estimates of the returns to quality and coauthorship in economic academia salaries of academic economists are studied to determine if individuals receive differential returns to publishing articles of varying quality and to coauthored versus single authored articles estimates based on detailed data and a flexible nonlinear least squares procedure indicate that substantial returns to quality exist and that an individual s return from a coauthored paper with n authors is approximately 1 n times that of a single authored paper

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

real option valuation of power transmission investments by stochastic simulation abstract network expansions in power markets usually lead to investment decisions subject to substantial irreversibility and uncertainty hence investors need valuing the flexibility to change decisions as uncertainty unfolds progressively real option analysis is an advanced valuation technique that enables planners to take advantage of market opportunities while preventing or mitigating losses if future conditions evolve unfavorably in the past many approaches for valuing real options have been developed however applying these methods to value transmission projects is often inappropriate as revenue cash flows are path dependent and affected by a myriad of uncertain variables in this work a valuation technique based on stochastic simulation and recursive dynamic programming called least square monte carlo is applied to properly value the deferral option in a transmission investment the effect of option s maturity the initial outlay and the capital cost upon the value of the postponement option is investigated finally sensitivity analysis determines optimal decision regions to execute postpone or reject the investment projects

aging and productivity among economists economists productivity over their careers and as measured by publication in leading journals declines very sharply with age there is no difference by age in the probability that an article submitted to a leading journal will be accepted rates of declining productivity are no greater among the very top publishers than among others and the probability of acceptance is increasingly related to the author s quality rather than the author s age

professional achievements and gender differences among academic economists i introduction while the academic labor market for economists attracts a good deal of attention among its participants work on the differences in remuneration for economic research and other professional characteristics between men and women in academic institutions has been limited this paper tests for gender differences using data on grants and grant applications from the national science foundation ault rutman and stevenson 1979 addressing issues of academic placement found that the highest rated institution at which an academic economist will be employed is the institution of first employment willis and pieper 1991 found that women who received doctorates in economics in the 1970s had a somewhat higher rate of placement at doctoral degree granting institutions than men but that there was no difference in the rank of the institutions for these placements lower tier institutions must offer promotions to attract candidates moore et al 1983 reported that the rank of the department at which one earned the doctorate is critically important in determining initial academic placement hamermesh johnson and weisbrod 1982 found that for those at prestigious departments increases in citations lead to salary increases but that the department s rank was not inversely related to salary in his review of work by sociologists youn 1988 reported that the prestige of an academic institution was positively related to the research productivity of its scientists there are two competing hypotheses that might explain this result better departments select better scientists achievement model or better departments foster greater productivity ascription model empirical efforts to distinguish between these hypotheses have been mixed the research on salary differentials in academia has generally found that there are significant gender differences that widen during the careers of men and women 1 barbezat 1991 the most recent evidence suggests that salary differentials in the academic community may have diminished somewhat since the 1960s but still remain weiler 1990 separated the influence of the department s rank on salary by treating it in a separate equation and found that standard formulations underestimate the degree of salary discrimination although important salary is not the only measure of achievement in academe promotion to a higher rank employment in key departments and the production of well placed articles all help determine an economist s influence in the profession but despite the dramatic increase in the percentage of women receiving the ph d during the past two decades the number of senior women at graduate institutions is still very low 2 to what extent does gender bias exist in economics departments as measured not only by salary but also by other achievements such as the likelihood of achieving a senior position or being employed by a top department is there a difference in the experiences of the younger cohorts compared to their more senior counterparts this paper attempts to answer these important questions by 1 taking into account the endogeneity of the variables that are usually treated as exogenous in models of salary determination and thereby broadening the characteristics that traditionally reflect discrimination and 2 using a new detailed data base developed from the national science foundation the results of this more complete model in which salary as well as other measures of professional achievement are explained show significant differences between men and women at the more senior level at the assistant professor level although the signs of the gender coefficients are consistent with a discrimination hypothesis the results are not statistically significant ii the model single equations using the techniques developed by oaxaca 1973 and blinder 1973 have long been used to estimate gender salary differentials in academia with productivity measures such as books and articles published administrative experience etc

cyclicality and the labor market for economists the 1987 academic market was strong whereas the 1997 market was weak a multimarket theory of optimal search suggests that job seekers will respond to a weakening market by changing their search strategies at the extensive margin which markets to enter and the intensive margin how many applications to submit per market employers respond to the weakening market by raising their hiring standards high quality applicants will obtain an increased share of academic interviews in weak markets while applicants from weaker schools will increasingly secure interviews outside of the academic market empirical results show that in the bust market graduates of elite schools shifted their search strategies to include weaker academic institutions while graduates of lower ranked schools shifted their applications away from academia and toward the business sector in bust conditions academic institu tions increasingly concentrate their interviews on elite school graduates women and u s residents

more on identification in detailed wage decompositions wage decompositions are often used to decompose wage differentials of two demographic groups into differences in characteristics and differences in returns to those characteristics the latter part is used as an estimate of the degree of discrimination a problem with this approach is that the contributions of individual dummy variables to the wage decomposition are not identified this note proposes a simple solution to the identification problem the solution is illustrated with an empirical application to spanish labor market data

media markets and localism does local news en espanol boost hispanic voter turnout the same time the availability of these products reduces the consumption of local news not only because some consumers prefer national and global content to local information but also because local media products that lose a significant number of consumers are forced to cut qual ity and they may even cease to exist if their audience falls below a critical threshold for these reasons some scholars claim that the rise of integrated media markets undermines local civic engagement robert d putnam 2000 against this backdrop many regulatory agencies including the federal communications commission fcc of the united states seek to protect local media and promote localism for instance by limiting ownership concentration 1 however localism is desirable only if there are in fact positive spillovers from the provision of local content that can help justify the loss of private welfare that integrated media markets would provide in this paper we propose a simple test for the existence of spillovers from local news pro gramming asking if the presence of local television news affects civic behavior the ubiq uity of local news programming across all us metro areas makes it impossible to study its effects on the general population in contrast the availability of spanish language news has increased considerably in recent years providing us with an experiment to study the effect of local news on one important measure of civic engagement voter turnout in local elections in particular we use a differencing approach asking whether hispanic voter turnout is higher in relation to non hispanic turnout in metro areas with spanish language local television news our results indicate that spanish language local television news raises hispanic turnout by more than 4 percentage points local news targeted at hispanics has no effect on the participa tion of non hispanics and as one would expect a significantly smaller effect in years with a presidential race in markets with spanish language news about a quarter of hispanics turn to these programs our estimates thus imply that news in spanish caused about a fifth of spanish language news viewers to start voting interestingly hispanics with access to news in spanish do not increase the time they spend watching news content analyses of spanish language news programs in the united states find that these shows are much more likely to report on

