do faculty salaries rise with job seniority abstract previous research suggests that academic salaries fall with greater job seniority using a 1988 national survey we find that the return to seniority is positive over a lengthy employment period tenure status and academic rank also affect the return to seniority

learning and wage dynamics we develop a dynamic model of learning about worker ability in a competitive labor market the model produces three testable implications regarding wage dynamics 1 although the role of schooling in the labor market s inference process declines as performance observations accumulate the estimated effect of schooling on the level of wages is independent of labor market experience 2 timeinvariant variables correlated with ability but unobserved by employers such as certain test scores are increasingly correlated with wages as experience increases and 3 wage residuals are a martingale we present evidence from the nlsy that is broadly consistent with the model s predictions

the consequences of minimum wage laws some new theoretical ideas economists generally agree that the effect of a binding minimum wage law is to move firms backward along the demand curve for low skill workers however this prediction of worker displacement depends critically on the assumption that the productivity of firms labor is not dependent on the wage in this paper we show that in a conventional efficiency wage model a minimum wage may increase the level of employment in low wage jobs the formal logic of our model is similar to the case of labor demand under monopsony but arises in a model with a large number of employers

an evolutionary approach to norms iorms provide a powerful mechanism for regulating conflict in groups even when there are more than two people and no central authority this paper investigates the emergence and stability of behavioral norms in the context of a game played by people of limited rationality the dynamics of this new norms game are analyzed with a computer simulation based upon the evolutionary principle that strategies shown to be relatively effective will be used more in the future than less effective strategies the results show the conditions under which norms can evolve and prove stable one interesting possibility is the employment of metanorms the willingness to punish someone who did not enforce a norm many historical examples of domestic and international norms are used to illustrate the wide variety of mechanisms that can support norms including metanorms dominance internalization deterrence social proof membership in groups law and reputation

effects of the minimum wage on the employment status of youths an update the large decline in the relative value of the minimum wage during the 1980s makes that period a valuable one for identifying the impact of variation in the minimum wage on youth employment this study produces the robust finding that when the experience of the 1980s is included a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is estimated to reduce teen employment by less than 1 percent the lower end of the range of previous estimates because this small employment effect is offset by a labor force withdrawal effect the study finds no discernible effect on measured unemployment the study also finds no apparent effect of the minimum wage on the employment of young adults aged 20 24

estimating a market equilibrium search model from panel data on individuals from albrecht and axell 1984 and is based on workers who are homogeneous in terms of market productivity and heterogeneous in terms of nonmarket productivity and on firms which are heterogeneous in terms of productive efficiency the equilibrium model is contrasted in terms of its fit to the data with an unrestricted version of the model which is based on a mixture of negative binomial distributions the equilibrium model fails to conform to the data in exactly the dimension of its major focus namely it implies that measurement error accounts for almost all of the dispersion in observed wages the equilibrium model also does not do well in fitting the unemployment duration distribution compared to the unrestricted model the problem is that the duration distribution itself does not support the existence of significant heterogeneity as evidenced by the estimates of the unrestricted model the paper also illustrates the use of such models for policy analysis by simulating the welfare effects of a minimum wage

fast track is it in the genes the promotion policy of a large japanese firm abstract we study the promotion policy of a large high tech manufacturing japanese firm we find that the company has multiple ports of entry and hires a significant number of employees with previous job experience cohort peer differentiation in promotion starts much earlier than predicted by the common view there are clear signs of fast track effects so that individuals promoted faster earlier on are more likely to be promoted faster later on fast track effects are not in the genes because they survive even after controlling for time invariant individual effects such as innate individual ability the last result is difficult to justify using a pure learning model where ability is time invariant so that a richer learning model that incorporates perhaps human capital considerations is clearly required

sex discrimination and competition in product and labour markets theoritical explanations for wage discrimination collapse in the long run because competition should drive discriminations firms out of the market in product markets with imperfect competition em

negative returns to seniority new evidence in academic markets recent research has suggested that the long observed negative association between seniority and pay among college faculty largely reflects below average research productivity of senior faculty a possibility that most earlier studies did not examine overlooked in both waves of studies however is match quality because the higher quality of the faculty institutional match implied by higher seniority should all else equal result in higher salaries failure to account for match quality inflates the estimated returns to seniority indeed that positive bias the authors find is roughly equal in magnitude to the negative bias caused by failure to account for research quantity and quality when they account for both match quality and faculty research productivity in an analysis of data on economics faculty at five research universities over a 21 year period the authors estimate that holding experience and other factors constant the penalty for twenty years of seniority is 16 of salary

