is there a glass ceiling in sweden using 1998 data we show that the gender log wage gap in sweden increases throughout the wage distribution and accelerates in the upper tail we interpret this as a strong glass ceiling effect we use quantile regression decompositions to examine whether this pattern can be ascribed primarily to gender differences in labor market characteristics or in the rewards to those characteristics even after extensive controls for gender differences in age education both level and field sector industry and occupation we find that the glass ceiling effect we see in the raw data persists to a considerable extent

the utilization of competing technologies within the firm evidence from cardiac procedures this paper examines the role of technological status in determining the rates at which competing techniques are used within a firm consistent with prior studies technological status is measured on the basis of an actor s prior contributions to the body of knowledge concerning a given technique the empirical analysis considers two treatments for coronary artery disease cad each of which is associated with a distinct professional group within a hospital these two groups are often characterized as engaging in a turf war for patients after controlling for several factors that might explain technological choice the clinical severity of patients the relative quality of the two procedures at a given facility firm level financial performance and other firm level characteristics i find that the technological status of the group associated with each technique affects the relative rate at which it is used within a given hospital moreover this effect is strongest for patients at the margin between the two techniques these results suggest that viewing the choice between competing innovations as a single firm level decision may not always capture the true dynamics underlying such a situation

individual risk attitudes measurement determinants and behavioral consequences this paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects homes using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks in general we find that gender age height and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks the experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure using paid lottery choices turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts we conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks occupational choice and smoking the question about risk taking in general generates the best all round predictor of risky behavior

sex and science how professor gender perpetuates the gender gap nber working paper seriessex and science how professor gender perpetuates the gender gapscott e carrellmarianne e pagejames e westworking paper 14959http www nber org papers w14959national bureau of economic research1050 massachusetts avenuecambridge ma 02138may 2009thanks go to usafa personnel j putnam d stockburger r schreiner k carson and p eglestonfor assistance in obtaining the data and to deb west for data entry thanks also go to charlie brown charles clotfelter caroline hoxby deborah niemeier kim shauman catherine weinberger andseminar participants at nber higher education working group ppic sdsu uc davis uc irvine and uc santa cruz for their helpful comments and suggestions the views expressed in this articleare those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the usaf dod the u s government or the national bureau of economic research 2009 by scott e carrell marianne e page and james e west all rights reserved short sectionsof text not to exceed two paragraphs may be quoted without explicit permission provided that fullcredit including notice is given to the source

an analysis of bank risk and deposit rate ceilings abstract the effect of deposit rate regulation on bank solvency is an important and unresolved issue that has received only limited attention in this paper capital market data is used to assess changes in both systematic and non systematic risk of a portfolio of bank stocks at the time of deposit rate deregulation the evidence indicates that neither measure of capital market risk is significantly affected leading to the conclusion that bank solvency risk will not be increased by the deregulation of interest rates on deposits

effects of the 1970 bank holding company act evidence from capital markets this study measures the effects of the 1970 amendment to the bank holding company bhc act on the profitability and risk of bhcs using capital market data differences in abnormal returns and risk among three portfolios of bank shares which differ in their regulatory status are examined in various periods preceding and following the enactment no significant differences in performance and no change in the relative risk of any pair of portfolios were observed thus the null hypothesis that the nonbank expansion provisions of the 1970 amendment had no effect on bhcs risk and profitability cannot be rejected the growth of bank holding companies and their expansion into nonbank activities following the 1970 amendment to the bank holding company bhc act of 1956 produced striking structural changes in the banking industry the nonbank expansion provisions of the statute triggered a continuing debate about the costs and benefits of these provisions black miller and posner 2 consider the amendment to be an important innovation that can increase the efficiency and hence the profitability of financial intermediaries other writers however suggest that nonbank activities of bank holding companies may increase the risk of bank failure thereby increasing the regulatory involvement silverberg 14 orgler and wolkowitz 13 and mayne 10 2 this study analyzes the effects of the 1970 amendment to the bank holding company act on the profitability and riskiness of bank holding companies capital market data are used to measure risk and return fama 6

interest rate risk and the pricing of depository financial intermediary common stock empirical evidence abstract using the likelihood ratio test this paper presents evidence that interest rate risk is priced these results are consistent with earlier findings presented by sweeney and warga based on a different sample and methodology the statistical results further reveal that failure to discern significant interest rate premia is attributable to insufficient rate sensitivity rather than being an outcome of monetary policy i e inadequate rate volatility

