nonparametric bounds on the returns to language skills this paper applies the theoretical literature on nonparametric bounds on treatment effects to the estimation of how limited english proficiency lep affects wages and employment opportunities for hispanic workers in the united states i analyse the identifying power of several weak assumptions on treatment response and selection and stress the interactions between lep and education occupation and immigration status i show that the combination of two weak but credible assumptions provides informative upper bounds on the returns to language skills for certain subgroups of the population adding age at arrival as a monotone instrumental variable also provides informative lower bounds copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

property market efficiency an institutional economics perspective this paper reassesses the debate around property market efficiency and introduces an institutional perspective it considers property market efficiency in terms of the specific characteristics of property itself and the processes through which property is used and traded it argues that the institutional dimension fundamentally alters the concept of efficiency and leads to a partial and contingent judgement on achieved efficiency instead of seeking a judgement on whether the property market as an entity is efficient the institutional approach allows the possibility that property market process may be efficient for some market participants but not for others it also introduces a time dimension suggesting the need to assess the adaptability of property market process as economic and social conditions change

housing finance and urban infrastructure finance financing issues received major attention in the discussions of human settlement development policy through the preparatory process for habitat ii and at the conference itself this paper presents

urban bias the political economy of development and urban policies for developing countries theories of urban overdevelopment and urban bias have a long but discontinuous history dating from the 1920s when policy makers in the former soviet union considered urban rural sectoral balanc

racial disparities in job finding and offered wages abstractthe extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive issues in the social sciences using a newly available data set this paper develops a simple empirical test that under plausible but not innocuous conditions provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market taken at face value our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black white wage gap we argue that the patterns in our data are most naturally rationalized through a search matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers but learn about their marginal product over time

the value of squatter dwellings in developing countries the value of squatter dwellings for a sample in the philippines is estimated and the statistical relationship between value and housing characteristics is described the results of a survey approach indicate that while the discrepancies in the estimates are quite large for individual properties they are offset by using sufficiently large samples in addition when two estimates are highly correlated with one another they yield similar results when they are used as dependent variables in a hedonic price equation methodological considerations aside the determinants of the value of squatter dwellings tend to be similar to those of conventional formal sector dwellings the external appearance and quality of materials used in construction are among the most important variables water and sanitary facilities may not be valued as much as expected age may be positively correlated with value because housing services are improved more gradually in squatter communities and because longevity in a particular area is a sign of reduced risk overall squatter housing markets appear to behave as economically rational entities that valuate dwelling units similarly to conventional markets

gender wage differentials and discrimination in the new south africa research into discrimination within south africa sa has focused on racial issues with gender issues being largely ignored this study aims to estimate gender wage differentials and through decomposition analysis understand the different problems faced by white black coloured and indian asian in 1995 it is found that white and asian females suffer greater gender discrimination than their black and coloured counterparts which could be a signal to future problems black and coloured females may encounter the largest gender wage differential is faced by white females whilst the lowest is encountered by coloured and black females a possible explanation for this finding is the low subsistence wages that the black and coloured population groups command relative to other population groups

socialist cities without land markets abstract how does the spatial dynamics of the socialist city compare with that of the market city what happens when all investment decisions are made administratively in the absence of land markets russian development is the longest socialist experiment on record its outcome is of paramount interest to urban economists this paper reports the first analysis of the structure of russian cities after 70 years of soviet development the main finding is a perversely positive population density gradient the soviet city also has a disproportionate share of industrial land often in prime locations free property trading started in russia in 1992 the emerging negative price gradient contrasts totally with the positive population gradient that is the legacy of administrative land allocation these two conflicting gradients highlight the land misallocation and inefficiency of the socialist city

the economics of development a survey i the subject our definition of the subject will be the use of economic analysis to understand the economies of poor or developing countries this includes in particular how standards of living in the population are determined and how they change over time and further how policy can or should be used in the influence of these processes the definition contains in principle much or most of analytical methods in economics insofar as they can be put to use in the examination of the issues of interest this is as it should be but it poses a problem for a survey in a journal a comprehensive treatment is infeasible so we shall follow a different route the survey will focus on what i take to be the major themes and approaches which characterise the productive aspects of the subject there is therefore no pretence at being exhaustive the purpose is rather to highlight some of the advances many of these have been of real substance there are a number of possible purposes for a survey and it is important to be clear at the outset for whom it is intended what it is and what it is not this survey is addressed to economists and students of economics who know the tools of their trade but not necessarily how they have been applied to and fashioned for the analysis of the economics of developing countries it is a description of the ways in which problems can be productively formulated and approached in terms of examples chosen for their intrinsic importance and interest the vastness of the subject means that we have to be highly selective it does not seek to provide a summary evaluation of the current view of the appropriate response to immediate policy questions it is not a history of thought nor a research manifesto nor an attempt to adjudicate or settle the major debates where they arise naturally from the major purpose some judgements on these subjects will be offered but they do not themselves constitute the primary intent of this survey there are three lines of enquiry or sets of questions which have i suggest been distinctive of the most fruitful work in development economics they will