the impact of the minimum wage on other wages in this paper i explore how changes in the minimum wage affect various occupational wages i postulate that other wages increase for two reasons first firms try to mitigate the deterioration in a worker s relative wage which would cause him to reduce his work effort and second there is an increase in the demand for nonminimum wage workers wage adjustment patterns are examined to ascertain whether wage comparisons play a role in the adjustment process the empirical work shows a short run wage compression among white collar occupations which is consistent with the wage comparison model however large standard errors make inferences weak

promotions and wage growth this article presents evidence that internal mobility defined as a promotion or other position change is an important source of wage growth it accounts for approximately 15 of wage growth over the life cycle for white and black men but less for women the incidence of promotions and other position changes appears tied to the wage level better paid workers are more likely to be promoted the life cycle incidence of internal mobility looks similar to that for conventionally defined job mobility most moves are made early in the career mobility declines both with time in position and with experience

monopsony power in the market for nurses estimates are presented of the inverse elasticity of supply of nursing services to the individual hospital a quantity which is a natural measure of employer market power the estimates corresponding to employment changes taking place over one year are quite high in the neighborhood of 0 79 and even for changes taking place over three years are substantial in the neighborhood of 0 26 the estimates do not significantly differ for hospitals in major metropolitan areas and do not depend very sensitively on the assumed form of the oligopsony equilibrium this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

internal labor markets and worker rents abstract we show that establishing an internal labor market by offering combined contracts across hierarchy levels strictly dominates external recruitment when workers are homogeneous the reason is that only an internal labor market can exploit higher tier rents for incentive provision on lower tiers given unobservable heterogeneity of workers relying on an internal labor market has the further advantage of improving the selection of high ability workers for higher ranks which is complemented by rent based incentive schemes however observable worker heterogeneity gives rise to a trade off between incentive and selection issues and may lead to ports of entry on higher tiers of the hierarchy

the case for methodological pluralism abstract ecology and economics share the same greek root both address complex systems ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems energetics population biology food web models hierarchy theory to mention just a few within ecology field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected economics on the other hand is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of proof the market model and econometrics within economics field knowledge and observations per se are little valued agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science the argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies the agreement on method within economics however seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided

monopsony in the low wage labor market evidence from minimum nurse staffing regulations this paper provides direct evidence on the extent of monopsony power in the low wage labor market by estimating the firm level elasticity of labor supply for nurse aides in the long term care nursing home industry using exogenous variation in hiring induced by the passage of a state minimum nurse staffing law i find that facilities initially out of compliance with the new law did not have to raise their wage offers relative to their competitors in order to hire more nurses while this is consistent with perfect competition in simple monopsony models of the labor market i discuss how the results may be more ambiguous in more complicated models

the structure of wages and internal mobility as the fields of personnel economics and organizational economics have become more visible in recent years more economists practitioners and policymakers have become interested in the internal workings of firms fortunately at the same time as interest in these areas has grown new data sets have emerged that provide consistent personnel data from a wide variety of firms this paper provides an example of how newly available data can be used to analyze internal labor markets and suggests how such data can be used to address other issues basic questions in personnel economics include how firms set wages and how people move between jobs within and across firms answering these questions is essential to assessing the relative importance of theoretical models as explanations of the nature of employment relationships these models include agency theory matching and search theory among others historically most attempts to study these models were limited to data sets that are drawn from a random sample of individuals with no identification of firms such as the current population survey cps while much can be learned from such studies much of the inference is indirect and the data may suffer from inconsistent or inaccurate self reported data an alternative strategy used by for example lazear 1992 george baker et al 1994 and kenn ariga et al 1999 is to procure detailed personnel information from a single firm and use it to study the policies at that firm while these papers were successful at providing details of the individual firms they leave open the question of how widely the results generalize especially given that the results are not consistent even across these three papers which are based on different firms an important step in getting past the limits of cps style and individual firm data is to find data sets that provide employee details for numerous firms such data sets have been created in the united states france sweden and other countries as john m abowd and francis kramarz 1999 show these data sets take many forms and like the data that preceded them have varying strengths and weaknesses they have already been used according to abowd and kramarz 1999 in over 100 studies of more than 15 countries that paper provides details on many of these studies as well as comparing some of the features of the various data sets although the u s data have many virtues they lack job information a key advantage of the swedish data used here is its detailed and accurate job classifications this makes it possible to determine whether job openings are filled internally or externally and to follow employees as they change jobs the data include many firms a long panel of years and accurate wage data allowing the study of the relative importance of firms and jobs on wage changes and levels the main results of this paper are as follows first the swedish firms studied fill a significant discussants henry farber princeton university lawrence katz harvard university derek neal university of chicago

