homeownership and economic performance of immigrants in germany this paper investigates the homeownership gap between native and immigrant households in germany paying particular attention to the assimilation process of immigrant households a double cohort model is derived which circumvents the identification problem for separating age period and cohort effects and accounts for differences in the effects the empirical findings suggest that immigrant households are less likely to own their primary residence than comparable native households moreover the duration of residence in germany does not affect the homeownership probability of immigrants indicating that an assimilation process in homeownership between native and immigrant households did not take place this result is largely consistent with the german immigration policy which has focused predominantly on short run economic needs and has neglected long run economic effects of immigration

analysis of the changing influences on traditional households ownership patterns abstract sociological and economic forces have begun to alter ownership patterns in ways not yet captured by movements in the aggregate ownership rate while demographic factors such as marital status and family structure remain influential in determining tenure choice their impact has waned particularly among the best educated households and those with rising real incomes labor market conditions as evidenced by increasing returns to skill are more strongly felt than ever before in the housing market the impact on owning of being highly educated now rivals the influence of being married with minor children increasingly delayed ownership is a reality even for traditional family units with 36 to 45 year old heads that have not prospered in the labor market the rising real cost of even relatively inexpensive suburban housing is also beginning to be reflected in a heightened impact for real family income on tenure choice finally race currently is more adversely influential in determining suburban ownership for young middle aged minority families than it was in 1960 particularly if the household head is not well educated we suspect this is due to racially disparate impacts of increasingly rigorous zoning regulations and higher impact fees in the suburbs

estimating the firm s labor supply curve in a new monopsony framework school teachers in missouri in the context of certain dynamic models it is possible to infer the elasticity of labor supply to the firm from the elasticity of the quit rate with respect to the wage using this property we estimate the average labor supply elasticity to public school districts in missouri we leverage the plausibly exogenous variation in prenegotiated district salary schedules to instrument for actual salary these estimates imply a labor supply elasticity of about 3 7 suggesting that school districts possess significant market power the presence of monopsony power in this teacher labor market may be partially explained by its institutional features

a comparative analysis of the nativity wealth gap this paper investigates the source of the gap in the relative wealth posi tion of immigrant households residing in australia germany and the united states our results indicate that in germany and the united states wealth difierentials are largely the result of disparity in the educational attainment and demographic composition of the native and immigrant populations while income difierentials are relatively unimportant in understanding the nativity wealth gap in contrast the relatively small wealth gap between australian and foreign born households exists because immigrants to australia do not translate their relative educational and demographic advantage into a wealth advantage on balance our results point to substantial cross national disparity in the economic well being of immigrant and native families which is largely consistent with domestic labor markets and the selection policies used to shape the nature of the immigration ow

caught in the housing bubble immigrants housing outcomes in traditional gateways and newly emerging destinations research has documented that immigrants have moved in large numbers to almost every metropolitan area and select rural areas in the us in the midst of these demographic shifts the country has experienced a profound recession to date there has been little research on the impact of the recession on immigrants across the us using 2006 and 2009 american community survey microdata the paper assesses how the recent economic crisis has affected latino and asian immigrants with respect to two housing outcomes homeownership and headship over two important time points in the recent economic cycle immigrants have worse housing outcomes and significantly lower mobility rates after the recession regression results suggest that the negative impacts from the recession are strongest in the gateway metropolitan areas and that after controlling for residence in the hardest hit areas increases in metropolitan level unemployment and mortgage delinquency rates have a negative impact on homeownership rates the results also suggest that even though the recession has disrupted immigrants upward trajectory in the housing markets the effect has not been as severe on immigrants as one might expect in particular the places where immigrant populations are newest have not experienced as large a reduction in homeownership as those in the large immigrant gateways even in the established gateways the decline in homeownership has been smaller for immigrants than for us born households

would higher salaries keep teachers in high poverty schools evidence from a policy intervention in north carolina abstract for a three year time period beginning in 2001 north carolina awarded an annual bonus of 1800 to certified math science and special education teachers working in public secondary schools with either high poverty rates or low test scores using longitudinal data on teachers we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program s implementation across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers and across eligible and barely ineligible schools results suggest that this bonus payment was sufficient to reduce mean turnover rates of the targeted teachers by 17 experienced teachers exhibited the strongest response to the program finally the effect of the program may have been at least partly undermined by the state s failure to fully educate teachers regarding the eligibility criteria our estimates most likely underpredict the potential outcome of a program of permanent salary differentials operating under complete information