welfare payments and other economic determinants of female migration this article investigates the effects of welfare payments wages and unemployment on women s probability of interstate migration in the united states it also investigates if the income attraction of locations varies with recency of labor market experience welfare gains increase the probability of interstate migration welfare effects are largest for single mothers with small children and stronger among women with no recent labor market experience the welfare effects albeit small are larger than the wage effects the wage effects are weaker among women with no recent work experience ethnic specific analyses suggest differences in migration behavior among anglos african americans and puerto ricans

london and property markets a long term view this paper examines the relationship between investment in built structures economic growth and economic cycles in the uk from the middle of the 19th century and relates its findings to the development of london a rising price of built structures relative to investment in equipment has existed throughout virtually all of the time period this it is argued has encouraged suburbanisation in addition a long term rise in demand for housing is putting additional pressure on living space in the city london has benefited however from the high level of building investment in modern economies particularly in attracting key building intensive activities like financial services long phases of building activity are shown in the data and they are argued to have a destabilising effect on london s economic growth these relationships between the relative price of investment goods long phases of higher and lower activity in their provision and the london economy reinforce the need for a london wide planning a

financing housing in developing countries a review of the pitfalls and potentials in the development of formal housing finance systems effectively addressing the existing and continuously growing enormous demands and needs for shelter depends critically on the availability of long term housing finance on a fairly large and sustain

labour market discrimination are there significant differences between the various decomposition procedures economists have usually called the proportion of the average wage gap between two groups which could not be explained by individual characteristics discrimination recently several theories have suggested that labour market discrimination on the one hand lowers the wages of the minority group and on the other leads to higher pay for the majority group in a recent survey of the various methods used to decompose the overall wage differential between two groups oaxaca and ransom compared five approaches in the contexts of race and gender discrimination this paper checks whether there are significant differences between the various decomposition procedures which have appeared in the literature the tests are based on bootstrap techniques

occupational segregation and selectivity bias in occupational wage equations an empirical analysis using irish data the gender wage effects of occupational segregation are assessed within the framework of occupational attachment and wage equations this paper exploits the modified index number approach suggested by brown et al 1980 and used recently by miller 1987 however neither of these papers allowed for the potential effects of selectivity bias in occupational wage equations in this study selectivity bias is corrected for using the method outlined in lee 1983 this allows for the effects of occupational selectivity buas on the gender wage gap to be assessed the findings for this sample of young lrish workers suggest that the greater part of the female wage disadvantage lies in intraoccupational wage differences furthermore selectivity bias is found to be important for a number of occupational categories

a decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban china 2002 2013 abstract labor market discrimination is an important issue in developing countries where path dependent institutions have been dominant while effective institutional arrangements and policies have been hidden by local customs and culture however the existing applications of classical blinder oaxaca decomposition face criticism for their imprecise understanding of the factors affecting institutional discrimination in labor markets as well as for their lack of power in formulating well targeted anti discrimination policies following oaxaca 1973 we propose a new method to decompose the total discrimination index tdi to analyze employment and wage discrimination in the labor markets of developing countries the tdi is decomposed into the employment discrimination index edi and the wage discrimination index wdi then into the underpayment index to majorities upi and the overpayment index to minorities opi we apply this method to the institutional discrimination against rural migrants in china s urban areas using national representative data from 2002 to 2013 we have found that 1 the tdi increased quickly after china entered the wto then dropped after anti discrimination policies were implemented 2 the tdi is mainly determined by the upi while the tdi s fluctuation is mainly determined by the wdi our method provides insights into the changing composition of employment and wage discrimination and their respective labor market outcomes in developing countries as a result appropriate policy measures may be developed accordingly

cross national price differences for pharmaceuticals how large and why bilateral drug price and quantity indexes based on comprehensive data for seven countries us canada france germany italy japan and the uk refute the conventional wisdom that us drug prices are much higher than elsewhere for laspeyres us weighted indexes previous drug price comparisons are biased by unrepresentative samples and unweighted indexes quasi hedonic regression shows that cross national price differences reflect differences in product characteristics and in their implicit prices which reflect the regulatory regime strict price regulation systematically lowers prices for older molecules and globally diffused molecules generic competition lowers prices in less regulated regimes which also have more price elastic demand

racial disparities in life insurance coverage we evaluate the extent to which there are racial disparities in life insurance coverage using multiple years of the survey of income and program participation between 2001 and 2010 we find that african americans hold significantly more life insurance after controlling for other factors especially employer sponsored and whole life insurance we demonstrate that our findings diverge from prior work because we examine all households instead of focusing exclusively on married and cohabitating households the findings on life insurance coverage and composition imply that earnings shocks due to mortality are not a contributing factor to racial disparities in wealth