two to tango gender differences in the decisions to publish and coauthor i introduction there is a well developed mythology regarding the presence of old boy networks and their importance in explaining gender differences in labor market outcomes as articulated by saloner 1985 nonetheless aside from works such as simon and warner 1992 there is relatively little empirical evidence examining the impact of networks on market outcomes how these effects differ by gender and whether gender differences in network access change over time as women become more well represented in a profession the paucity of empirical evidence arises in part from the difficulty of measuring the presence of such networks prior work including that of saint paul 2001 and erickson and jacoby 2003 has found evidence that networks facilitate the adoption of team oriented work practices and information sharing that increase average worker productivity in management and professional jobs on the other hand studies such as that by marmaros and sacerdote 2002 have also found that women have less access to networks than their male counterparts in both private and public sector jobs which has been shown to yield gender differences in job placement and other labor market outcomes this article considers how gender differences in networks are manifested in a specific male dominated profession i e academic economists and in a specific work related outcome i e the decision to coauthor articles in which access to networks is likely to be important the analysis uses uniquely detailed individual and job level data for phd economists included in nearly four decades of american economic association aea membership to examine the role of networks on the joint decision to publish and coauthor the unique matching process of phd economists between academic and nonacademic jobs and within the hierarchy of academic departments along with the relative ease of observing joint research provide a rare opportunity to distinguish differential network access and measure joint production the results demonstrate the importance of networks in the production of research output and that new female entrants into a male dominated profession do not have equal access to these professional networks the results also provide evidence that women are able to plug into networks over time as the profession becomes more gender representative our study contributes to the literature on the role of networks in the labor market in several ways first the profession of academic economist is well suited to this study because it is made up of workers who produce a relatively homogenous output i e scholarly journal articles and that share a common set of job related tasks i e teaching research and service second the incidence of coauthorship is an observable outcome measure of network utilization a phenomenon inherently difficult to measure in the tradition of the business productivity literature as found in sabel 1993 third there is extensive evidence in the literature that journal publications are positively linked to academic salaries as found in siegfried and white 1973 and sauer 1988 that the propensity to coauthor is positively associated with publication output as in as found in durden and perri 1995 and maske et al 2003 that there are gender differences in tendencies to coauthor as shown by ferber and teiman 1980 and mcdowell and smith 1992 and that there are gender differences in professional outcomes such as publications salary and promotion as seen in mcdowell 1982 hansen et al 1978 formby et al 1993 and broder 1993 cumulatively these studies suggest that understanding the determinants of coauthorship is important for evaluating the sources and the extent of gender inequity in the profession prior work on coauthorship behavior has analyzed patterns over time and across disciplines several studies including hudson 1996 mcdowell and melvin 1983 and barnett et al

determinants of scholarly productivity among male and female economists i introduction the purpose of this article is to test a model of the determinants of articles produced by male and female academics of particular interest is how article production is influenced by coauthorship institutional research orientation and gender several works have identified and demonstrated the trend toward coauthorship in economics and in other disciplines using data from the journal of economic literature heck and zaleski 1991 demonstrated that the incidence of coauthorship has increased from about 15 of total articles in 1969 to about 35 in 1989 durden and perri 1995 report that as of 1992 the proportion coauthored had grown to more than 38 hudson 1996 finds that by 1993 coauthorship rates in the journal of political economy and american economic review were 39 6 and 54 9 respectively as compared to rates of 6 and 8 in 1950 why do economists coauthor rational interest theory suggests that if scholars collaborate then there must be a utility enhancing result other things equal this could be in the form of higher salaries and increased probabilities of promotion greater access to funded research greater mobility in job markets and the like which might result if collaboration significantly increases the overall production of published papers studies by mcdowell and melvin 1983 barnett et al 1988 and piette and ross 1992 suggest that coauthorship among scholars may increase article production through the division of labor made necessary by increased complexity in the subject matter and by the need to saturate markets to increase the probability of getting papers accepted for publication laband and tollison 2000 find evidence that increasing rates of coauthorship result from the greater quantitative content of articles greater requirement for the use of sophisticated econometric techniques and the fact that cooperation is cheaper in time and other resources as compared to learning what is necessary to publish in another field or discipline hamermesh and oster 2002 discuss nonpecuniary purely consumption benefits such as the pleasure obtained from cooperation and suggest that higher levels of prestige among colleagues may also be relevant although many reasons for cooperation have been developed not much has been done to determine whether the rate of coauthorship among scholars actually affects total article production using cross section data hansen et al 1978 and graves et al 1982 estimate productivity models but coauthorship is not included in either study mcdowell and smith 1992 include a coauthorship variable but find that it neither increases nor decreases article production when articles are discounted by the number of authors hollis 2001 uses panel data to examine the relationship between coauthorship and research productivity he finds that coauthorship leads to better longer and more frequent publications when publications are discounted by the number of authors however coauthorship appears negatively related to research output mcdowell and smith s 1992 and hollis s 2001 results are very counterintuitive because a viable reason for coauthorship is to increase efficiency as shown in durden and perri 1995 durden and perri 1995 estimate a time series model finding that coauthorship is highly instrumental in determining article productivity as far as we know the only study by economists that specifically analyzes the effect of institutional research orientation on publishing output is that by graves et al 1982 using data from 240 schools they estimate total pages published per faculty member in the top 24 economics journals between 1974 78 using a series of independent variables to proxy influences that affect publication they find that secretaries per faculty member helps and teaching load hinders production the effects of ph d status teaching assistance and faculty student ratios are mixed depending on specification of the model

a theory of participation in elections we analyze a model of participation in elections in which voting is costly and no vote is pivotal ethical agents are motivated to participate when they determine that agents of their type are obligated to do so unlike previous duty based models of participation in our model an ethical agent s obligation to vote is determined endogenously as a function of the behavior of other agents our model predicts high turnout and comparative statics that are consistent with strategic behavior jel d72