estimating level effects in diffusion of a new technology barcode scanning at the checkout counter cross country or cross industry studies of technology diffusion typically estimate how independent factors affect diffusion speed or timing often based on a two stage approach in many applications however countries industries differ most in the saturation level of diffusion in a single stage econometric approach to a standard diffusion model we therefore estimate how the saturation level covaries with independent factors in our application to diffusion of an important retail information technology we focus on the competitive effect of hypermarkets superstores we also find standard scale income and labour substitution effects

is there a glass ceiling over europe exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution using harmonised data from the european union household panel we analyse gender pay gaps by sector across the wages distribution for ten countries we find that the mean gender pay gap in the raw data typically hides large variations in the gap across the wages distribution we use quantile regression qr techniques to control for the effects of individual and job characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculate the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women we find that first gender pay gaps are typically bigger at the top of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with the existence of glass ceilings for some countries gender pay gaps are also bigger at the bottom of the wage distribution a finding that is consistent with sticky floors third the gender pay gap is typically higher at the top than the bottom end of the wage distribution suggesting that glass ceilings are more prevalent than sticky floors and that these prevail in the majority of our countries fourth the gender pay gap differs significantly across the public and the private sector wages distribution for each of our eu countries

market structure uncertainty and intrafirm diffusion the case of optical scanners in grocery stores this study uses monthly data on the adoption of optical scanners by sixty three grocery chains in thirty two large u s cities to identify the determinants of the rate of intrafirm diffusion the methodology involves a two stage approach that relates market environment characteristics to the estimated rate of intrafirm diffusion the results indicate that firms with larger market shares adopt a new innovation scanners more quickly initially but diffuse the innovation through their stores more slowly than firms with smaller market shares in addition firms that lag competitors in the initial adoption of scanners tend to diffuse the innovation more quickly copyright 1992 by mit press

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

a new test of the relationship between regulatory change in financial markets and the stability of beta risk of depository institutions the us economy experienced major regulatory changes in the banking and finance industry with the passage of five major acts over the period 1980 to 1991 this has generated an extensive literature investigating the effects of these changes on the us banking industry in particular this body of research has examined the share market reaction to regulatory changes as well as their impact on the risk return market value and profitability of banking industry stocks generally it has been found that the regulatory changes have had a substantial impact although the effect has not been uniform across all depository institutions this paper extends this literature by analysing the stability of a sample of eighteen us banking industry stock betas across five periods a pre regulatory change period a monetary experiment period a deregulation period a reregulation period and a post regulatory change period based on an analysis of weekly returns we find that the level of bank risk has increased further we also find a tendency towards greater beta instability in both the monetary experiment and deregulation samples the degree of beta instability is lowest in the pre regulatory change and post regulatory change samples overall the monetary experiment and regulatory change coincided with an increased tendency towards beta instability we also compare our results to a randomly selected control sample of non banks and find some more general effects of regulatory change on individual stock betas

innovations and the economics of new technology spreading within and across users gaps and way forward r d subsidies are often considered the main policy tool to stimulate the competitiveness and the innovativeness of firms this is especially true for innovations designed to produce greener products or cleaner and more energy efficient technologies however a consistent literature has now shown that even when a clean or a cost reducing technology is ready available in the market its spreading within intra or across inter households or firms takes several years and in some cases decades therefore it is not only important to generate innovations via investments in r d but it is also important that such innovations are adopted and used by firms this paper briefly illustrates the main theoretical approaches to the analysis of the factors leading to inter firm diffusion and emphasise the existing gap led by the paucity of literature on intra firm diffusion a final section briefly discusses some methodological issues surrounding the diffusion of consumer non durable technologies within and across households and how ad hoc models can be used to test the validity of environmental policies

the market valuation effects of the financial institutions reform recovery and enforcement act of 1989 abstract this paper evaluates the stock market effects of events leading to the passage of the financial institutions reforms recovery and enforcement act of 1989 the evidence suggests that the signing of the act by president bush produced positive abnormal returns for both banks and s ls and that the addition of tougher capital standards produced positive returns for s ls in addition the act increased the risk of both banks and s ls

gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking comparing children in colombia and sweden we explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 912 in colombia and sweden two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices we include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness running skipping rope math and word search we find that boys and girls are equally competitive in all tasks and all measures in colombia unlike the consistent results in colombia the results in sweden are mixed with some indication of girls being more competitive than boys in some tasks in terms of performance change whereas boys are more likely to choose to compete in general boys in both countries are more risk taking than girls with a smaller gender gap in sweden