native immigrant wage differentials and occupational segregation in the greek labour market this article explores native immigrant wage differentials in the greek labour market data from the most recent greek household budget survey 2004 05 were employed four alternative occupational categories were considered and occupational choice was explicitly modelled controlling for occupational selectivity occupation specific wage regressions for representative samples of employed native and immigrant workers were estimated and an augmented decomposition technique was utilized to analyse inter and intra occupation wage differentials the obtained results demonstrate that roughly 48 of the average wage differential cannot be explained by differences in observed characteristics and that the larger component of this unexplained part is due to asymmetrical occupational access by native and immigrant workers

a meta analysis of the international gender wage gap abstract since the early 1970s a number of authors have calculated gender wage differentials between women and men of equal productivity this meta study provides a new quantitative review of this vast amount of empirical literature on gender wage differentials as it concerns not only differences in methodology data and time periods but also different countries we place particular emphasis on a proper consideration of the quality of the underlying study which is done by a weighting with quality indicators the results show that data restrictions i e the limitation of the analysis to new entrants never marrieds or one narrow occupation only have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap moreover we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying wage equation like the frequent use of potential experience has on the calculated gender wage gap over time raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen substantially however most of this decrease is due to better labor market endowments of females

wage discrimination occupational segregation and visible minorities in canada the earnings gap between each of whites asians and blacks is decomposed into the effects on earnings of productivity related characteristics wage discrimination and occupational segregation unlike previous canadian studies this paper analyses the relative economic position of both immigrant and native born visible minorities and explicitly incorporates the effect of discrimination in occupational attainment on the earnings gap the results indicate that policies aimed at increasing the ethnic representation across occupational categories would be effective only for black men anti discrimination legislation aimed at decreasing the earnings gap between visible minority and white women should have a dual focus they should aim at reducing the inter occupational wage discrimination they should provide training programs to extend the career ladders confronting ethnic minority women

land tenure issues in economic development land property and construction are reckoned to account for around 20 per cent of the gross domestic product of many nations the relationship between people and the land is complex and differs between nations depending on their history culture and legal system many countries especially those in transition from command to market driven economies are re engineering their cadastral and land registration systems in order to provide cheaper faster and more secure ways of transacting land this paper focuses on the importance of land tenure arrangements and the need to manage information about land and property in support of land markets and sustainable development

institutions in british property research a review this paper surveys approaches to the study of institutions as used in recent commercial property research in britain institutional analysis can be approached from mainstream economics power str

wage discrimination against handicapped men and women the extent of discrimination against handicapped men and women is estimated in this paper observed wage differentials are corrected for selectivity bias the results indicate that almost one third of the wage differential for men and close to one half for women can be attributed to discrimination interestingly handicapped women are also subjected to sex discrimination

panel estimates of the earnings gap in norway do female immigrants experience a double earnings penalty this study explores the possibility that being both a female and an immigrant will impose an earnings disadvantage on immigrant women in norway well known techniques are used to decompose the earnings gap between norwegian men and immigrant women into portions attributable to productivity differentials portions attributable to a gender effect and portions attributable to an ethnic effect the analysis supports the following conclusions first there is evidence of a double negative effect on female immigrant earnings second gender effect is more important than ethnic effect finally the discrimination estimates are robust to the alternative methods used in decomposing norwegian men immigrant women earnings gap

recent trends in white black earnings differentials abstract this paper tracks white black earnings differentials between 1967 and 1986 using panel data separate estimates are computed for males and females corrections for selectivity bias have been made and neumark s modified version of the oaxaca procedure is used to derive estimates of the earnings gap the finding of secular decline in the white black earnings gap is re established

immigrants minorities and labor market competition this paper investigates the extent of labor market competition among immigrants minorities and the native population an analysis of 1980 u s census data reveals that immigrants tend to be substitutes for some labor market groups and complements for others the effects of shifts in immigrant supply on the earnings of native born men are however very small on the other hand increases in the supply of immigrants do have a sizable impact on the earnings of immigrants themselves an increase of 10 percent in the supply of immigrants for example reduces the immigrant wage by about 10 percent