a simple solution to the identification problem in detailed wage decompositions i introduction oaxaca and ransom 1999 show that the oaxaca decomposition suffers from one nagging conceptual problem the detailed oaxaca decomposition of wage differentials is not invariant to the choice of reference group when dummy variables are used 1 that is if one uses dummy variable s then the detailed coefficients effect attributed to dummy variables is not invariant to the choice of the omitted group s 2 this invariance or identification problem is well known to labor economists and has plagued decomposition and discrimination analysis for a long time 3 this article proposes a simple and practical solution to this identification invariance problem the solution is based on the intuitive idea that if alternative reference groups yield different estimates of the characteristics and coefficients effects for each individual variable then it is natural to obtain estimates of the two effects for every possible specification of the reference groups and take the average of the estimates of the two effects with various reference groups as the true contributions of individual variables to wage differentials a close inspection shows that averaging the two effects in the decomposition equation with varying reference groups the averaging approach is equivalent to finding average estimates of constant and dummy variables in wage equations with varying reference groups and then using the average estimates to calculate the oaxaca decomposition equation researchers may react a bit negatively to this suggestion because it could be quite cumbersome and tedious to estimate wage equations permuting the choice of reference groups this article shows that there is no need to estimate multiple wage equations one set of regression estimates is sufficient to resolve the identification problem in the detailed decompositions that is the average of the estimates with varying reference groups can be easily calculated by using only one set of regression estimates with any specific reference group s the identification problem for the detailed decomposition disappears once the contribution of the dummy variables and the constant in the regression equations are identified 4 ii identification problem and invariant decomposition an illustration to understand what the identification problem in the detailed wage decomposition is i will first illustrate the problem with a simple example suppose that there are three categories and the regression equation has only a constant and two dummy variables on the right hand side where the reference group is the first category 5 that is 1 y sub i alpha sub i 3 summation over k 2 d sub ki beta sub ki e sub i where y is log wages and i a or b for two comparison groups coefficients for two dummy variables taking category one as the reference group are estimated using ordinary least squares ols regression and are reported in the second column of table 1 for sample a and for sample b note that the coefficient of the reference group category 1 is restricted to zero similarly i may change my reference group specification and estimate the wage equation two more times the estimates taking category 2 or 3 as the reference group are reported on the next two columns because i have three sets of estimates with varying reference groups i may decompose the wage differentials 0 15 0 76 0 61 into characteristics and coefficients effects three times the characteristics effect delta sub x 1 and coefficients effects delta sub beta 1 are specified as follows when category 1 is the reference group delta sub x 1 summation sup 3 sub k 2 bar d sub ka bar d sub kb beta sub kb and delta sub beta 1 alpha sub a alpha sub b summation sup 3 sub k 2 bar d sub ka beta sub ka beta sub kb

bootstrapping statistical inferences of decomposition methods for gender earnings differentials applying the standard bootstrapping technique with corrections for heteroskedasticity for a sample of the 1997 urban household survey in china the present article attempts to test 1 whether the commonly used decomposition methods for gender earnings differentials give significantly different results and 2 whether the explained component is significantly different from the unexplained component which is commonly referred to as discrimination within each decomposition method based on a national data set the empirical results indicated some significant differences in both tests the implication of the results is that the proposed bootstrapping technique can be regarded as a guideline on applying which approach to decompose gender earnings differentials among different methods without losing important information and on evaluating the relative importance of the decomposition components for any chosen method

heterogeneous human capital occupational choice and male female earnings differences human capital models have mainly focused on the rate of return to investment in a homogeneous stock of capital yet individuals have different initial attributes that determine comparative advantage in producing different types of human capital we find that mathematical ability is an important determinant of field choice for college students and that differences in earnings across fields are largely explained as a return to the use of scarce quantitative abilities in the production of each type of human capital the model successfully accounts for the observed male female differences in earnings and occupational choices of recent college graduates

real investment options with multiple sources of rare events abstract we value real investment options when the underlying asset follows a mixed jump diffusion process involving various types sources of rare events jumps these jumps are assumed independent of each other with each type having a log normally distributed jump size and a random poisson distributed arrival time they may represent uncertainties about the arrival and impact on the underlying investment of new information concerning technological innovation competition political risk regulatory effects and other sources an analytic solution is presented for european claims call or put options with multiple sources of jumps a discrete time markov chain methodology implemented within a finite difference scheme is proposed for the valuation of american as well as european options the approach is also applicable to financial options with multiple types of rare events the approach is illustrated through valuing complex real options with compound features involving interactions between optimal investment and subsequent operating decisions specifically we value a growth option and an extension option

information aggregation rationality and the condorcet jury theorem the condorcet jury theorem states that majorities are more likely than any single individual to select the better of two alternatives when there exists uncertainty about which of the two alternatives is in fact preferred most extant proofs of this theorem implicitly make the behavioral assumption that individuals vote sincerely in the collective decision making a seemingly innocuous assumption given that individuals are taken to possess a common preference for selecting the better alternative however in the model analyzed here we find that sincere behavior by all individuals is not rational even when individuals have such a common preference in particular sincere voting does not constitute a nash equilibrium a satisfactory rational choice foundation for the claim that majorities invariably do better than individuals therefore has yet to be derived

gender differences in first jobs for economists over the last several decades women have made substantial progress into traditionally maledominated professions reflecting this trend much recent research has focused on explaining the choice of profession and the gender composition of the workforce 5 23 16 however a focus on occupation choice may conceal interesting patterns within professions because a profession can include a number of different job types with a distinct mix of professional activities the dual labor market phenomenon of primary and secondary jobs may also be present although perhaps to a lesser extent within a particular profession 17 gender differences in composition of employment among the various jobs within a profession could thus affect the status pay and advancement of women in the occupation if women primarily place in secondary type jobs the advantages of entering a profession will be lower for women relatively little is known about career choice within a profession 15 in this paper we model the first job choice of economists among several careers and use data on new ph d economists over the last thirty years to examine whether career choices differ by gender over a period of low but increasing representation of women an advantage of our single profession analysis is that it contains a relatively homogeneous set of workers with quantitative human capital measures that other studies of job choice suggest are important 7 there is significant variation in career choices available within economics that permits possible market segmentation 2 there are research and teaching academic jobs and the government and private sectors employ large numbers of economists we find significant structural differences in the placements of male and female economists indicating that the choices of female economists differ from those of their male counterparts both within academia and between this and other sectors the economics profession provides a useful background to examine gender differences in the career choices of professionals in a male dominated occupation over the last 30 years the average number of ph d s conferred annually in the u s has increased from approximately 300 to over 800 reflecting increased opportunities for economists within economics departments and expansion of other academic government and private sector jobs at the same time the proportion

risky recombinations institutional gatekeeping in the innovation process theories of innovation and technical change posit that inventions that combine knowledge across technology domains have greater impact than inventions drawn from a single domain the evidence for this claim comes mostly from research on patented inventions and ignores failed patent applications we draw on insights from research into institutional gatekeeping to theorize that to be granted patent applications that span technological domains must have higher quality than otherwise comparable narrower applications using data on failed and successful patent applications we estimate an integrated two stage model that accounts for this differential selection we find that more domain spanning patent applications are less likely to be approved and that controlling for this differential selection reduces the estimated effect of knowledge recombination on innovative impact by about one third by conceptualizing the patent approval process as a form of institutional gatekeeping this paper highlights the in