international migration housing demand and access to homeownership in the uk since the mid 1980s the uk has experienced a prolonged period of net international migration with debate as to its impact on economic benefits and costs a third of projected new households in the next 15 20 years are expected to come from net migration this article examines international migration and housing demand in light of the conventional understanding of british housing markets and the extent to which there are differences in demand and access to homeownership across international migrant groups demographic and socioeconomic factors as well as length of residence are found to be significant determinants of homeownership however there are also differences in homeownership attainment that may be related to ethno cultural differences or unobserved wealth effects and mortgage market institutional factors the role of socioeconomic factors has implications for skills based migration to the uk if a policy concern is house price pressure and migration

dynamic bargaining in a supply chain with asymmetric demand information we analyze a dynamic bargaining game in which a seller and a buyer negotiate over quantity and payment to trade for a product both firms are impatient and they make alternating offers until an agreement is reached the buyer is privately informed about his type which can be high or low the high type s demand is stochastically larger than the low type s in the dynamic negotiation process the seller can screen whereas the buyer can signal information through their offers and the buyer has an endogenous and type dependent reservation profit with rational assumptions on the seller s belief structure we characterize the perfect bayesian equilibrium of the bargaining game interestingly we find that both quantity distortion and information rent may be avoided depending on the firms relative patience and the seller may reach an agreement with either the high type or the low type first or with both simultaneously furthermore we explore our model to characterize the effect of demand forecasting accuracy on firm profitability we find that improved demand forecast benefits the buyer but hurts the seller when the buyer s forecasting accuracy is low however once the buyer s forecasting accuracy exceeds a threshold both firms will benefit from further improvement of the forecast this observation makes an interesting contrast to previous findings based on the one shot principal agent model in which improvement of forecasting accuracy mostly leads to a win lose outcome for the two firms and the buyer has an incentive to improve his forecasting accuracy only when it is extremely low this paper was accepted by yossi aviv operations management

job queues and wages this paper uses job applications data to investigate the relationship between job queues and wage differentials the main finding is that openings for jobs that pay the minimum wage attract more job applicants than jobs that pay either slightly more or slightly less than the minimum wage this spike in the job application rate distribution suggests that ex ante rents generated for employees by an above market level minimum wage are not completely dissipated by reductions in nonwage benefits in addition we find that highly unionized firms large firms and firms in high wage industries tend to receive relatively many job applicants for openings

the economics of teacher quality abstract concern is often voiced about the quality of american schoolteachers this paper suggests that while the relative quality of teachers is declining this decline may be the result of technological changes that have raised the price of skilled workers outside teaching without affecting the productivity of skilled teachers growth in the price of skilled workers can cause schools to lower the relative quality of teachers and raise teacher quantity instead evidence from the national longitudinal survey of youth demonstrates that wage and schooling are good measures of teacher quality analysis of u s census microdata then reveals that the relative schooling and experience adjusted relative wages of u s schoolteachers have fallen significantly from 1940 to 1990 moreover class sizes have also fallen substantially the declines in class size and in relative quality seem correlated over time and space with growth in the relative price of skilled workers

fairness and frictions the impact of unequal raises on quit behavior we analyze how separations responded to arbitrary differences in own and peer wages at a large us retailer regression discontinuity estimates imply large causal effects of own wages on separations and on quits in particular however this own wage response could reflect comparisons either to market wages or to peer wages estimates using peer wage discontinuities show large peer wage effects and imply the own wage separation response mostly reflects peer comparisons the peer effect is driven by comparisons with higher paid peers suggesting concerns about fairness separations appear fairly insensitive when raises are similar across peers suggesting search frictions and monopsony are relevant in this low wage sector

mortgage lending in boston interpreting hmda data the home mortgage disclosure act was enacted to monitor minority and low income access to the mortgage market the data collected for this purpose show that minorities are more than twice as likely to be denied a mortgage as whites yet variables correlated with both race and creditworthiness were omitted from these data making any conclusion about race s role in mortgage lending impossible the federal reserve bank of boston collected additional variables important to the mortgage lending decision and found that race continued to play an important though significantly diminished role in the decision to grant a mortgage copyright 1996 by american economic association