the gender salary gap in british academia this paper considers salary determination and the gender salary gap in the academic labour market utilizing a particularly detailed data set of academics from five old established universities results reveal an aggregate gender salary differential for academic staff of 15 most of this differential can however be explained by our model evidence suggests a limited opportunity for female academics to combine career and family despite the flexibility of an academic job and emphasizes the importance of mobility to the male career publication record is found to be an important determinant of salary

linking common property resource management to human capital outcomes in regions where common pool resources provide significant support to their surrounding communities any climate change related shock could produce multiple livelihood repercussions in this paper a model explores how the health of common pool resources could impact upon human capital outcomes for communities that struggle to find alternate livelihood options when traditional means such as agriculture become unsustainable the management of common pool resources is modeled as a strategic interaction process between two heterogeneous communities that are directly or indirectly dependent upon it an unconstrained harvesting of common resources such as forestry not only depletes its stocks but it also indirectly affects crop output through soil degradation a number of situations are constructed where communities are able to successfully finance human capital accumulation through proper management of their common pool resources however results also warn that communities that are faced with limited opportunities towards accumulating human capital must plan ahead to prevent the depletion of their common resources below critical levels when non linear feedbacks to soil degradation emanate from low levels of common pool stocks human capital outcomes as well as future livelihoods of such communities are threatened

the effect of collective bargaining on salaries in higher education using data from a 1977 survey of faculty from 158 u s colleges and universities the author estimates that the proportional salary advantage to unionized faculty members was typically less than two percent that differential varied considerably however with the length of time the institution had been organized in addition unionization increased the return to seniority and decreased the return to several measures of merit including number of publications and general post degree experience

gender and racial earnings differentials in academic labor markets this study estimates earnings differentials across racial and gender groups among college faculty and decomposes these differentials into the components attributable to differences in individual and institutional characteristics and that which remains unexplained we find that white females earn approximately 4 percent less than white males black males earn 7 4 percent more black females earn one percent more hispanic males earn 2 7 percent more hispanic females earn 1 7 percent less and asian males earn 7 7 percent more than comparable white males we also find a significant earnings penalty for being a naturalized citizen or noncitizen versus an u s born citizen

a dynamic approach to forest regimes in developing economies abstract in the developing economies optimal forest regimes should incorporate the socio economic characteristics of the user groups and since socio economic factors will change with time optimal forest regimes will also follow a dynamic path the two most important socio economic factors are the heterogeneity of the user group with respect to forest management and the direct dependence of the user group on forest normally the heterogeneity will increase and dependence will decrease with economic growth of user group an optimal control model is used to integrate the dynamics of natural system such as joint product of forests and its growth function and the dynamics of the two socio economic factors heterogeneity and dependence the model demonstrates that the dynamics of optimal forest regimes will depend upon the change in natural factors socio economic factors and on the interactions between natural and socio economic factors hence optimal forest management strategies would require a continuous refinement in forest management regimes instead of static state regimes as local communities in developing economies pass through different phases of economic growth

what matters most teaching or research empirical evidence on the remuneration of british academics this paper examines the impact of productivity on pay within academia drawing upon a detailed dataset of academics from five old established universities results outline the importance of publication grant receipt and teaching quality in the determination of pay a large financial penalty to time out of the profession is revealed which with productivity variables explains away the gender salary gap the relationship between teaching and research is investigated and we find some evidence in support of the hypothesis that productive researchers are successful teachers results on reservation salary suggest that the best academics are willing to stay within the profession

a more general dynamic economic model of the optimal rotation of multiple use forests abstract a deterministic optimal control model is presented for a multiple use forest with specific consideration given to provision and maintenance costs associated with a flow of nontimber values a relatively simple relationship is found which determines the optimal rotation length for such a forest