do women shy away from competition do men compete too much we examine whether men and women of the same ability differ in their selection into a competitive environment participants in a laboratory experiment solve a real task first under a noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme although there are no gender differences in performance men select the tournament twice as much as women when choosing their compensation scheme for the next performance while 73 percent of the men select the tournament only 35 percent of the women make this choice this gender gap in tournament entry is not explained by performance and factors such as risk and feedback aversion only playa negligible role instead the tournament entry gap is driven by men being more overconfident and by gender differences in preferences for performing in a competition the result is that women shy away from competition and men embrace it

the intra firm diffusion of new process technologies the study of intra firm diffusion has largely been neglected and the limited extant literature overwhelmingly relies upon uncertainty reduction via information spreading or epidemic learning as the main driver in this paper an alternative approach is taken whereby the intra firm diffusion of new process technologies reflects the profitability of new technology adoption as proxied by firm characteristics the approach is tested using data relating to the diffusion of computer numerically controlled machine tools within firms in the uk engineering and metalworking sectors the empirical analysis does not reject the hypothesis that profitability considerations are important with a number of firm characteristics being isolated as of special relevance including firm size and the use of complementary technologies and managerial techniques however there is little support for the traditional epidemic effect

a dynamic analysis of the adoption of a new technology the case of optical scanners two p roportional hazard models are used to investigate the differingeffects of marke t structure variables on the conditional probabilityof a firm initially adoptin g the new technology of optical scanners as the innovation spreads through the f ood store industry during the early stage leading firms with large average sto re size which are not members of chains and which operate in less concentrated m arkets with higher incomes and wage rates tend to adopt scanners sooner later on differences in seller concentration market share and size become less impo rtant as other firms follow prior adoptions copyright 1987 by mit press

interdependences in the intrafirm diffusion of technological innovations confronting the rational and social accounts of diffusion this article investigates the intrafirm diffusion of technological innovations and the interdependences that exist among rival firms in this process previous research has offered two potential explanations for these interdependences social accounts in which they result from institutional pressures and rational accounts in which firms are interdependent as a result of how adoption by rivals affects expectations about the profitability of the technology the article offers two contributions first we propose a competitive interaction mechanism that is consistent with the fundamentals of rational accounts of diffusion second the empirical analysis shows the dominance of the proposed rational mechanism over social accounts of innovation diffusion in the generation of interdependences in the process of intrafirm diffusion

a note on deposit rate deregulation super nows and bank security returns abstract this paper empirically investigates the effects on the weekly returns of almost 100 banking organizations of the december 1982 authorization of super nows examination of excess returns around the announcement date suggests that the announcement of the super nows had a statistically significant and negative effect and that the impact differed significantly by type of bank while returns for money center banks were generally unaffected excess returns for regional retail banks were highly significant

market segmentation and the diffusion of quality enhancing innovations the case of downhill skiing we report econometric results concerning the diffusion of detachable chairlifts in the united states that provide the first empirical evidence that the adoption of a technological innovation by a firm decreases the likelihood that a local competitor will also adopt it we model the effect that an innovation in service speed has on a f s incentive to differentiate the quality of its service from that of its competitors in our model the incentive to adopt is negatively related to the number of competitors who have already adopted our empirical results support this hypothesis

rival precedence and the dynamics of technology adoption an empirical analysis this study employs information on the adoption of automatic teller machines by banking firms to examine the nature of firm reactions to rival precedence in the adoption process using a failure time estimation procedure it is found that the ado ption of this innovation by rivals increases the conditional probabil ity that a decision to adopt will be made the effect of spillovers f rom technology adoption and the interaction of market concentration a nd rival precedence are also investigated finally the study shows w ith an example how the estimation procedure may be used to test the u nderpinnings of diffusion processes copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited

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

time to implement and aggregate fluctuations in this paper we slightly modify the canonical rbc model by adding an implementation lag in the technology to reproduce the fact that consumption is a leading indicator of output indeed we assume that agents have today some information on the realization of the technology shock that will occur tomorrow today inventions are known and give information on the innovations which will be implemented tomorrow the model is estimated and tested on us data by a simulated method of moments using some suitable reconstructed data that are compatible with that model the results are in favor of this implementation lag hypothesis the model is not rejected by us post war data

how costly is diversity affirmative action in light of gender differences in competitiveness affirmative action is often criticized for causing reverse discrimination and lowering the qualifications of those hired under the policy however the magnitude of such adverse effects depends on whether the best suited candidate is hired absent the policy indeed affirmative action may compensate for the distortion discrimination imposes on the selection of candidates this paper asks whether affirmative action can have a similar corrective impact when qualified individuals fail to apply for a job we evaluate the effect of introducing a gender quota in an environment where high performing women fail to enter competitions they can win we show that guaranteeing women equal representation among winners increases their entry the response exceeds that predicted by the change in probability of winning and is in part driven by women being more willing to compete against other women the consequences are substantial as the boost in supply essentially eliminates the anticipated costs of the policy this paper was accepted by uri gneezy behavioral economics

clustering in n player preemption games we study a complete information preemption game in continuous time a finite number of firms decide when to make an irreversible observable investment upon investment a firm receives flow profits which decrease in the number of firms that have invested the cost of investment declines over time exogenously we characterize the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome which is unique up to a permutation of players when the preemption race among late investors is sufficiently intense the preemption incentive for earlier investors disappears and two or more investments occur at the same time we identify a sufficient condition in terms of model parameters clustering of investments occurs if the flow profits from consecutive investments are sufficiently close this shows how clustering can occur in the absence of coordination failures informational spillovers or positive payoff externalities

gender competitiveness and career choices gender differences in competitiveness have been hypothesized as a potential explanation for gender differences in education and labor market outcomes we examine the predictive power of a standard laboratory experimental measure of competitiveness for the later important choice of academic track of secondary school students in the netherlands although boys and girls display similar levels of academic ability boys choose substantially more prestigious academic tracks where more prestigious tracks are more math and science intensive our experimental measure shows that boys are also substantially more competitive than girls we find that competitiveness is strongly positively correlated with choosing more prestigious academic tracks even conditional on academic ability most important we find that the gender difference in competitiveness accounts for a substantial portion about 20 of the gender difference in track choice

didmca and bank market risk theory and evidence abstract this paper examines the theoretical and empirical consequences of the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 1980 on the market risk of the us banking industry we survey several theoretical arguments linking deregulation of deposit interest rates to market based measures of bank risk capital market data for a sample of large commercial bank holding companies provides evidence that deregulation has accompanied increases in both systematic and nonsystematic measures of bank risk

the impact of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on competitiveness we examine whether competitiveness in women is influenced by biological factors female participants in a laboratory experiment solve a simple arithmetics task first under a piece rate and then under a competitive tournament scheme participants can then choose which compensation scheme to apply in a third round we find that the likelihood of selecting into the competitive environment varies strongly and significantly over the menstrual cycle and with the intake of hormonal contraceptives the observed patterns are consistent with a negative impact of the sex hormone progesterone on competitiveness we show that the effect of the menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptives on competitiveness is due neither to an impact on performance nor to an impact on risk aversion or overconfidence

do faculty serve as role models the impact of instructor gender on female students although women have matched or surpassed men in many educational outcomes such as college access and persistence female students remain much less likely to major in quantitative technical and science related fields while women have made progress in recent years only 20 percent of engineering students are female and the proportion of women receiving degrees in the sciences and engineering in the united states lags that of other industrialized countries national center for education statistics 1995 this underrepresentation of women may have serious implications for women s returns to education and may relate to occupational segregation and earnings inequality by gender linda loury 1997 as the economy shifts to favor these more male dominated fields there is concern that women will not be prepared to succeed moreover the health of the economy depends on the production of certain kinds of degrees and the underrepresentation of women in certain areas may contribute to shortages in critical fields there have been many widely publicized efforts by the government companies and schools to increase female representation in male dominated fields one focus has been to increase mentoring opportunities for female students by hiring more women faculty members theory and evidence suggest that female instructors may be instrumental in encouraging women to enroll and excel in subjects in which they are underrepresented female students may avoid male dominated fields due to biases against women sandra hanson 1996 and the presence of female faculty may mitigate these effects david neumark and rosella gardecki 1998 found that female doctoral students with female mentors were more likely to succeed however similar to student trends women are underrepresented on university faculties particularly in the sciences and quantitative fields and many worry about the lack of potential role models for female undergraduates for example in 2003 princeton university created a 10 million fund to hire and promote women faculty in science and engineering departments while duke s president pledged 1 million per year for the same purpose robin wilson 2003 in addition the national science foundation s advance program continues to push for increased representation and advancement of women in academic careers and engineering careers national science foundation 2004 does the presence of faculty members of the same gender impact student interest in a subject this paper answers this question by estimating how having a female faculty member in an initial course affects the likelihood that a female student will take additional credit hours or major in a particular subject if students choose their courses and major based on their experiences during their initial exposure to a subject then the instructors they face early in a discipline could influence these decisions such an analysis is difficult because few data sets allow researchers to link student outcomes to faculty characteristics however using a comprehensive longitudinal data set of nearly 54 000 students this paper is among the first large scale studies to estimate the impact of faculty on the outcomes of students moreover discussants ronald ehrenberg cornell university brian jacob harvard university richard murnane harvard university