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

turnout political preferences and information experimental evidence from peru abstract i combine a field experiment with a change in voting laws reducing the fine for abstention to assess the effects of monetary incentives to encourage voter participation in a real world election using experimental variation in the perceived reduction of the fine for abstention i estimate that receiving information about a reduction in the fine by 50 75 percent causes a decrease in turnout of 2 6 5 3 percentage points these estimates imply a cost elasticity of voting of 0 22 the reduction in turnout is driven by voters who are in the center of the political spectrum hold less political information and have lower subjective value of voting the increase in abstention does not change aggregate preferences for specific policies further involvement in politics as measured by the decision to acquire political information is independent of the level of the fine additional results indicate that the reduction in the fine reduces the incidence of vote buying and increases the price paid for a vote

the paradox of voter participation a laboratory study it is widely believed that rational choice theory is grossly inconsistent with empirical observations about voter turnout we report the results of an experiment designed to test the voter turnout predictions of the rational choice palfrey rosenthal model of participation with asymmetric information we find that the three main comparative statics predictions are observed in the data the size effect whereby turnout goes down in larger electorates the competition effect whereby turnout is higher in elections that are expected to be close and the underdog effect whereby voters supporting the less popular alternative have higher turnout rates we also compare the quantitative magnitudes of turnout to the predictions of nash equilibrium we find that there is undervoting for small electorates and overvoting for large electorates relative to nash equilibrium these deviations from nash equilibrium are consistent with the logit version of quantal response equilibrium which provides a good fit to the data and can also account for significant voter turnout in very large elections

a quality adjustment model of the academic labor market the case of economists this paper uses some new data on the initial academic placements of new ph d economists to test a quality adjustment model which is consistent with the hypothesis that most academic appointments follow a downstream pattern by the use of weighted least squares the authors confirm the importance of the perceived quality of the faculty of the degree granting program the publishing performance of former graduates of these programs and the student faculty ratio of these programs in economics over the period 1960 to 1978 finally it is shown that contrary to popular opinion the extent of the downstream pattern has not been magnified in the so called buyers markets of the 1970 s

not by productivity alone how visibility and specialization contribute to academic earnings the popular adage publish or perish has long defined individual career strategies as well as scholarly investigations of earnings inequality in academe as researchers have relied heavily on rese

explaining voter turnout patterns an information theory voting research is rich in empirical regularities yet a parsimonious theory of voter turnout that can match the facts has proven to be elusive this paper argues that voter turnout patterns can be explained by extending the traditional rational voter model to include limited information a model is presented in which utility maximizing consumers receive higher payoffs from voting the more confident they are of their vote choice the model provides an explanation for the most important cross sectional voter turnout patterns in addition it suggests a novel explanation for the post 1960 decline in u s participation

the effect of gender sorting on propensity to coauthor implications for academic promotion a cohort sample of ph d economists indicates a significant propensity for researchers to select coauthors of the same sex this gender sorting contributes to lower article production for women further we find evidence of bias in academic promotion when single authored and coauthored articles carry the same weight in promotion and salary decisions the evidence explains in part why women academics wait longer for promotion and are not as likely to be promoted as men among the effects of gender sorting is self selection of women into larger departments where they are more likely to find colleagues of the same sex

let the experts decide asymmetric information abstention and coordination in standing committees abstract we examine abstention when voters in standing committees are asymmetrically informed and there are multiple pure strategy equilibria swing voter s curse svc equilibria where voters with low quality information abstain and equilibria when all participants vote their information when the asymmetry in information quality is large we find that voting groups largely coordinate on the svc equilibrium which is also pareto optimal however we find that when the asymmetry in information quality is not large and the pareto optimal equilibrium is for all to participate significant numbers of voters with low quality information abstain furthermore we find that information asymmetry induces voters with low quality information to coordinate on a non equilibrium outcome this suggests that coordination on letting the experts decide is a likely voting norm that sometimes validates svc equilibrium predictions but other times does not

scholarships citations and salaries economic rewards in economics while substantial attention has been paid to the determinants of academics earnings 5 7 8 14 15 this literature has by implication suggested that the mere fact of having spent more time in the profession and the publication of more scholarly articles and books are the major determinants of salary differences our purpose here is to introduce a new determinant the quality of one s scholarly research measured by the frequency of references to that work as an additional objective measure of productivity we expect that this proxy for the extent of a scholar s influence on the work of other researchers is rewarded by the market in addition to giving a more complete picture of the determination of salaries in academic labor markets our approach should be useful in establishing a better framework for the evaluation of issues of discrimination in such markets than has been presented before 2 9

women in economics moving up or falling off the academic career ladder copyright 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 by the american economic association

unraveling the academic productivity of economists the opportunity costs of teaching and service this study investigates the relationships among research productivity teaching and service on the basis of individual specific information involving approximately 715 academic economists responding to an online survey these economists provided information regarding their teaching and service commitments as well as personal and institutional information the publication record of each respondent was then obtained from econlit together these data constitute a rich field for the systematic study of research productivity results of a tobit analysis reveal much about the nature of research productivity underscoring for instance the importance of gender coauthorship presen tations at conferences and peers who publish among the more important findings from this analysis is that both teaching and service commitments have a significantly negative impact on the research productivity of academic economists these relations hold across types of academic employer though to varying degrees taken together the results provide interesting insights into the roles of academic scholars teachers and colleagues

gender and promotion in the economics profession the authors use unique panel data on american economic association members to test for gender differences in promotion in a profession with a well defined promotion and job hierarchy and in which men and women exhibit similar labor market attachment the results suggest that over the period from the 1960s through the early 1980s female economists had lower levels of professional attainment and career advancement than did their male colleagues with similar attributes these gender differences remain in evidence despite controls for unobserved heterogeneity and self selection between academic and non academic jobs there is evidence however that promotion prospects for female economists significantly improved during the 1980s not only at all ranks but also within both ph d granting institutions and non ph d granting institutions in fact the results reveal no unexplained gender specific differences in promotion by the end of the 1980s

religious homophily in a secular country evidence from a voting game in france homophily the tendency individuals have to associate with similar others is a powerful determinant of social networks yet research to date does not allow us to determine which dimension e g ethnic religious gender age or class similarity drives association tests demonstrating homophily are flawed by restricting the range of dimensions in the choice set we introduce an experimental game in which we exogenously expose subjects to diverse partners to determine which dimension dominates we find that in a socio demographically diverse district of paris despite expectations of secularization religious similarity significantly predicts homophily moreover we provide tentative evidence that religious homophily is taste based jel c91 d03 d72 j71 z12