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

are there gender differences in the job mobility patterns of academic economists labor economic theory posits that job mobil ity should affect worker salaries the degree to which this holds for academic faculty has received considerable attention prior empirical studies have estimated log wage regressions that control for both years of total work experience and years of seniority at the current institution in an effort to determine whether negative returns to seniority exist in academic labor markets for example bernt bratsberg james ragan and jim warren 2003 and william moore robert turnbull and geoffrey newman 1998 for aca demic economists michael ransom 1993 kevin hallock 1995 and emily hoffman 1976 for specific institutions debra a barbezat and michael r donihue 1998 and barbezat 1989 for

the internal economics of the firm evidence from personnel data we analyze twenty years of personnel data from one firm the hierarchical structure is quite simple and stable career movements suggest that the employee s rate of learning and the firm s learning about ability are important there are promotion fast tracks exit rates vary little with tenure or salary the firm has personnel policies like those described in the internal labor markets literature although several theoretical preconditions for ilms such as ports of entry and exit are lacking job levels are important to compensation but there is also substantial individual variation in pay within levels our companion paper in this issue explores the wage policy of this firm

revisiting the seniority wage effect for faculty abstract this study uses 1999 national data to derive estimates of the effect of seniority on faculty salaries seniority has a positive effect on salary but varies by union status rank job mobility and inclusion of faculty productivity measures

rural forest management in sierra leone the role of economic in equality in facilitating collective action while significant theoretical developments have been made in the research on common pool resources heterogeneity remains a contested issue focusing on economic inequality one particular aspect o

monopsony power and relative wages in the labor market for nurses this paper examines the thesis that monopsony power is an important determinant of wages in nursing labor markets using data from the 1985 93 current population surveys measures of relative nurse non nurse wage rates for 252 labor markets are constructed contrary to predictions from the monopsony model no positive relationship exists between relative nursing wages and hospital density or market size nor is support found for the presence of monopsony power based on evidence on union wage premiums slopes of experience profiles or the mix of rn to total hospital employment

monopsony and the lifetime relation between wages and productivity we consider the relation between wages and productivity by means of a model based on the following assumptions workers live for 2 periods firms live forever senior workers differ nontrivially from junior seniority enhances workers expected second period earnings both firms and workers recognize the prospect of promotion and the senior junior wage differential at the time of hiring and firms have monopsony power in hiring junior workers we show that senior wages are equal to the senior marginal product but junior wages are set below the junior marginal product by an amount that depends on the elasticity of the firm s labor supply

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

fame and the fortune of academic economists how the market rewards influential research in economics we analyze the pay and position of 1 009 faculty members who teach in doctoral granting economics departments at fifty three large public universities in the united states using the web of science we have identified the journal articles published by these scholars and the number of times each of these articles has been subsequently cited in published research articles we find that research influence as measured by various measures of total citations is a surprisingly strong predictor of the salary and the prestige of the department in which professors are employed we also examine how coauthorship is rewarded by the market

the internal economics of a university evidence from personnel data using a rich personnel data set of a large european university we find strong evidence for the existence of an internal labor market first there is a strong port of entry at the lowest academic rank and in fact even prior to entering professorship resulting in very long internal careers second wages do not follow external wage developments we subsequently consider various incentive theories regarding the dynamics of promotions as organized through annual tournaments as expected a rigid set of research and teaching criteria determine the speed of promotions at the same time administrative rigidities play an important role

the union impact on hospital wages and fringe benefits this paper uses 1977 data from a national probability sample of 1 200 hospitals to estimate the effect of unions on wages and fringe benefits in four occupations registered nurses practical nurses secretaries and housekeepers the results show that unionization has a significant impact on wages that increases with the length of time collective bargaining has been in effect at the individual hospital the overall wage effect of unions is about 8 percent for both types of nurses and 11 to 12 percent for secretaries and housekeepers employed in hospitals the authors also estimate an equation for hospital wide fringe benefits which shows that such benefits are positively related to the percent of full time employees in the four occupations covered by union contracts

seniority and monopsony in the academic labor market workers with high seniority usually have higher wages than workers with low seniority and the same total labor marke t experience in contrast the results of this paper indicate that higher seniority is associated with lower salaries for university professors the author documents this finding for national surveys a nd individual institutions and explains it as due to monopsonistic discrimination by employers copyright 1993 by american economic association