a dream deferred or realized the impact of public policy on fostering black homeownership in new york city throughout the 1990 s homeownership disparities between blacks and whites have been a persistent feature of american life for example in 1950 the black homeownership rate stood at 63 percent of the total homeownership rate and nearly a half century later in 1996 the black homeownership rate stood at 67 percent of the national homeownership rate u s bureau of the census 2001a although there may not be consensus among social scientists that housing discrimination continues to play a role in racial homeownership disparities a vast majority of social scientists would not dispute the historical role of housing discrimination and during the late 1980 s and 1990 s policymakers acted under the implicit assumption that discrimination was a driving force behind the black white disparities in homeownership this paper seeks to explore how policies of the 1990 s that were designed in part to combat mortgage lending discrimination affected black white homeownership disparities in new york city nyc because of its large presence of immigrants concentrating on nyc allows us to decipher the effects of nativity on homeownership moreover the u s bureau of the census 2001c conducted the new york city housing and vacancy survey nychvs of approximately 18 000 units in 1991 1993 1996 and 1999 which conveniently allows us to track homeownership trends over the 1990 s

the market work behavior and wages of women 1975 94 changes in the labor market participation and wages of women in the united states are analyzed over the period 1975 1994 using data from the current population survey women are organized into nine birth cohorts five schooling groups and each year of age from 25 to 60 years and their weekly and annual work hours their annual work weeks their employment population ratio and their real average hourly earnings tabulated schooling differences in work behavior have become wider in recent cohorts as have their wages the relationship between work and wages is estimated for women of different ages cohorts and marital status the gap between the work of unmarried and married women has narrowed and the role of wages both the wages of women and those of husbands is examined to determine the extent to which changes in wages account for these movements excerpt

the elasticity of labor supply at the establishment level monopsonistic wage setting power requires that the supply of labor directed toward individual establishments is upward sloping this study utilizes institutional features to identify the supply curve the elasticity of labor supply is estimated using data for the norwegian teacher labor market in a period where the only variation in the wage level was determined centrally and with information on whether there is excess demand or not at the school level in fixed effects models the supply elasticity faced by individual schools is estimated to about 1 4 and is in the range 1 0 1 9 in different model specification

an econometric model of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand abstract this paper addresses the determination of housing price permanent income tenure choice and housing demand full housing demand elasticities incorporate the interactive effects among the four stages of the model price and income have major effects in the tenure choice equation sociodemographic variables such as age have complex effects that may be lost in simpler forms of estimation

teacher sorting teacher quality and student composition abstract using panel data for norwegian schools we establish a two equation supply and demand model for teachers with approved education taking into account nationally determined teacher pay and a strict teacher appointment rule the data enable us to separately estimate supply and demand functions for certified teachers the results clearly indicate that the student body composition and in particular students belonging to ethnic minorities influences both teacher supply and teacher demand the implied negative relationship between excess demand for certified teachers and the share of minority students is likely to be important for teacher quality

do alternative opportunities matter the role of female labor markets in the decline of teacher quality abstract this paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented using standardized test scores undergraduate institution selectivity and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality in contrast the quality of young women becoming professionals increased the roy model of self selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality

wages and recruitment evidence from external wage changes in this article the author estimates the causal effect of the wage level on the recruitment rate in establishments during the 1990s the wage setting for certified teachers in norway was completely centralized with a state paid wage premium of about 10 at some schools with severe recruitment problems the empirical approach exploits within school variation in wage premium eligibility and that actual teacher supply is empirically observed at schools with excess demand for teachers in a difference in differences framework the wage premium increases the recruitment rate by 6 to 7 percentage points this finding is robust to model specification and indicates that the recruitment elasticity to the wage is equal to the separation elasticity in absolute terms the implied short run labor supply elasticity for individual establishments is about 1 4 it is also evidence of a diminishing return to scale in recruitment activity a central assumption in search theoretic models of imperfect competition in the la

homeownership in the 1980s and 1990s aggregate trends and racial gaps abstract housing policy under the clinton and bush administrations has sought to boost homeownership while also narrowing racial gaps in owner occupancy rates against that backdrop homeownership rose sharply in the 1990s but white minority gaps remain in excess of 25 percentage points we analyze these patterns using data from the 1983 to 2001 survey of consumer finances results indicate that household characteristics explain most of the increase in homeownership and roughly two thirds of the white minority homeownership gap credit barriers account for no more than 5 percentage points of the remaining gap this suggests that policy makers will need to look beyond innovations in mortgage finance if their goal is to further expand homeownership