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

the influence of gender on faculty salaries in the united states 1969 89 this study estimates the earnings differential between the male and female faculty in the united states over a period of two decades 1969 1989 five micro level data sets are used for this purpose a modified version of the widely used oaxaca model is used in the estimations it is found that the racial earnings gap narrowed considerably more than did the gender earnings differential over this period a higher male female earnings gap at the professor level relative to junior ranks suggests that relatively recent entrants in the academic labour market face a less discriminatory environment than did their predecessors a controversial finding is that the discriminatory component of the earnings differential between male and female faculty fell between 1969 and 1984 but rose thereafter

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

paying the professor sources of salary variation in academic labor markets using a set of 58 academic fields as distinct labor markets we examined the extent of wage variation within markets the degree to which wages vary is an indicator of market efficiency and of whether a market wage exists holding constant differences in human capital we found that the degree of wage variation in an academic labor market is negatively related to mobility within that market and positively related to the oversupply of labor we also found that as wage variation increases male female wage differentials also increase

public information and electoral bias abstract we present a theory of voting that predicts that elections are more likely to be close and voter turnout is more likely to be high when citizens possess better public information about the composition of the electorate these findings suggest that providing more information to potential voters about aggregate political preferences e g through pre election polls or expert forecasts may undermine the democratic process our analysis reveals that if the distribution of political preferences is common knowledge then the unique type symmetric equilibrium leads to a stark neutrality result in which each alternative is equally likely to win the election by contrast when citizens are ignorant about the preference distribution the majority is more likely to win the election and expected voter turnout is lower welfare is therefore unambiguously higher when citizens possess less information about the preference distribution

gender differences in earnings among economics and business faculty abstract this research note finds significant earnings differentials across gender that can not be explained by differences in individual job or institutional characteristics specifically we find that female economics and business faculty earn between 1 3 and 7 4 less than would be predicted in the absence of discrimination

women s wages in women s work a u s canada comparison of the roles of unions and public goods sector jobs in this paper we investigate the mechanism by which the femaleness of occupations has a negative effect on women s wages we relate us canada differences in labor market institutions the returns to skills and other dimensions of the wage structure such as occupational rents to corresponding differences in the rewards to female jobs our analysis which uses us data from the cps org for 1988 and canadian data from the 1988 lmas uncovers intriguing us canada differences in the effect of occupational gender composition on women s wages the estimated effect for canadian women is generally small and not statistically significant while estimates for american women are relatively large and comparable to the evidence in previous studies relating these differences to cross country variation in other wage determinants reveals that higher rates of unionization and the higher occupation wage effects for certain public good sector jobs such as educational services work to the advantage of canadian women we also find that the relatively higher pay of integrated jobs in the united states helps account for the larger negative effect of gender composition on women s wages in this country dans cet article nous etudions le mecanisme par lequel le taux de feminite des occupations peut avoir un effect negatif sur les salaires des femmes nous utilisons une comparaison internationale etats unis canada pour relier les differences institutionnelles du marche du travail les differences dans les rendements des qualifications et dans d autres dimensions de la structure salariale comme les rentes occupationnelles a des differences dans la remuneration des emplois a predominance feminine notre analyse qui utilise les donnees americaines provenant des cps org pour 1988 et les donnees canadiennes provenant de l enquete sur l activite aussi pour 1988 demontre l existence de differences interessantes entre les etats unis et le canada quant a l effet du taux de feminite des occupa this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

designing regulatory frameworks for merchant transmission investments by real options analysis in deregulated electricity markets the transmission network is a key infrastructure for enabling competition in the generation sector a deficient expansion of the transmission grid prevents the realization of the benefits in terms of efficiency associated with market mechanisms consequently it is essential to provide clear investment policies and economic signals to attract timely and efficient transmission investments in order to develop the system at minimum cost meeting the requirements of generators and consumers while keeping adequate levels of service quality and reliability this paper proposes a modern tool of economic evaluation based on real options analysis that provides the regulator the ability to assess various incentives that would lead transmission investors to make efficient decisions in highly uncertain environments real options properly values partially irreversible investment decisions such as to defer modify or abandon an investment project in response to the arrival of new information or as uncertainties are resolved decisions are evaluated from the point of view of a transmission investor trying to maximize its own profits in the time period set to recover the capital invested the results allow the study of the behavior of transmission investors regarding their decision making when they have the possibility to manage the option to defer under different regulatory schemes that encourage the expansion of the transmission system

marginal pricing of transmission services an analysis of cost recovery this paper presents an in depth analysis of network revenues computed with marginal pricing and in particular it investigates the reasons why marginal prices fail to recover the total incurred network costs in actual power systems the basic theoretical results are presented and the major causes of the mismatch between network costs and marginal revenues are identified and illustrated with numerical examples some tutorial and others of realistic size the regulatory implications of marginal network pricing in the context of competitive electricity markets are analyzed and suggestions are provided for the meaningful allocation of the costs of the network among its users

why do some occupations pay more than others social closure and earnings inequality in the united states1 this article elaborates and evaluates the neo weberian notion of social closure to investigate positional inequality in the united states it argues that social and legal barriers around occupations raise the rewards of their members by restricting the labor supply enhancing diffuse demand channeling demand or signaling a particular quality of service hypotheses derived from the closure perspective are evaluated using new data that map five institutionalized closure devices licensing educational credentialing voluntary certification association representation and unionization onto 488 occupations results from multilevel models demonstrate that closure practices particularly those that generate tangible restrictions on the labor supply shape the contemporary structure of occupational earnings returns to these strategies vary across occupations but are not tightly linked to the complexity of the occupation s knowledge base if suitably elaborated closure theory thus offers a promising complemen

efficiency equity and timing of voting mechanisms we compare the behavior of voters under simultaneous and sequential voting rules when voting is costly and information is incomplete in many political institutions ranging from small committees to mass elections voting is sequential which allows some voters to know the choices of earlier voters for a stylized model we generate a variety of predictions about the relative efficiency and participation equity of these two systems which we test using controlled laboratory experiments most of the qualitative predictions are supported by the data but there are significant departures from the predicted equilibrium strategies in both the sequential and the simultaneous voting games we find a tradeoff between information aggregation efficiency and equity in sequential voting a sequential voting rule aggregates information better than simultaneous voting and is more efficient in some information environments but sequential voting is inequitable because early voters bear more participation costs