changes in college skills and the rise in the college wage premium the college wage premium for new labor market entrants rose sharply during the 1980s we ask how much of this change arose from changes in the skill level of the typical college graduate we find that skills attained prior to college as measured by standardized test scores and high school grades had no effect on the change in the college wage premium for men in contrast the returns to math ability rose considerably for women failing to account for math skills thus substantially overstates the growth in the female college wage premium skills acquired in college as reflected in the distribution of students across majors had important effects on the relative wages of men the trend away from low skill subjects such as education and toward high skill subjects such as engineering accounts for one fourth of the rise in the male college wage premium

intrafirm diffusion of new technologies an empirical application research on the diffusion of new technologies has centred on the study of the interfirm rate of diffusion paying much less attention to intrafirm aspects this paper attempts to overcome this gap in the literature by analysing the factors that influence the speed with which a new technology the atm is fully adopted the data over which the hypotheses are tested belongs to the spanish savings banks market the results show that the rate of intrafirm diffusion is explained by innovation firm and market characteristics in testing our hypotheses we make use of both traditional methods and survival analysis techniques

the impact of the 1980 depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act on market value and risk evidence from the capital markets the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 1980 brought about major changes in the banking industry this study employs capital market data to examine the act s impact on the relative competitive positions of distinct classes of firms within the industry the evidence supports the hypothesis that federal reserve system banks profited from the regulatory change at the expense of nonmember banks and savings and loans copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

tying odysseus to the mast evidence from a commitment savings product in the philippines we designed a commitment savings product for a philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology the savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism we conducted a baseline survey on 1777 existing or former clients of a bank one month later we offered the commitment product to a randomly chosen subset of 710 clients 202 28 4 percent accepted the offer and opened the account in the baseline survey we asked hypothetical time discounting questions women who exhibited a lower discount rate for future relative to current trade offs and hence potentially have a preference for commitment were indeed significantly more likely to open the commitment savings account after twelve months average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those clients assigned to the treatment group relative to those assigned to the control group we conclude that the savings response represents a lasting change in savings and not merely a short term response to a new product

performance in competitive environments gender differences even though the provision of equal opportunities for men and women has been a priority in many countries large gender differences prevail in competitive high ranking positions suggested explanations include discrimination and differences in preferences and human capital in this paper we present experimental evidence in support of an additional factor women may be less effective than men in competitive environments even if they are able to perform similarly in non competitive environments in a laboratory experiment we observe as we increase the competitiveness of the environment a significant increase in performance for men but not for women this results in a significant gender gap in performance in tournaments while there is no gap when participants are paid according to piece rate this effect is stronger when women have to compete against men than in single sex competitive environments this suggests that women may be able to perform in competitive environments per se

selection into self improvement and competition pay gender stereotypes and earnings volatility abstract we examine whether men and women differ in their willingness to select into a contract that pays upon improving one s past performance experiment participants choose to perform a task under either a regular piece rate or a larger piece rate provided they improve relative to a previous round women are less willing than men to select into self improvement pay and this gender gap is largely explained by higher risk aversion and to a smaller extent lower self confidence high earnings volatility widens the gender gap and makes self improvement pay less attractive than competition pay we find no effect of gender stereotypes in the willingness to sort into self improvement the results provide insight into the feasibility and potential of using self improvement contracts as gender neutral incentive mechanisms

the effects of didmca on bank stockholders returns and risk abstract in this paper we examine the effects of the 1980 didmca on bank stockholders returns and risk while at the time of the announcement both commercial banks and thrifts appeared to benefit measured by abnormal returns over a longer period of time surrounding the announcement week it is evident that thrift stockholders were the primary beneficiaries of the acts passage when the effects of didmca on risk was analysed it was found that after the act s passage the total return risk of both money center and regional banks increased while that for thrifts decreased however some of the beneficial effects of the act appear to have been mitigated by an increase in the absolute size of unexpected interest rate risk in the post enactment period