the decline of the immigrant home ownership advantage life cycle declining fortunes and changing housing careers in montreal toronto and vancouver 1981 2001 in the past working age immigrant families in canada s large urban centres had higher home ownership rates than the canadian born over the past 20 years however this advantage has reversed due jointly to a drop in immigrant rates and a rise in the popularity of home ownership among the canadian born this paper assesses the efficacy of a fairly standard microeconomic consumer choice model which includes indicators for age income education family type and immigrant characteristics plus several interactions with time to explain these changes it is found that the standard model almost completely explains the immigrant homeownership advantage in 1981 as well as the rise in home ownership rates over time among the canadian born even after accounting for the well known decline in immigrant economic fortunes however it is shown that only about half of the 1981 2001 immigrant change in homeownership rates is explained by the standard model

is there monopsony in the labor market evidence from a natural experiment recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market however there is little direct empirical support for these models we use an exogenous change in wages at department of veterans affairs va hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market we estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic with short run elasticity around 0 1 we also find that non va hospitals responded to the va wage change by changing their own wages

differences in labor supply to monopsonistic firms and the gender pay gap an empirical analysis using linked employer employee data from germany this article investigates women s and men s labor supply to the firm within a semistructural approach based on a dynamic model of new monopsony using methods of survival analysis and a large linked employer employee data set for germany we find that labor supply elasticities are small 1 9 3 7 and that women s labor supply to the firm is less elastic than men s which is the reverse of gender differences in labor supply usually found at the level of the market our results imply that at least one third of the gender pay gap might be wage discrimination by profit maximizing monopsonistic employers

household tenure choice and migration abstract a model of the joint tenure choice and migration decision is estimated unlike previous work that has considered each decision separately or examined the premigration tenure status choice jointly with the migration decision this analysis addresses change in tenure status as well the empirical findings indicate that variables often thought to affect either or both tenure status of the residence location change decision have offsetting or augmenting effects on their joint probabilities which are masked if the decisions are examined independently

strengthening state capabilities the role of financial incentives in the call to public service we study a recent recruitment drive for public sector positions in mexico different salaries were announced randomly across recruitment sites and job offers were subsequently randomized screening relied on exams designed to measure applicants intellectual ability personality and motivation this allows the first experimental estimates of i the role of financial incentives in attracting a larger and more qualified pool of applicants ii the elasticity of the labor supply facing the employer and iii the role of job attributes distance attractiveness of the municipal environment in helping fill vacancies as well as the role of wages in helping fill positions in less attractive municipalities a theoretical model guides each stage of the empirical inquiry we find that higher wages attract more able applicants as measured by their iq personality and proclivity towards public sector work i e we find no evidence of adverse selection effects on motivation higher wage offers also increased acceptance rates implying a labor supply elasticity of around 2 and some degree of monopsony power distance and worse municipal characteristics strongly decrease acceptance rates but higher wages help bridge the recruitment gap in worse municipalities

a dynamic model of teacher labor supply the labor supply decisions of certified elementary and high school teachers are examined using data from a general longitudinal survey a significant decrease in the teaching participation rate tak