male white black wage gaps 1979 1994 a distributional analysis 1 introductionnumerous studies show that during the 1980s the mean white black wage gap among new entrant 0 10 years of potential experience males expanded 1 juhn murphy and pierce 1991 jmp attribute the mean gap s expansion to a widening of the overall u s wage distribution caused by a host of economy wide race neutral changes that led to labor demand shifts toward better educated and better skilled workers regardless of race because african americans tend to be at lower levels of the overall skill distribution the shifts adversely impacted african american men more than white men leading to an expansion in the mean wage gap to arrive at this conclusion jmp decompose the expansion in the mean new entrant wage gap into four components the first two components measure the wage gap s increase because of a widening in observable racial differences in measured characteristics and their prices for example educational attainment and the returns to education the third component captures the contribution of growing racial discrimination and widening differences in unmeasured skills to the wage gap s expansion this term s contribution is measured by the drop in the mean percentile rank of blacks in the white residual wage distribution the fourth component identifies the role of increases in the prices of unmeasured skills and is measured by the increase in the variance of the white residual wage distribution when applied to the march annual demographic files of the current population survey jmp find that from 1979 to 1987 increases in the price of unmeasured skills explain all of the new entrant mean wage gap s expansion indicating that factors that adversely impacted less skilled workers regardless of race are the primary cause of the wage gap s expansion in related work reardon 1997 uses a national sample of white and african american men from the 1980 and 1990 decennial censuses and shows that the mean racial wage gap s expansion is caused by increased variance in the distribution of residual wages generated by labor demand shifts toward high skilled whites and away from medium skilled whites and high skilled african american men the wage gap expands because high skilled african american men earn wages that are similar to those of whites in the middle and upper third of their wage distribution the labor demand shifts led to a stretching or increased variance in the wage distribution that favored high skilled whites relative to high skilled african americans and medium skilled whites this paper makes several contributions to the literature on racial wage gaps and the technical literature on wage decompositions first i examine whether jmp s 1991 results hold up when the analysis is disaggregated by experience and educational attainment this is an important extension for two reasons bound and freeman 1992 rodgers 1997a and others have found that the racial wage gap among high school graduates and particularly among college graduates expanded significantly after the late 1970s over the same time period the variance of wages within these educational categories increased second it is important to determine the extent to which racial inequality that was generated while a cohort was a new entrant persists as it ages the paper s technical innovation is the development of a distribution or skill specific decomposition that identifies whether the stretching of the white wage distribution uniformly contributes to an expansion in racial inequality at all skill levels or quantiles of the wage distribution or whether the contribution of the wage distribution s stretching is specific to a skill level for example does the increase in the price of unmeasured skills explain a greater portion of the increase in the racial wage gap between high skilled african americans and whites than it does between medium skilled african americans and whites

urban regeneration and the development industry healey p 1991 urban regeneration and the development industry reg studies 25 97 108 this paper examines a key assumption of urban policy in britain in the 1980s this assumption is that urba

the gap between male and female pay in the spanish tourism industry abstract this paper analyzes wage differentials between male and female workers in the spanish tourism industry using a large administratively matched employer employee data set obtained from a representative sample of companies this allows us to control for unobserved firm specific factors likely to affect the magnitude of the gender wage gap our findings indicate that male workers earn on average 6 7 higher monthly wages than their socially comparable female counterparts in particular the type of contract held the qualifications required for the job and the specific sub sector of employment are very important variables in explaining this gender wage difference we also find that only around 12 of the mean wage difference in the tourism industry cannot be explained by differences in observable characteristics which is well below the average for the rest of the industries in spain 87 our interpretation is that minimum wage legislation provides a particularly effective protection to women in the tourism industry which is characterized by a large number of low wage earners

industrial restructuring and regional household income growth negrey c zickel m b and fenn j m 1998 industrial restructuring and regional household income growth reg studies 32 103 111 in this study industry and place intersect in a systematic examination of the effects of industrial restructuring on men s and women s personal income and married couple and female headed household income we analyse income trends from 1969 89 in relationship to shifts in employment in manufacturing finance insurance and real estate wholesale and retail trade and services in 140 us metropolitan areas grouped into six types improvements in women s income appear to have offset men s losses in all six area types given increases in average median married couple household income in each area type during the 20 year period our most provocative finding is the average decrease in median female headed household income in the 19 classic deindustrializing centres while female headed household income actually increased on average in the five other area types this finding ha

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

the employer size wage gap evidence for britain university of edinburgh and university of sussexfinal version received 5 may 1992 this paper presents estimates for the employer plant size wage gap for britain using anordered probit model selectivity corrected wage equations are estimated for three plant sizecategories in a comparison between plants with more than 500 workers and those with lessthan 100 a wage gap estimate of over 17 per cent is detected the wage effects of unionizationin plants with more than 500 workers is reported as insignificant in contrast to evidenceprovided by idson and feaster 1990 for the united states no evidence of non randomsorting of workers across plant size is detected

the present state of institutional economics after articulating the institutionalist paradigm and its principal facets the article examines the present status converging interests and possible future of institutional economics emphasis is on related schools of thought and especially european and other developments along evolutionary and holistic lines of analysis and on a new generation of u s and especially european authors among more specific themes are the importance of power technology social change social control organizations and institutions in governing economic performance the work of european authors is expected to become increasingly important owing to their concern with subject matter and policy issues rather than sectarian questions c 1995 academic press ltd copyright 1995 by oxford university press

territorial competition and property market process an exploratory analysis this paper argues that the emerging research on territorial competition should be supplemented by an explicit consideration of the role of real property and property market process in shaping urb

informal urban property markets and poverty alleviation a conceptual framework in the context of increasing urbanisation growth of informal settlements and the urbanisation of poverty this article suggests a conceptual framework to link urban informal property markets and p