the swing voter s curse in the laboratory this paper reports the first laboratory study of the swing voter s curse and provides insights on the larger theoretical and empirical literature on pivotal voter models our experiment controls for different information levels of voters as well as the size of the electorate the distribution of preferences and other theoretically relevant parameters the design varies the share of partisan voters and the prior belief about a payoff relevant state of the world our results support the equilibrium predictions of the feddersen pesendorfer model and clearly reject the notion that voters in the laboratory use naive decision theoretic strategies the voters act as if they are aware of the swing voter s curse and adjust their behavior to compensate while the compensation is not complete and there is some heterogeneity in individual behavior we find that aggregate outcomes such as efficiency turnout and margin of victory closely track the theoretical predictions

employers discriminatory behavior and the estimation of wage discrimination this paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups introduced by oaxaca 1973 to a theoretical model of employers discriminatory behavior it is shown that conditional on different assumptions about employers discriminatory tastes oaxaca s estimators of wage discrimination can be derived that the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination based on the assumption that within each type of labor e g unskilled skilled the utility function capturing employers discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male female wage differentials

outside offers and the gender pay gap empirical evidence from the uk academic labour market using a unique data source on academic economist labour market experiences we explore gender pay and promotions in addition to earnings and productivity measures we have information on outside offers and perceptions of discrimination we find both a gender promotions gap and a within rank gender pay gap a driving factor may be outside offers men receive more outside offers than women of comparable characteristics and gain higher pay increases in response this may arise due to discrimination we find that perceptions of discrimination and also outside job applications correlate with an individual receiving earnings below that expected given their characteristics

orchestrating impartiality the impact of blind auditions on female musicians a change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras adoption of blind auditions with a screen to conceal the candidate s identity from the jury provides a test for sex biased hiring using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed effects framework we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras

does a gender disparity exist in academic rank evidence from an australian university employing a unique administrative data set on academics from the university of wollongong uow we investigate if women are under represented in academic rank taking into account information on personal characteristics job characteristics education and productivity the results suggest that males have a significant advantage in rank attainment the possession of a phd the number of years of experience and the number of journal articles books book chapters competitive grants and era a ranked articles appear to be important for academic rank attainment a blinder oaxaca decomposition test indicates that both supply side and demand side factors play a role however there is greater support for the endowments argument interviews were conducted in an attempt to explain the results interviews showed that men were more career driven compared to women

get out the costly vote institutional design for greater participation institutions designed to increase turnout appeal to democratic sentiments but are highly debated as they entail two potentially countervailing eects while generating more pieces of information they may decrease the average voter s information quality we examine two commonly discussed institutions inducing participation abstention penalties used in 32 countries around the world and lotteries providing a prize to one randomly chosen participant as proposed on the 2006 arizona ballot we analyze a benchmark rational choice model in which voters vary in their information quality and participation is costly we illustrate that both institutions can improve collective outcomes though lotteries are a more eective instrument asymptotically in an array of lab experiments we empirically assess institutional performance we nd strong evidence for selective participation lab voters participate more when better informed or when institutionally induced however because subjects vote more often than the equilibrium predictions these institutions entail less welfare benets than theory prescribes lotteries do fare better than nes suggesting that they may be a useful alternative to commonly used compulsory

an experimental study of jury decision rules we present experimental results on groups facing a decision problem analogous to that faced by a jury we consider three treatment variables group size three or six number of votes needed for conviction majority or unanimity and pre vote deliberation we find evidence of strategic voting under the unanimity rule a large fraction of our subjects vote for a decision analogous to conviction even when their private information indicates a state analogous to innocence this is roughly consistent with the game theoretic predictions of feddersen and pesendorfer although individual behavior is explained well by the game theoretic model there are discrepancies at the level of the group decision contrary to feddersen and pesendorfer in our experiments there are fewer outcomes analogous to incorrect convictions under unanimity rule than under majority rule in the case of no deliberation we simultaneously account for the individual and group data using quantal response equilibrium

unions without rents the curious economics of faculty unions we show that canadian faculty unions have had no effect on university revenues only a small positive effect on earnings a negative effect on research output and lead to earnings redistributions across disciplines and ranks we argue that faculty unions have a negligible positive and often negative effect on average faculty wages because a union that promotes the median faculty member s welfare negotiates wage redistributions and more onerous teaching conditions despite the negative impact these changes have on research output average wages may rise but only because non unionized universities trade off wages against the non pecuniary benefits from research and teaching jel classification i20 j51 j54 syndicats sans rentes l economie singuliere des syndicats de professeurs d universite les auteurs montrent que les syndicats canadiens de professeurs d universite n ont pas eu d effet sur les revenus des universites ont eu seulement un petit effet positif sur les gains un effet negatif sur la production de recherche et qu ils ont entraine une redistribution des gains entre disciplines et entre les professeurs de divers rangs on suggere que les syndicats de professeurs ont eu un effet negligeable positif mais souvent negatif sur le salaire moyen des professeurs parce qu un syndicat qui s attache a promouvoir le mieux etre du professeur median negocie des redistributions de salaires et des t ches d enseignement plus lourdes meme si ces changements ont un effet negatif sur la production de resultats de recherche les salaires moyens peuvent croitre mais seulement parce que les universites non syndiquees negocient des avantages non pecuniaires portant sur la recherche et l enseignement en compensation pour des salaires moindres

the evolution of male female earnings differentials in canadian universities 1970 2001 the evolution of academic salaries and the gender earnings gap in canadian universities is analysed using a unique statistics canada data set containing detailed information on all full time teachers at canadian universities over the period 1970 through 2001 male salaries declined across cohorts while female salaries remained stable consequently male female earnings differentials have narrowed recent years have also seen increasing variation in academic salaries for both men and women a gender earnings gap remains the bulk of which can be explained by differences in men s and women s rank and field the unexplained earnings gap has decreased over time on analyse l evolution des salaires et l ecart entre hommes et femmes dans les universites canadiennes entre 1970 et 2001 a l aide d une base de donnees unique de statistiques canada qui contient des renseignements detailles sur tous les professeurs a temps plein des universites canadiennes les salaires des hommes ont decline au fil des cohortes pendant que ceux des femmes demeuraient stables ce qui fait que les differentiels de salaires se sont amenuises au cours des annees recentes on a observe une variabilite croissante des salaires academiques tant pour les hommes que les femmes un ecart entre hommes et femmes persiste qui est attribuable aux differences dans les rangs et dans les champs d activites des hommes et des femmes l ecart qui demeure inexplique a diminue dans le temps

