions to explore the economic consequences of illegal immigration in the baseline model native workers and illegal foreign workers compete for jobs in the same market but serve as imperfect substitutes in production the calibrated model generates a u shaped relationship between long run domestic consumption and the population share of illegal immigrants after taking into account both consumption and leisure i found that an increase in illegal immigration can generate significant welfare gains for the natives the baseline model is then extended to include heterogeneous workers in the domestic population

conscription and the returns to education evidence from a regression discontinuity in 1997 the french government put into effect a law that permanently exempted young french male citizens born after jan 1 1979 from mandatory military service while still requiring those born before that cutoff date to serve this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of peacetime conscription on education and labor market outcomes results indicate that conscription eligibility induces a significant increase in years of education which is consistent with conscription avoidance behavior however this increased education does not result in either an increase in graduation rates or in employment and wages additional evidence shows conscription has no direct effect on earnings suggesting that the returns to education induced by this policy was zero

on mandatory labeling of animal welfare attributes this paper assesses us resident support for mandatory labeling of animal welfare information on pork and egg products and outlines policy considerations for assessment prior to implementing any mandatory labeling policies regarding animal welfare practices results suggest consumers support mandatory labeling indicating use of gestation crates stalls and laying hen cages estimates suggest consumers would be willing to pay about 20 higher pork and egg prices to obtain this production practice information demographic and latent perception drivers of this support are highlighted multiple issues that warrant consideration prior to imposing mandatory labeling are discussed revealing lines of corresponding future research

weighing the military option the effects of wartime conditions on investments in human capital serving in the military is an important vehicle through which young americans invest in their human capital as such changes in the desirability of military service may affect the attainment of enlistment requirements such as a high school degree or equivalent using american community survey data we find that exposure to home state combat fatalities during the iraq and afghanistan wars decreased the probability of high school completion and increased the probability of general equivalency diploma completion using military data we confirm that exposure to home state fatalities selectively deterred some individuals from enlisting the results suggest military service and educational investments are complements jel i20 i26 j24

tariffs and growth in the late 19th century the paper estimates the correlation between tariffs and economic growth in the late 19th century in the context of three types of growth equation unconditional convergence equations conditional convergence equations and factor accumulation models it does so for a panel of ten countries between 1875 and 1914 tariffs were positively correlated with growth in these countries during this period economic theory is ambiguous as regards the relationship between trade policy and growth the growth literature of the past decade has produced an impressive array of models in which protection can either increase or reduce long run growth rates grossman and helpman 1991 rivera batiz and romer 1991 stokey 1991 young 1991 such theoretical ambiguity invites empirical research while new growth theory is ambiguous on the subject the new empirical growth literature has produced a consensus that free trade is positively associated with growth based on evidence from the late 20th century but see rodrlguez and rodrik 1999 for a sceptical review of the literature the clear

consumer perceived risk model for the introduction of genetically modified food in spain abstract since the last part of the 20th century the search for new forms of cultivation and food has basically centred on the application of biotechnology giving rise to gm foods consumer acceptance is conditioned by the risk that they perceive from introducing food into their consumption habits processed through technology that they hardly understand besides information is insufficient in the consumer ambit and moreover it is influenced by ideological and ethical determining factors the factors were analysed that influence this consumer perceived risk through a structural equation model this study was conducted in spain concretely in the province of alicante located in the southeast of this country the main conclusion from this research is that the introduction of gm food into agro food markets should be accompanied by adequate policies to guarantee consumer safety these actions would allow a decrease in consumer perceived risk by taking special care of the information provided concretely relating to health for the most influential factor in consumer perceived risk from these foods is concern about health

the awarding of phds in the united states and canada war the draft and other economic determinants this article is concerned with the awarding of phds in the usa and canada in the post ww ii period overall by gender and major academic discipline the effects of the explanatory variables lagged by 6 years to allow for time to degree completion are consistent with the model military conscription with educational exemptions and the vietnam war increased male phds in the usa but as expected had no effect for us females or in canada this suggests that the war and draft effect for us males were not reflecting other unmeasured north american effects government expenditures on research and development enhanced the phd production especially for males and in the physical sciences the cyclical indicator the adult male unemployment rate has a weak positive effect for males in both the usa and canada suggesting that during the post ww ii period the positive effect on graduate level education of the reduced opportunity cost of time due to a recession was stronger than the negative wealth effect of th