measuring the gender wage gap a methodological note we propose to estimate the blinder oaxaca decomposition by a single equation model augmented with interactions between the group membership and other predictors the relative importance of predicto

wage determination of registered nurses in proprietary and nonprofit nursing homes this study explores why registered nurses employed in nonprofit nursing homes earn higher wages than those employed in proprietary facilities previous studies have explained this finding in a property rights context where higher wages were posited to result from the weaker incentives for cost minimization accompanying nonprofit status this paper tests an alternative explanation of sectoral wage differences which is predicated on the reason for the coexistence offor profit and nonprofit firms in a given industry informational constraints concerning the quality of care are posited to cause the long term health care market to fail to provide care at the upper levels of a quality of care continuum nonprofits are viewed as a response to this form of market failure acting to fulfill customers demand for higher quality and higher cost long term care with attendant demand for higher quality nurses than in for profit homes both the observed sectoral pattern in selectivity and wage decompositions based on selectivity corrected wage regressions call into question the property right explanation yet are consistent with an asymmetric information explanation

the effects of competition and equal treatment laws on gender wage differentials discrimination if it is inefficient can be eliminated by competition in most countries it is also forbidden by law this paper evaluates the influence of economic and legal factors on the portion of male female wage differentials that is not explained by other worker characteristics and may be due to discrimination we use a new international data set of suitable gender wage gap measures constructed from the results of existing studies meta analysis of the data shows that increased competition and adoption of international conventions concerning equal treatment laws both reduce gender wage gaps while legislation that prevents women from performing strenuous or dangerous jobs tends to increase it doris weichselbaumer and rudolf winter ebmer

analysis of urban land shortages the case of korean cities both natural constraints and government regulations on urban land use can cause urban land shortages and hence higher prices of urban land and housing than otherwise there have been attempts to investigate the differential effects of natural and contrived restrictions on land price for w x example rose 10 found that natural constraints have a significant positive impact on land value while monopoly zoning power makes a smaller contribution in explaining inter city variations in urban land price w x on the other hand pollakowski and wachter 8 analyzed the impact of land use controls measured by an index of restrictiveness of zoning and confirmed that land use regulations raise the prices of housing and developed land to the best knowledge of the authors however none of the published empirical studies including the two cited above actually measure the amount of shortage of urban land at the city level instead land supply variables are employed together with demand variables such as income and population size to determine their impact on land or housing prices this study seeks to fill the gap in the literature first by developing a measure of the urban land shortagersurplus from an analysis of land price

asymmetric labor market reforms effects on wage growth and conversion probability of fixed term contracts the authors investigate the impact of a change in employment protection laws in portugal that increased the maximum legal duration of fixed term contracts they find that this reform led to a reduction in the probability that a worker on a fixed term contract would be converted to a permanent contract in addition those workers who had their contracts converted experienced a significantly higher hourly wage growth at the time of conversion and faced a lower reduction in wage growth during the years in which the changed legislation was in force consequently the implementation of this law led to a 27 increase in the wage growth differential between the two contracts the findings are based on an endogenous regime switching model using rich administrative linked employer employee data

a distributional analysis of the gender wage gap in bangladesh this article empirically investigates the gender wage gap in bangladesh during the period 2005 2009 applying unconditional quantile regression models the article demonstrates that women are paid less than men throughout the wage distribution and the gap is higher at the lower end of the distribution discrimination against women is the primary determinant of the wage gap the article also demonstrates that the observed gender wage gap is likely to be underestimated if we ignore selection in full time employment a number of policy implications are discussed

the political economy of korean government policies on real estate this paper investigates the driving forces behind the korean government s real estate policy decision making in particular it tries to explain why inefficient and inequitable policies have persisted for so long and why policy reform has been so sluggish in order to do this a few key regulations governing housing supply and land use are described and evaluated these are the price control on new apartments control on land use conversion green belts and spatial deconcentration policies next it is demonstrated that the standard economic theory of interest group politics is not appropriate in explaining the behaviour of the government officials in charge of these regulations it is then suggested that a piecemeal and lukewarm approach to policy reform could be better understood in light of the behaviour of risk averse government officials taking the political ramifications of their decisions very seriously