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

gender biases in student evaluations of teaching abstract this article uses data from a french university to analyze gender biases in student evaluations of teaching sets the results of fixed effects and generalized ordered logit regression analyses show that male students express a bias in favor of male professors also the different teaching dimensions that students value in male and female professors tend to match gender stereotypes men are perceived by both male and female students as being more knowledgeable and having stronger class leadership skills which are stereotypically associated with males despite the fact that students appear to learn as much from women as from men

moral bias in large elections theory and experimental evidence in this article we provide evidence that voters in large elections tend to vote against their material self interest and to vote for a morally or ethically appealing alternative it may seem puzzling that voters might behave differently in small elections than they do in large ones however we show that such behavior is a logical consequence of voters having a conflict between obtaining a better material outcome and choosing a moral action we develop a simple model of this conflict and show that decreasing the probability that a single vote is decisive i e pivot probability reduces the importance of outcomes relative to actions in voter decision making because pivot probability is generally small in large elections alternatives that are understood by voters to be morally superior are more likely to win in large elections than in small ones thus compared to the preferences of voters election results will be biased in favor of moral alternatives 1 the model produces a set of predictions that we test in a laboratory experiment to clarify ideas consider a situation in which two outcomes are possible a and b assume that b gives

sex discrimination in faculty salaries evidence from a historically women s university during the past several years a number of studies have appeared in this review and elsewhere examining the earnings and promotion of women faculty a finding common to most of these studies is that the female male salary differential is smallest at entry level but widens over time 2 indeed george johnson and frank stafford state after presenting such evidence for michigan state university we believe this qualitative result would be observed for any university in the united states for which the sample size is sufficiently large 1974 p 899 while the qualitative findings of faculty salary studies have been similar interpretations have differed on the one hand the human capital view attributes the widening sex differential or flatter female earnings profile to differences in acquired skill and productivity this literature emphasizes differences in continuous labor market experience hours of work and the relative teaching research division of labor on the other hand the discrimination view attributes the widening differential to increased labor market discrimination with respect to experience the sex differential is smallest at entry level where universities must compete and pay prevailing salaries to attract incoming faculty members however discrimination is more easily exercised in the internal university labor market by male faculty and administrators as job mobility lessens with age because of fixed costs tied moves 3 university specific job training a shorter benefit span etc the strongest evidence supporting the discrimination view is the existence of significant unexplained salary differentials even where detailed data exist on research and teaching performance the purpose of this note is to examine the salary structure at a large university which was historically the state s university for women but is now fully coeducational to our knowledge no other such study is available comparison of results from such a study with those already in the literature can shed light on the interpretation of salary differential studies we find somewhat surprisingly an exception to the finding by johnson and stafford and others of a widening femalemale salary differential with experience apart from some qualifications discussed below we find a small differential at entry but little difference in the reward structure to men and women with respect to experience ceteris paribus alternative interpretations of this evidence are provided while we cannot clearly test between the human capital and discrimination explanations for salary differentials our evidence strongly suggests that universities can and do exercise significant discretion in the awarding of salaries discretion which is presumably made possible by the not for profit nature of these institutions see armen alchian and reuben kessel section i briefly describes the data source while section ii examines specification and then tests for functional form section iii university of north carolina greensboro we thank terry g seaks and frank stafford for helpful suggestions we are equally responsible for the contents of the paper a partial list includes george johnson and frank stafford with later comments by steven farber and by myra strober and alice quester nancy gordon thomas morton and ina braden emily hoffman david katz marianne ferber and jane loeb ferber and betty kordick ferber loeb and helen lowry and james koch and john chizmar 2 there is debate over whether the differential begins to narrow late during the working life as argued by johnson and stafford see johnson and stafford 1977 and ferber loeb and lowry 3viewing mobility within a household context see jacob mincer the potential for discrimination against married women faculty may be higher than with male or unmarried female faculty

the curse of uninformed voting an experimental study we study majority voting over two alternatives in small groups individuals have identical preferences but are uncertain about which alternative can better achieve their common interest before voting each individual can obtain information by buying a valuable but imperfect signal about the better alternative voting is either voluntary or compulsory in the compulsory mode each individual must vote between the two alternatives while in the voluntary mode they can also abstain an uninformed random vote generates a negative externality since it may override an informative group decision in pivotal events in our experiments participants in randomly re matched groups obtain information more often with compulsory than voluntary voting and the average number of signals is greater in larger than smaller groups surprisingly uninformed voting is common even in the voluntary mode finally group performance is poor in all treatments indicating the need to reconsider current practice of jury and committee voting

downs meets d aspremont and company convergence versus differentiation in politics and the media abstract media firms have incentives to differentiate their news products to soften price competition when consumers value cognitive consistency between the news they read and the policies they support politicians are induced to propose more polarized policies to conform to a polarized media landscape a stronger commercial motive or a weaker preference for editorial neutrality in the media exacerbates this effect and causes party policies to become more extreme we find that prices for news products are higher when consumers have a demand for cognitive consistency despite the fact that maximal product differentiation does not hold for media firms

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

cracks in the glass ceiling gender and promotion in the economics profession gender differences in promotion within the economics profession have long been a concern of the committee on the status of women in the economics profession cswep in a descriptive analysis of the aea universal academic questionnaire rebecca blank 1996 finds that hires and promotions to the associateand fullprofessor levels have averaged 4 2 and 2 7 percentage points below the share of female assistants and associates professors respectively thus women appear to be underrepresented in senior positions suggesting they may face a glass ceiling this paper uses unique panel data for american economic association aea members to examine formally whether there are differences across gender in promotion probabilities an academic labor market beyond its direct interest to economists is well suited to study possible gender differences in promotion because departments can be ranked within the profession and because professors can be ranked within a department by a welldefined promotion hierarchy a focus on academic economists offers an additional advantage in that on the job productivity can be measured directly by research output other promotion studies have had limited controls for productivity and have used cross sectional data which do not permit controls for unobserved ability e g rudolf winter ebmer and josef zweimuller 1997 failure to account for gender differences in unobserved productivity could produce biased inference prior promotion studies also have generally relied on job advancement indexes that limit the distinction between initial job assignment i e an

nonmonotonic status effects in new product adoption we investigate how the tendency to adopt a new product independently of social influence the recipients susceptibility to such influence and the sources strength of influence vary with social status leveraging insights from social psychology and sociology about middle status anxiety and conformity we propose that for products that potential adopters expect to boost their status both the tendency to adopt independently from others and the susceptibility to contagion is higher for middle status than for low and high status customers applying a nested case control design to the adoption of commercial kits used in genetic engineering we find evidence that status affects i how early or late one adopts regardless of social influence ii how susceptible one is to such influence operating through social ties and iii how influential one s own behavior is in triggering adoption by others the inverse u patterns in i and ii are consistent with middle status anxiety and conformity the findings have implications for how to use status to better understand adoption and contagion mechanisms and for targeting customers when launching new products