measuring protection a cautionary tale abstract this paper comments on a theoretically based index of protection recently developed by anderson and neary the index must be calculated within the context of a specific cge model anderson and neary propose a generic model and have found that the index is robust to changes in the elasticities embedded within that model is the index also robust to changes in the specification of the model the paper identifies one historical instance where the index is extremely sensitive to the specification of the model s demand side there are important methodological lessons to be learnt from this example

skill biased technical change and the cost of higher education we document the growth in higher education costs and tuition over the past 50 years to explain these trends we develop a general equilibrium model with skill and sector biased technical change finding the model s parameters through a combination of estimation and calibration we show that it can explain the rise in college costs between 1961 and 2009 along with the increase in college attainment and the change in the relative earnings of college graduates the model predicts that if college costs had ceased to grow after 1961 enrollment in 2010 would have been 3 6 higher

evaluating the labor market effects of compulsory military service we identify the causal effect of compulsory military service on conscripts subsequent labormarket outcomes by exploiting the regression discontinuity design of the military draft in germany during the 1950s unbiased estimates of the effect of military service on lifetime earnings wages and employment are obtained by comparing men born before july 1 1937 the white cohort who were exempted from compulsory military service to men who were born on or shortly after this threshold date and hence faced a positive probability of being drafted we find that the putative earnings advantage and wage premium of those who served in the armed forces vanish when selection effects are taken into account

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

the macroeconomic implications of rising wage inequality in the united states in recent decades american workers have faced a rising college premium a narrowing gender gap and increasing wage volatility this paper explores the quantitative and welfare implications of these changes the framework is an incomplete markets life cycle model in which individuals choose education intrafamily time allocation and savings given the observed history of the u s wage structure the model replicates key trends in cross sectional inequality in hours worked earnings and consumption recent cohorts enjoy welfare gains on average as higher relative wages for college graduates and for women translate into higher educational attainment and a more even division of labor within the household

social interactions in high school lessons from an earthquake after an earthquake hit southern italy in 1980 young men from certain towns were exempted from compulsory military service we show that the exemption raised high school graduation rates of boys by more than 2 percentage points we do this by comparing high school graduation rates of young exempt men and older nonexempt men from the least damaged areas and men of the same age groups from nearby towns that were not hit by the quake similar comparisons show that graduation rates of young women in the affected areas also increased since in italy women are not subject to the draft the findings suggest the presence of spillover effects jel i21 j13

the determinants and welfare implications of us workers diverging location choices by skill 1980 2000 abstract from 1980 to 2000 the rise in the us college high school graduate wage gap coincided with increased geographic sorting as college graduates concentrated in high wage high rent cities this paper estimates a structural spatial equilibrium model to determine causes and welfare consequences of this increased skill sorting while local labor demand changes fundamentally caused the increased skill sorting it was further fueled by endogenous increases in amenities within higher skill cities changes in cities wages rents and endogenous amenities increased inequality between high school and college graduates by more than suggested by the increase in the college wage gap alone jel d31 i26 j24 j31 j61 r23

migration and imperfect labor markets theory and cross country evidence from denmark germany and the uk we investigate the labor market effects of immigration in denmark germany and the uk three countries which are characterized by considerable differences in labor market institutions and welfare states institutions such as collective bargaining minimum wages employment protection and unemployment benefits affect the way in which wages respond to labor supply shocks and hence the labor market effects of immigration we employ a wage setting approach which assumes that wages decline with the unemployment rate albeit imperfectly we find that the wage and employment effects of immigration depend on wage flexibility and the composition of the labor supply shock in germany immigration involves only moderate wage but large unemployment effects since immigrants are concentrated in labor market segments with low wage flexibility the reverse is true for the uk and denmark