the influence of classroom characteristics on high school teacher turnover i introduction a number of authors have suggested that the u s will face a shortage of qualified teachers in the near future especially in the areas of math and science 1 school districts facing such a shortage could respond in a variety of ways for instance hiring standards could be lowered teachers could be asked to teach outside their areas of certification or funds permitting starting salaries could be increased in an effort to attract the most promising candidates still another option would be to raise teaching loads i e average class size or the number of classes taught thus making do with fewer teachers this option is particularly alluring in light of the fact that average class size has been falling rapidly in the u s over the last twenty years and yet no strong connection between smaller classes and increased student learning has been established 2 there is however a possible hidden cost that needs to be investigated before recommending such a course of action if teachers respond to larger or more frequent classes by quitting then a district that tries to solve its hiring problems in this fashion could simply be increasing its demand for new teachers this paper uses data from the new york state education department s personnel master file for the years 1979 to 1989 in order to investigate whether an increased teaching load affects the likelihood that a teacher will leave his or her district in order to obtain an unbiased sample of job lengths the sample is restricted to full time high school teachers who were newly hired in 1979 3 we estimate a discrete time hazard model in which teaching load is measured as the average class size taught by an individual the number of classes taught and the proportion of classes taught in the teacher s certified area in interpreting our results we pay special attention to whether the behavior of math and science teachers differs from that of other teachers this is an important issue because shortages of qualified teachers in these two areas are predicted to be especially acute ii background the market for teachers differs from a well functioning neoclassical labor market in that salaries are determined through a political process involving various levels of government the public and often teachers unions 4 if the demand for teachers increases as retirements and student enrollment increase then starting salaries cannot be counted on to quickly move to the market clearing level and thus a shortage of teachers becomes a possibility 5 few observers however believe that there will be an actual shortage of warm bodies the more likely scenario is that there will be a lack of teachers trained in specific areas and of high quality teachers in general see murnane et al 1991 1 2 given a limited budget what are the options available to a school district facing this type of shortage the district could settle for hiring lower quality teachers but this might be seen as an unnecessary measure with long term implications taken in response to what could be a temporary situation another option that has been suggested is to increase teacher workloads 6 whether this option is workable depends in part on the exit decisions of teachers a large number of empirical studies have investigated the determinants of teacher turnover however no work specifically directed toward capturing the effect of increased teaching responsibilities on turnover has been done 7 without knowing whether such an effect exists and what the magnitude of it might be informed policy decisions at the district level in response to a shortage of qualified teachers becomes impossible past studies have shown that the probability of a teacher leaving his or her job is high in the first few years after entering the profession falls after the third year 8 and again increases as the teacher nears retirement age murnane et al

risk based pricing and the enhancement of mortgage credit availability among underserved and higher credit risk populations this paper estimates an option based hazard model of the competing risks of fha mortgage termination results indicate that the elevated default risks of loans originated among lower credit quality and minority borrowers are more than offset by the damped prepayment speeds of those loans so as to result in markedly lower loan termination probabilities among underserved borrower groups those damped termination risks translate into sizable reductions in risk premia to investors in simulated lower creditquality mortgage pools empirical findings suggest that such pooling and risk based pricing of fha insured mortgages could serve to substantially reduce housing finance costs among underserved borrowers so as to advance both their homeownership opportunities and related federal housing policy objectives

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

why are hispanic and asian american homeownership rates so low immigration and other factors abstract the homeownership rates of hispanic and asian american households are significantly less than that of other demographic groups in the us especially after accounting for income and other characteristics this naturally leads to an investigation of the impact of immigration characteristics of various groups on the propensity for homeownership it is found that being an immigrant has a substantial negative effect on the probability of being a homeowner but that this effect dissipates over time the relative youth of these two groups in and of itself plays a significant role in lowering their homeownership rate as does the relatively high rate of residence in areas with high value rent ratios

employment determination in a unionized public sector labor market the case of ontario s school teachers a standard efficient contracts model of employment determination in a unionized labor market is contrasted with a naive model of labor supply and demand that allows for the possibility of monopsony in the market for public school teachers the standard model is consistent with the data and suggests that employment contracts are strongly efficient but a more surprising result is that the simple supply demand model is not rejected by the data either estimates of the latter suggest that the demand for teachers is inelastic and that the supply curve is slightly upward sloping rather than perfectly elastic at the union wage

measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits caught in the act a survey technique called a fair housing audit provides a direct measure of racial discrimination in housing this paper examines the econometric issues raised by audit data measures the discrimination uncovered by a 1981 boston study and tests hypotheses about the causes of discrimination the estimated level of discrimination is high black housing seekers are told about 30 percent fewer available housing units than are whites the hypothesis tests indicate that the primary cause of this discrimination is that housing agents illegally promote their economic interests by catering to the racial prejudice of their current or potential white customers

teacher mobility responses to wage changes evidence from a quasi natural experiment low mobility responses to wage changes imply rents associated with existing employment relationships for example continued employment after a wage cut all else equal reflects rents in the hand of the worker at the outset and symmetrically voluntary quits after a

new market power models and sex differences in pay in the context of certain models it is possible to infer the elasticity of labor supply to the firm from the elasticity of the quit rate with respect to the wage we use this strategy to estimate the elasticity of labor supply for men and women workers at a chain of grocery stores identifying separation elasticities from differences in wages and separation rates across different job titles within the firm we estimate that women have lower elasticities so a robinson style monopsony model can explain reasonably well the lower relative pay of women in the retail grocery industry