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

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

salary differentials by sex in the academic labor market this paper examines faculty time allocation decisions that are fundamental to the functioning of a university a random utility approach yields a grouped data multinomial logit model and predicts that time allocation decisions depend systematically on

updating estimates of male female salary differentials in the academic labor market abstract i estimate the male female salary gap and salary discrimination for faculty between the years 1968 and 1989 estimates of both these quantities fell substantially in the 1970 s with no further improvement in 1984 and 1989

the swing voter s curse the authors analyze two candidate elections in which some voters are uncertain about the realization of a state variable that affects the utility of all voters they demonstrate the existence of a swing voter s curse less informed indifferent voters strictly prefer to abstain rather than vote for either candidate even when voting is costless the swing voter s curse leads to the equilibrium result that a substantial fraction of the electorate will abstain even though all abstainers strictly prefer voting for one candidate over voting for another copyright 1996 by american economic association

viewpoint male female wage differentials how can that be abstract the paper outlines the main empirical procedures that are used to document the male female wage differential and the extent to which it reflects discrimination it then discusses the evidence on male female wage differentials their existence the extent to which they reflect discrimination their changes over time and the factors that influence the gap particular attention is paid to more recent studies that control for a wider range of conventionally unobserved factors theoretical perspectives are then outlined focusing on the issue of how discriminatory wage differentials can survive given the forces of competition the impacts of policy initiatives are also discussed

entry level salaries of academic economists does gender or age matter i introduction since the mid 1970s earnings differentials in academic labor markets have been extensively investigated with particular attention focused on salary differentials between males and females the leading studies use similar methodologies but differ in terms of the time period analyzed data sources and whether a single academic discipline or multiple disciplines are considered for example johnson and stafford 1974 investigate several academic professions in 1970 jusenius and scheffler 1981 consider a single discipline economics in 1973 and include a cross section of universities and professorial ranks as well as race several investigators including katz 1973 hirsch and leppel 1982 rickman 1984 and raymond sesnowitz and williams 1988 focus on a single college or university and include diverse academic disciplines the latter two studies raise the question of whether gender continued to matter in academic labor markets in the 1980s and reach opposite conclusions a consistent finding transcending early studies of academic labor markets is that earnings differentials are smallest between men and women who are at the beginning of their careers for example johnson and stafford in a widely cited study state the most important finding is that the salaries of females start out at not much less than those of males 4 to 11 percent in the six disciplines in our sample and then decline 1974 901 this paper investigates entry level salaries in a single academic discipline by considering a cross section of newly hired economists the primary source of labor market information is a unique survey of entry level salaries in the 1987 88 academic year it might seem that by the late 1980s gender differentials should have disappeared at the entry level but like johnson and stafford s 1974 earlier result our survey reveals newly hired females received 1060 3 4 percent less than males our principal purpose is to determine whether this gender differential and the effects of age are significant once other determinants of earnings are taken into account for example we consider and control for terminal degree status the quality of the ph d granting department field of specialization highest degree offered by the hiring department differences in cost of living across areas and other institutional factors that can influence beginning entry level salaries we first describe the data set developed primarily from a survey which is used to estimate entry level earnings equations we also briefly compare our survey to other surveys providing information on market outcomes for economists we then present estimates of the determinants of entry level salaries and discuss the influence of gender age and other determinants of earnings ii the survey a total of 469 u s economics departments were surveyed in the summer and fall of 1987 with 258 departments responding 55 percent 1 the 1987 88 academic year salary of each new hire was requested of each department demographic information age sex and human capital characteristics ph d granting university primary field of specialization and degree status were also requested for each new hire in addition the survey included questions on whether the hiring college university is privately or publicly supported the administrative reporting channel of the economics department highest degree offered and number of entry level persons hired the identities of the hiring department and the university at which the newly hired economist did his or her graduate work are used to construct two measures of quality the quality of the department where the ph d work was done is the first measure and the quality of the hiring department is the second 2 the survey was designed to provide microdata on individual entry level economists for the purpose of estimating earnings equations in an effort to maximize responses the questionnaire was intentionally brief only questions directly relevant to estimating the earnings equation of entry level economists were included

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

cohort patterns in canadian earnings assessing the role of skill premia in inequality trends in this paper we document the pattern of change in age earnings profiles across cohorts and evaluate its implications using synthetic cohorts from the survey of consumer finances over the period 1971 to 1993 wwe show that the age earnings profiles of canadian men have been deteriorating for more recentcohorts in comparison with older cohorts we find this pattern for both high school and university educated workers in no case do we find evidence that the return to gaining experience has been increasing over time nor do we find increased within cohort dispersion of earnings we view these findings as conflicting with the hypothesis that increased skill premia largely explain the observed increase in dispersion of male weekly earnings jel classification j31 o33 ce memoire documente le pattern de changements dans les relations ges gains d une cohorte a l autre et en analyse les implications utilisant des cohortes synthetiques pour la periode 1971 93 on montre que les profils ges gains des hommes au canada se sont deteriores dans les cohortes les plus recentes on ne trouve pas de resultats qui montreraient que le rendement sur l experience accumulee s est accru dans le temps ou qu il y a dispersion accrue des gains a l interieur des cohortes les auteurs suggerent que ces resultats contredisent l hypothese que des primes accrues pour les habiletes expliqueraient l accroissement qu on a observe dans la dispersion des gains des hommes au canada

real option valuation of facts investments based on the least square monte carlo method efficient and well timed investments in electric transmission networks that cope with the large ongoing power market uncertainties are currently an open issue of significant research interest strategic flexibility for seizing opportunities and cutting losses contingent upon an unfavorable unfolding of the long term uncertainties is an attribute of enormous value when assessing irreversible investments in this sense flexible ac transmission systems facts devices appear as an effective manner of adding flexibility to the transmission expansion planning this article proposes an investment valuation approach which properly assesses the option value of deferring transmission lines investments whereas gaining flexibility by investing in facts devices the flexibility provided by facts investments option to abandon and to relocate is assessed through a real option valuation approach based on the novel least square monte carlo method in order to illustrate the practicability of the proposed valuation approach a traditional expansion strategy lines and a flexible investment strategy lines and facts are compared in a real study case the article shows that a proper combination of lines and facts leads to efficient investments by allowing a progressive adaptation of the transmission grid to the changing scenarios

women in the economics profession this article discusses evidence from recent literature on gender literature on gender differences among ph d economists it finds many gender similarities in accomplishments including undergraduate grades publication rates ceteris paribus and labor market commitment it finds no evidence of disadvantages for women in admissions to ph d programs or in nonacademic salaries yet gender differences remain ceteris paribus in gre scores attrition from ph d programs non tenure track academic jobs academic salaries and academic promotion rates the paper suggests that trends toward increasing percentage of females may be peaking particularly given recent drops in female undergraduate economics majors