labor market discrimination against men with disabilities in the year of the ada the americans with disabilities act ada provides civil rights protections to persons with disabilities but the debate that preceded passage of the act was not based on empirical estimates that could be used to measure its performance this article estimates the extent of wage discrimination against men with disabilities in 1990 providing a reference that can be used to evaluate the impact of the ada the results show large productivity standardized wage differentials between disabled and nondisabled men that are weakly correlated with the strength of prejudice against different impairments physical limitations explain part but not all of the wage differentials the results also show that low employment rates are a more serious problem than wage discrimination for workers with disabilities provide civil rights protections to persons with disabilities the act s supporters promised that it would increase the employment and wages of persons with disabilities and reduce their dependency on public programs the promises were not based on empirical estimates of discrimination and there is no empirical base against which to compare the promises to the performance of the ada this article estimates the extent of wage discrimination against men with disabilities in 1990 providing a reference that can be used to evaluate the impact of the act the ada does not grant a right to employment to all persons with disabilities it requires that persons with disabilities be able to perform the jobs they seek subject to reasonable accommodations by employers this article therefore considers men who are able to work even though their health limits the amount or kind of work they can perform the ada s provisions assume that low wages and low employment rates for persons with disabilities are the result of discrimination caused by prejudice prejudice against persons with disabilities is well documented but so are the limiting effects of physical impairments on workplace productivity hahn 1987 margolis and shapiro 1987 clogston 1990 the core of the debate concerning the value of the ada is whether the poor labor market outcomes of persons with disabilities are the result of discrimination or the limiting effects of health con

household production in the philippines a non neoclassical approach the starting point of any economic analysis is a microeconomic theory of the decision making unit by providing a set of explicit assumptions regarding individual choices a microeconomic theory lays the necessary foundation for the explanation of economic behavior just as a theory of the firm underlies analyses of market production a theory of the family underlies analyses of household production explanations of long run trends such as fertility decline grow out of assumptions regarding the nature of household decision making developing what they term the economic approach to human behavior gary becker and other neoclassical economists forcefully argue that household behavior is motivated primarily by a collective concern for economic efficiency they assume that households seek to maximize exogenously given joint utility functions and they hypothesize that differences in household behavior represent efficient responses to differences in the prices and incomes which households face this approach provides the foundation for an explanation of fertility decline based on long run changes in relative prices associated with economic development simply stated the argument runs as follows as the rate of return to human capital rises and levels of education increase the cost of rearing children goes up as higher wages draw women out of the household into the labor force the opportunity cost of mothers time goes up further increasing the cost of children the demand for children decreases and fertility levels gradually adjust 2 the assumption that joint utility functions are exogenous constant over time and vary randomly if at all across households is crucial to this argument systematic differences in unobservable joint utility functions could seriously confound the interpretation of observed relationships between changes in household behavior and changes in rela

examining for evidence of the leapfrog effect in the context of strict agricultural zoning while strict agricultural zoning policies or greenbelts are implemented to reduce urban sprawl such policies may result in the leapfrog effect which could cause sprawl to extend further this paper outlines a theoretical explanation for the occurrence of the leapfrog effect due to developent restrictions imposed by agricultural zoning this theory is then applied empirically to a setting where agricultural zoning has been implemented ontario s greenbelt the results provide evidence that the leapfrog effect has occurred around the greenbelt as farmland values just beyond the outer boundary have increased extensive sensitivity analysis supports this result jel q15 r52

industrial restructuring gender segregation and sex differences in earnings men s and women s 1979 earnings are examined within a framework of the structural transformation of employment and the gender composition of jobs during the 1970s tests for interaction between structural change and gender composition reveal that industrial restructuring translates into different job opportunities for men and women which in turn differentiate their economic rewards both men and women benefited from the effects of industrial shifts and intraindustry occupational restructuring but men benefited more from the entry of women into traditionally male dominated occupations than did woman apparently the industrial transformation of employment accompanies a process which redefines gender boundaries so that job sex segregation persists as a feature of the employment structure

gender differences in observed and offered wages in canada 1980 according to the 1981 census of canada the female rate of pay is 30 percent less than the male rate the average female wage offer however is only around one half of that received by males other things being equal slightly more than one half of the difference in observed wages can be explained by diffe rences in wage related characteristics between males and females two fifths of the disparity between wage offers can be explained by the same set of factors analysis of the distribution of wage offers indicates greater wage inequality in the canadian labor market than suggested by study of observed wages

the effectiveness of private versus public schools the case of indonesia abstract in most developing countries education is largely publicly provided however the scarcity of public funds and recent evidence of public school inefficiency calls for an examination of the dominant role of the state in this paper we use data from indonesia to examine the effectiveness of public versus private schools we use labor market earnings as our measure of effectiveness controlling for observable personal characteristics and school selection we find that graduates of private secondary schools perform better in the labor market this is contrary to the widely held belief in indonesia that public secondary schools are superior our findings coupled with the existing literature on private school cognitive and cost advantages suggest the need for greater private participation in the education sector

can an islamic model of housing finance cooperative elevate the economic status of the underprivileged abstract a formal home loan is onerous to subprime borrowers in efficient markets this can deter home ownership for financially strapped individuals leading to a market failure this paper proposes a special form of cooperative mortgage financing practiced in oman to overcome this market failure we integrate the literature of mortgage design with that of informal savings schemes i e roscas ascras to illustrate that this mode of financing dissipates credit risk better than the