the health effects of military service evidence from the vietnam draft i introduction the impact of military service on long term health is reemerging as a vital policy question as the united states conducts major military operations in iraq and afghanistan health professionals have raised concerns that significant numbers of the veterans of these conflicts are experiencing psychological and physical health problems the department of veterans affairs estimates that anywhere from 12 to 20 of servicemen returning from iraq suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder which the medical literature suggests can have a long term adverse effect on an individual s health in the 2005 fiscal year the department of veterans affairs spent about 32 billion dollars on medical care for veterans a substantial liability for the american taxpayer thus understanding the long term health impacts of military service is important both for allocating treatment resources and for correctly estimating the cost of waging these two wars comparing the health of veterans with that of nonveterans may not give us credible estimates of the effect of military service people voluntarily enlisting in the military differ in their observable characteristics from those who do not these observable differences between veterans and nonveterans leave us concerned that cross sectional estimates of the long term health consequences of military service will be biased by systematic differences in the unobservable characteristics of the two groups for this reason we use the draft lottery implemented during the vietnam war as an instrument for military service the draft lottery required randomly selected men born between 1944 and 1952 to report for possible induction into the military we use confidential versions of the 19742004 national health interview surveys nhis 1 to examine the impact of military service on veterans health we focus on the 67 608 men who were born between 1950 and 1952 because as we document this is the cohort most affected by the vietnam draft lottery we begin with a cross sectional comparison of veterans and nonveterans which reveals that veterans are in systematically worse health than nonveterans and that these health disparities increase with age these estimates probably overstate the causal effect of military service because veterans differ systematically from nonveterans on dimensions such as education that are strongly associated with adverse health when we correct for this problem using draft status to instrument for military service we find that despite a very strong first stage relationship between draft eligibility and military service the 2 stage least squares 2sls estimates of the impact of military service on health are fairly imprecise for most of the outcomes we examine the confidence intervals from the 2sls regressions containing both zero and the point estimate from the cross sectional regression this paper makes two contributions to the literature first unlike the cross sectional literature on the impact of military service on health the instrumental variables approach used in this paper provides unbiased estimates second this paper documents that though the vietnam lottery very significantly increased military service it led to only a modest increase in combat exposure 2 in the following section we discuss the existing literature on veterans health and on the impact of the vietnam era draft in section iii we describe our primary data source the nhis in section iv we discuss the research methodology and some of the issues that complicate the use of draft eligibility as an instrument section v discusses our results and section vi concludes ii previous literature there is a significant literature documenting the disproportionate prevalence of health problems among military veterans hoge et al 2004 find that mental health problems are common in veterans who served in iraq and afghanistan

a century of missing trade in contemporary data the measured factor content of trade is far smaller than its predicted magnitude in the pure heckscher ohlin vanek framework the so called missing trade mystery authors wonder if this problem has been there from the beginning that is authors ask if the heckscher ohlin theory was so much at odds with reality at its time of conception authors apply contemporary tests to historical data focusing on the major trading zone that inspired the factor abundance theory the old and new worlds of the pre 1914 greater atlantic economy this places autor s analysis in a very different context than contemporary studies an era with lower trade barriers higher transport costs a more skewed global distribution of the relevant factors especially land and comparably large productivity divergence these conditions might seem more favorable to the theory but the results are still very poor

comparative advantage in uk manufacturing trade 1910 1935 this paper uses a maintained hypothesis of comparative advantage based on relative factor endowments to investigate uk manufacturing trade prior to world war ii the results from several independent tests indicate that britain exported goods intensive in the use of unskilled labour and had a comparative disadvantage in goods intensive in the use of human capital right up to the mid 1930s this is consistent with the views of contemporaries but somewhat at odds with recent optimistic assessments of structural change in pre war britain this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

free trade and factor price polarization abstract factor price equalization between trading partners is perhaps the best known implication of the heckscher ohlin samuelson model of production and trade it has long been known that with more primary factors than goods this result is not necessary recent studies have investigated effects of changing prices on factor payments in the three factor two good trade model this short note emphasizes that when such an economy moves from autarky to free trade payment to a relatively cheap factor may fall polarizing factor prices conditions favoring this outcome are examined

on input market frictions and estimation of factors demand in this article we explore the impact of imperfectly competitive input markets on production function estimation first order profit maximizing conditions are altered when frictions in input markets cause the elasticity of input supply to the firm to be finite a consequence of this is that the standard econometric model used for production function estimation will be misspecified we prove that in all nontrivial cases finite elasticities of supply to the firm will lead to inconsistent estimates of production function parameters monte carlo simulations show that the resulting bias can be economically significant

market potential and the rise of us productivity leadership abstract today s globalization driven by lower barriers to trade has increased market potential for many nations and led to gains in gdp per capita we test whether this was true in the first wave of globalization by constructing market potential measures for a sample of 27 countries in 1900 and 1910 based on a general equilibrium model of production and trade cross sectional estimates suggest that market potential was an economically significant determinant of gdp per capita at this time to assess welfare effects we then study the general equilibrium impact of raising market potential by eliminating international borders in a quantitative counterfactual calculation for 1900 there are significant gains in real income per capita for all nations we use us per capita output as a benchmark since it attained leadership in this variable from the late 19th century and the literature frequently attributes this to its relatively large domestic market a market unconstrained by trade costs associated with international borders because market potential was already near that of the us the largest european countries do not entirely close their per capita income gaps with the us after removing all border barriers to trade within europe or even globally on the other hand many small european countries could have done so