monopsony in the labor market this paper surveys recent theoretical and empirical research on monopsony in labor markets broadly defined as upward sloping labor supply to an employer we compare older monopsony models based on small numbers of employers with newer models based on labor market frictions such as moving costs and search we also compare older econometric approaches that focus on static wage concentration relationships with newer approaches that focus on dynamics our review of empirical estimates suggests that monopsony power based on small numbers of employers is probably rare but occasionally large while monopsony power based on frictions is probably widespread but small on average

decentralization and participation the governance of common pool resources in nepal s terai summary decentralization has emerged as an important instrument of environmental and development policy in the last two decades presumed benefits of environmental policy decentralization depend in significant measure on broad participation in the programs that governments create to decentralize decision making related to resource management this paper uses data from protected areas in nepal s terai to examine who participates in environmental decentralization programs on the basis of our statistical analysis we highlight the fact that the likelihood of participation in community level user groups is greater for those who are economically and socially better off we also find that individuals who have greater access to and who visit government offices related to decentralization policies more often are also more likely to participate in user groups created by state officials finally we find a negative correlation between education and levels of participation our study and analysis support the argument that for decentralization policies to be successful on equity issues it is important to build institutional mechanisms that encourage poorer and more marginal households to access government officials improve access to educational opportunities and create incentives to promote more interactions between less powerful rural residents and government officials 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

seniority and monopsony in the academic labor market comments this paper further explores the work of both michael ransom and emily hoffman who have written on monopsony in the academic labor market using data from university of massachusetts at amherst umass from 1989 this comment has three principal findings i the return to seniority at umass is positive at least for low levels of seniority which is contrary to ransom s results ii faculty hired with tenure have significantly higher salaries which supports the ransom monopsony hypothesis and iii sex discrimination as described by hoffman is much lower in 1989 than it was 15 years prior

an estimate of the rent generated by a premium college football player the national collegiate athletic association limits the payments athletes can receive for their services colleges are effectively monosony employers so players will not be paid their marginal revenue product therefore colleges capture an economic rent from players this paper measures these rents by estimating the marginal revenue product of a top college football player the empirical results suggest that a premium college player generates over 500 000 in annual revenues for his team

where have all the union members gone this paper examines trends in union membership during the twentieth century the hypothesis is advanced that the provision of certain social welfare benefits by government substitutes for the private provision by unions thereby reducing the attractiveness of union membership the empirical implications of this hypothesis are examined using time series data on aggregate union membership for the period 1904 80 and using pooled state data for the period 1964 80 these latter data are used to examine the effect of departures from the traditional doctrine of employment at will both the time series and the cross section evidence suggest that government supply of union like services reduces union membership

attaching workers through in kind payments theory and evidence from russia external shocks may cause a decline in the productivity of fixed capital in certain regions of an economy exogenous obstacles to migration make it hard for workers in those regions to reallocate to more prosperous regions in addition firms may devise attachment strategies to keep workers from moving out of a local labor market when workers are compensated in kind they find it difficult to raise the cash needed for migration this endogenous obstacle to migration has not yet been considered in the literature the article shows that the feasibility of attachment depends on the inherited structure of local labor markets attachment can exist in equilibrium only if the labor market is sufficiently concentrated attachment is beneficial for both employers and employees but hurts the unemployed and the self employed an analysis of matched household firm data from the russian federation corroborates the theory

do academic salaries decline with seniority this article reexamines the negative seniority earnings relationship for academic economists the empirical results show that the anomalous negative seniority effect found in earlier academic market studies holds in the absence of direct measures of research productivity the negative effect however eventually disappears as more comprehensive measures of publishing citations and other productivity measures are included in the wage equation to control for the quantity and quality of faculty productivity faculty with greater seniority appear to be rewarded relatively less simply because many have been relatively less productive than their colleagues with less seniority at similar stages in their careers

the evolution of social norms in common property resource use the problem of extracting commonly owned renewable resources is examined within an evolutionary game theoretic framework it is shown that cooperative behavior guided by norms of restraint and punishment may be stable in a well defined sense against invasion by narrowly self interested behavior the resource stock dynamics are integrated with the evolutionary game dynamics effects of changes in prices technology and social cohesion on extraction behavior and the long run stock are analyzed when threshold values of the parameters are crossed social norms can break down leading generally to the lowering of the long run stock and possibly to its extinction copyright 1996 by american economic association