the endogeneity of union status an empirical test an unsettled issue in the literature relating to the relative wage effect of unions is the appropriate treatment of union status in a wage determination model in the context of a three equation model determining union membership and union and nonunion sector wage rates this paper presents an instrumental variables iv procedure for estimating the parameters of the wage equations and a test of the exogeneity of union status using the hausman specification test an advantage of our iv procedure in comparison to the widely used inverse mill s ratio procedure is that our procedure is a distribution free estimator whereas the inverse mill s ratio estimator hinges in the assumption that the error term of the choice equation is normally distributed using data for a sample of middle aged white workers we estimate the parameters of the union and nonunion wage equations with both procedures on the key question of the endogeneity of union status the hausman test decisively rejects the null hypothesis of exo

labor market discrimination against hispanic and black men h ispanic american men have lower average wage rates than white non hispanics in 1975 the average white non hispanic male wage earner in the united states earned 5 97 an hour mexican men earned 4 31 72 as much as white non hispanics puerto rican men earned 4 52 76 as much and cuban men earned 5 33 89 as much as white non hispanics by way of comparison black men s average wages in 1975 were 4 65 78 of the white male wage several possible reasons for the hispanics lower wages come to mind among them are age and education geographic location immigration language difficulties and discrimination for example as shown in table 1 mexicans and puerto ricans are younger on average than the white non hispanic population and earnings tend to rise with age hispanics have lower average levels of education than white non hispanics and wages are positively associated with education many mexican americans live in the southwest where prices are relatively low moreover hispanics are more likely to be recent immigrants and to lack fluency in english than white non hispanics and so to be at a disadvantage in the labor market in addition there is a widespread belief that hispanics suffer from employment discrimination and cannot obtain the wages that their human capital would command if they were non hispanic whites how much of the wage differentials described above are due to each of these factors and to other inter group differences in wage related characteristics in particular how much impact does labor market discrimination have on the average hispanic man s wage and how does this compare with discrimination against blacks this paper provides answers to these questions a few other efforts have been made to analyze the relative earnings of hispanic and white nonhispanic men using 1960 and 1970 census data fogel 1966 poston and alvirez 1973 poston alvirez and tienda 1976 long 1977 and gwartney and long 1978 we use more recent data from the 1976 survey of income and education this data set enables us to measure wage rates more accurately and to specify the wage function more completely than does the census unlike previous analysts in estimating the wage function we take account of possible selectivity bias due to the distinction between average wage offers and average observed wages thus we hope to obtain a more accurate and up to date measure of labor market discrimination against hispanic men section ii explains the method used to separate the minority white non hispanic wage differential into the portions due to differences in average characteristics and the portion due to differences in unobserved factors and discrimination taking into account the possibility of selectivity bias in the observed wage sample section iii describes the data used in the study and the specification of the wage equation the breakdown of the observed wage differentials into components due to differences in participation in the wage and salary sector local price levels average characteristics and discrimination are presented in section iv section v summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for efforts to improve the economic situation of hispanics in the united states

the effect of unions on the employment of blacks hispanics and women to investigate whether unions have helped or hindered the employment prospects of minorities and women the author analyzes data on 1 273 california manufacturing plants for the period 1974 80 the

entrepreneurial women and men two different species the ability of the self employed to create additional job opportunities is a fundamental concern given the huge increases in public resources targeted at new venture creation in the u k and other countries since 1979 this study initially concentrates on identifying differences in the personal and demographic characteristics of women and men in four potential labour market states namely unemployment waged employment single self employment and job creating self employment it then goes on to consider labour market transitions over a four year period between 1991 and 1995 the key findings are firstly that women entrepreneurs are better educated than their male counterparts and secondly that flows into self employment were considerably higher for men than women furthermore proportionately three times as many male self employed in 1991 had gone on to become job creating self employed by 1995

the definition of part time employment a switching regression model with unknown sample selection rejecting the standard less than thirty five hours per week categorization of part time workers this paper offers an empirically justified definition of the part time employed the definition is based on the distinction through wage payments that employers make between a high hours full time and a low hours part time group of workers a switching regression model of wage equations with deterministic but unknown sample selection is estimated resulting in a significant split between high hours and low hours workers that is higher than the standard definition wage differentials are calculated and decomposed and estimates from the structural choice model are presented copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

spatial patterns of residential development abstract a simple dynamic model of residential development with durable housing where all households are identical and all developers have perfect foresight is studied it is shown that unlike the case of static models it is quite possible that house size decreases and thus population density increases with distance from the city center and that the house rent curve has positive gradient in certain area

gender wage differences in malaysia parametric and semiparametric estimation this paper is an empirical study on the labor force in peninsular malaysia parametric and semiparametric estimated wage equations which correct for sample selection bias are used to assess the returns to education and extent of gender discrimination to estimate in the semiparametric case the wage equation intercept which is needed for the oaxaca wage decomposition consistently we apply the newly developed andrews schafgans andrews d w k schafgans m m a 1998 semiparametric estimation of the intercept of a sample selection model review of economic studies 65 497 518 estimator the results suggest that discrimination favoring men in malaysia is still quite prevalent while for malays the sons of the soil the strong level of discrimination favoring malay men is negated by the semiparametric estimation results