human capital prices productivity and growth separate identification of the price and quantity of human capital has important implications for understanding key issues in labor economics and macroeconomics price and quantity series are derived and subjected to robustness checks the human capital price series associated with dierent education levels are highly correlated and exhibit a strong secular trend three result

global trade and the maritime transport revolution abstract what is the role of transport improvements in globalization we argue that the nineteenth century is the ideal testing ground maritime freight rates fell on average by 50 while global trade increased 400 from 1870 to 1913 we estimate the first indices of bilateral freight rates and directly incorporate these into a standard gravity model we also take the endogeneity of bilateral trade and freight rates seriously and propose an instrumental variables approach the results are striking we find no evidence that the maritime transport revolution was the primary driver of the late nineteenth century global trade boom

globalisation history and development a tale of two centuries this paper situates globalisation in historical perspective to analyse its implications for development it sketches a picture of globalisation during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries a comparison of these two epochs reveals striking parallels unexpected similarities and important differences it shows that globalisation did not lead to rapid growth and economic convergence in the world either then or now indeed growth slowed down and income levels diverged while the gap between the industrialised and developing countries widened in both epochs the story of globalisation it turns out does not conform to the fairy tale about convergence and development

the diffusion of computers and the distribution of wages abstract when the costs are decreasing workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity output per worker increases immediately while productivity benefits increase only gradually if costs continue to fall as a result workers in computer adopting labor market groups experience an immediate fall in wages due to increased supply on the other hand adopting workers experience wage increases with some delay this model explains why increased computer use does not immediately lead to higher wage inequality more specifically the results of the model are shown to be consistent with the question why within group wage inequality among skilled workers as a result of computer technology adoption in the united states increased in the 1970s while between group wage inequality and within group wage inequality among the unskilled did not start to increase until the 1980s the model also predicts that the more compressed german wage structure leads to a lagged diffusion of computer technology along with smaller changes in wage inequality our empirical analysis suggests that this is consistent with the actual developments in germany since the 1980s finally the theoretical predictions seem to be of the right magnitude to explain the empirical quantities observed in the data

the origins of american industrial success 1879 1940 the united states became the world s preeminent manufacturing nation at the turn of the twentieth century this study considers the bases for this success by examining the factor content of trade in manufactured goods surprisingly the most distinctive characteristic of u s manufacturing exports was intensity in nonreproducible natural resources furthermnore this relative intensity was increasing between 1880 and 1920 the study then asks whether resource abundance reflected geological endowment or greater exploitation of geological potential it was mainly the latter jel 042 recent thinking about american economic performance has been marked by alarm over the country s loss of its competitive edge most of this discussion is not rooted in an understanding of the historical origins of the economic leadership now thought to be in jeopardy modern economists tend to assume that the american advantage has been technological and

paternity deferments and the timing of births u s natality during the vietnam war i background during the conflict in vietnam men between 18 5 and 25 yr of age were subject to the draft several exemptions to this rule existed for example students were exempt importantly for the purposes of this study married men with dependents could also obtain a deferment from the draft and the particulars of this policy underwent substantial changes in the 1960s in august 1965 president johnson issued executive order 11241 which formally eliminated deferments for childless men who got married after august 26 1965 and in october 1965 the selective service declared that childless married men irrespective of the date of marriage were to be called up both announcements came as a surprise new york times 1965a since married men with children remained exempt the declarations provided a strong incentive for young couples to conceive a first born child before august 1965 marriage had been a sufficient condition for a deferment even just a few hours before the august 26 midnight deadline desperate couples tried to make use of this provision by quickly scheduling their wedding between august and october couples who had missed the deadline had to satisfy an additional condition conceiving a child childless men who got married in this period were still subject to the draft and so had an incentive to conceive a child in october 1965 the risk of induction was further extended to all couples who had remained childless finally in april 1970 the family deferments were entirely eliminated by executive order 11527 the selective service system office of public and intergovernmental affairs 2004 past research has demonstrated that taxes and expenditure programs can affect fertility e g whittington alm and peters 1990 see also milligan 2005 for an excellent review as well as the timing of delivery dickert conlin and chandra 1999 the goal of this article was to provide additional evidence on the responsiveness of childbearing to incentives embedded in public policy by studying a dramatic yet unexamined government intervention the effects of the vietnam war paternity deferments on the decision to conceive a first born child as discussed in the popular press vice president dick cheney s first daughter elizabeth was born 9 mo 2 d after the selective service system announced that childless married men were to be drafted boston globe 2000 slate chatterbox 2004 did draft eligible men strategically react to the announcement and if so how widespread and fast was the response to my knowledge no one has investigated the impacts of the vietnam draft on natality using the vietnam draft rules to identify a causal effect however i build on several prior studies angrist for example uses the exogeneity of the vietnam draft rules to identify the effects of military service on lifetime earnings angrist 1990 angrist and chen 2007 and to measure the racial differences in the value of military service angrist 1991 gullason 1989 and card and lemieux 2001 2002 estimate the effects of the vietnam draft on schooling explicitly recognizing that college attendance often served as a vehicle to avoid the draft both studies find a significant effect of the probability of being drafted on school enrollment the fact that the changes in the selective service rules were both unexpected and widely publicized makes this an ideal example to study the effects of policy on fertility decisions milligan 2005 argues that the assumptions made about the timing of the response to policy are arbitrary since a reaction will be delayed not only by a 9 mo gestational lag but also by the time necessary for the diffusion of information about the change in policy in the case examined here however the criticism seems less relevant newspaper clippings from august 27 1965 suggest that the issuance of the executive order 11241 did receive broad attention for example the story was listed on the front pages of new york times 1965c and washington post 1965b

vive la revolution long term educational returns of 1968 to the angry students the famous events of may 1968 starting with student riots threw france into a state of turmoil as a result normal examination procedures were abandoned and the pass rate for various qualifications increased enormously the lowering of thresholds at critical stages of the education system enabled a proportion of students to pursue more years of higher education than would otherwise have been possible for those on the margin of passing their examinations additional years of higher education increased future wages and occupational levels interestingly the effect is also transmitted across generations and is reflected in the educational performance of children

immigration and inequality immigration is often viewed as a proximate cause of the rising wage gap between highand low skilled workers nevertheless there is controversy over the appropriate theoretical and empirical framework for measuring the presumed effect and over the precise magnitudes involved this paper offers an overview and synthesis of existing knowledge on the relationship between immigration and inequality focusing on evidence from cross city comparisons in the u s while some researchers have claimed that a cross city research design is inherently flawed i argue that the evidence from cross city comparisons is remarkably consistent with recent findings based on aggregate time series data in particular cross city and aggregate time series comparisons provide support for three key conclusions 1 workers with below high school education are perfect substitutes for those with a high school education 2 high school equivalent and college equivalent workers are imperfect substitutes with an elasticity of substitution on the order of 2 3 within education groups immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes together these results imply that the average impacts of recent immigrant inflows on the relative wages of u s natives are small the effects on overall wage inequality including natives and immigrants are larger reflecting the concentration of immigrants in the tails of the skill distribution and higher residual inequality among immigrants than natives even so immigration accounts for a small share 5 of the increase in u s wage inequality between 1980 and 2000

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

has nafta increased labor market integration between the united states and mexico this article analyzes three criteria for labor market integration between mexico and the united states u s before and since the north american free trade agreement nafta the responsiveness of mexican wages to us wage shocks the speed at which relative wages return to a long run differential and changes in the rate of convergence of absolute wages tests for increased integration using these three criteria generate mixed results which are then explored by directly incorporating trade foreign direct investment fdi and migration the results suggest that trade and fdi did in fact positively contribute to integration but that the increase in border enforcement depressed mexican wages masking the positive benefits

preferences and willingness to pay for gm labeling policies abstract the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture is currently the focus of intense public and political debate press articles provide evidence that us consumer concerns toward biotechnology are increasing in this paper we analyze whether consumers prefer mandatory or voluntary labeling schemes through contingent valuation additionally we calculate the premium that consumers are willing to pay in order to subsidize their favorite labeling alternative we find that the premium associated with mandatory labeling is lower than expected costs this indicates that in spite of the concerns surrounding biotechnology consumers remain fairly confident with the current food and drug administration policy which does not require mandatory labeling