sex segregation and sectors an analysis of gender differences in returns from employer changes sweet james 1973 women in the labor force new york seminar press vanek joann 1974 time spent in housework scientific american 231 116 20 1980 household work wage work and sexual equality pp 275 91 in sarah f berk ed women and household labor beverly hills ca sage walker k and m woods 1976 time use a measure of household production of family goods and services washington d c american home economics association

job search and immigrant assimilation an earnings frontier approach this study examines labor market assimilation by measuring the information utilized by immigrants during job search assimilation is assumed to occur whenever such information increases with length of residence in the united states and repeated job searches the authors assert that information utilized during job search reduces differentials between actual and potential maximum attainable earnings coauthors are henry w herzog jr richard a hofler and alan m schlottmann copyright 1992 by mit press

incorporating the causes of occupational differences in studies of racial wage differentials this study provides a basic framework for incorporating the causes of occupational differences into analyses of racial wage differentials separating the influences of personal characteristics occupational choice and hiring discrimination on occupational attainment provides measures of the contributions of each to the racial pay gap the paper also considers the potential for bias in the wage equation estimates arising from self selection into occupations there are two generalfindings first correcting for self selection increases the importance of occupational distribution in explaining racial wage differentials second a proper accounting of the causes of these occupational differences yields discrimination measures that are higher than those that arise when occupational dummy variables are included in the wage equations and all the difference in occupational distribution is treated as nondiscriminatory

managing urban land the case for urban partnership zones multiple ownership of land can act as a significant barrier to brownfield redevelopment despite renewed interest in compulsory purchase it is unlikely to become the normal remedy for multiple ownership owing to its cost and complexity drawing on international experience and recent research this article proposes the concept of an urban partnership zone in which existing landowners would be entitled to participate alongside the local authority and a chosen development partner in a joint venture redevelopment company combined with greater planning certainty and other benefits this innovation would enable the development process to operate more rapidly without immediate compulsory purchase

housing sector performance in global perspective a cross city investigation this paper measures and accounts for variations in housing sector performance using the unchs and world bank s housing indicators database of a diverse sample of 52 cities the first stage of the empirical analysis based on a principal components analysis indicates that housing sector performance can be evaluated in terms of six distinct dimensions these are poor housing conditions house price appreciation public sector housing provision home ownership housing finance and the absence of homelessness the second stage of the analysis reveals that intercity variations in these dimensions can be accounted for by differences in the levels of economic development the macroeconomic environment demographic characteristics the efficiency of the construction industry expenditure on infrastructure and the regulatory and institutional environment governing the housing delivery process

racial wage gaps and differences in human capital this paper uses the cotton neumark decomposition methodology and 1990 cps data to investigate the relative importance of labour market structure and human capital in explaining the white male asian white male black white male hispanic wage gaps we find that labour market structure is more important than human capital in explaining the white minority wage gaps moreover most of the labour market structural effects are due to differential returns to white structural characteristics our result is robust to the specification of human capital our results contradict the results of research that indicate that the white minority wage gaps can be explained solely by differences in the endowment of human capital our results have implications for narrowing the wage gaps between whites and racial minorities

poverty and progress reflections on housing and urban policies in developing countries 1976 96 the habitat ii conference in june 1996 was more determined by retrospect and prospect than by the discussions during the several days in istanbul the policy outcomes were fashioned by reforms and

gender wage discrimination in the thai labor market in thai this paper investigates the presence of gender wage differentials in the thai labor market a two step approach heckman 1979 was applied in estimating wage equations to avoid sample selection bias the wage differential decomposition methods oaxaca 1973 cotton 1988 oaxaca and ransom 1994 were used the data used were obtained from the labor force survey july september 2008 conducted by the national statistical office of thailand the findings indicate that female workers received lower wages than male workers because of their gender not because they are less productive on the contrary the female workers were shown to be more productive than the men the analysis indicates they would have earned higher wages than men this is especially true in the age groups 15 24 and 25 54 years old although the wage gap was partly explained by a lower productivity of workers 55 60 years old wage discrimination played a substantial role wage discrimination was worse in the younger than the older worker groups

the role of the inner city in the development of manufacturing industry the first section of the paper surveys the evidence relating to the hypothesis that the inner city acts as a nursery for new manufacturing firms and shows that there is little direct confirmatory evidence the second and third sections report on two research studies of new firm foundation in london in the first study it is shown that few manufacturing firms have been set up in inner london in recent years the majority being in the inner city industries of printing clothing etc in the second the founders of new manufacturing firms not in the inner city industries were located and interviewed to find out the reasons for their choice of location the two studies together tend to refute the inner city nursery hypothesis

does drug use lower wages this study using microdata from the 1980 and 1984 waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth examines the effects of drug use on wages and employment contrary to most previous researcher