minimum wages and training revisited theory predicts that minimum wages will reduce employer provided on the job training designed to improve workers skills on the current job but it is ambiguous regarding training that workers obtain to qualify for a job we estimate the effects of minimum wages on both types of training received by young workers exploiting cross state variation in minimum wage increases much of the evidence supports the hypothesis that higher minimum wages reduce formal training to improve skills on the current job but there is little or no evidence of offsetting increases in training undertaken to qualify for or obtain jobs

post keynesian money endogeneity evidence in g 7 economies abstract post keynesian theory of money endogeneity emphasizes the importance of bank loans causing money supply changes thus the proponents of endogenous money supply assert banks create money by meeting money demands of economic agents money is said to originate as bank created loans from deposits which in turn create more loans under the endogenous money supply the traditional money supply theory asserts that deposits create money so money is exogenously created this paper provides new evidence on endogenous money supply across g 7 economies over 26 years using quarterly data with controls for monetary regime change effects bank loans cause money supply hence money is endogenous and the monetary regime effect appears to hold as crucial factors in money supply theory money supply behavior is exogenous during two short periods in the uk and the us when monetary targeting policies were in place

sources of intra industry wage dispersion how much do employers matter observed human capital explains less than half of wage variation in bls industry wage surveys establishment based wage differentials controlling for occupation account for 20 70 percent of intra industry wage variation this corresponds to a standard deviation in wages of 14 percent of the mean almost as large as interindustry wage variation investigation suggests that establishment wage differentials are not random variations or returns to usual measures of human capital

investment in human capital and gender wage differences evidence from the nlsy this paper uses data from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to investigate gender differences in returns to various forms of human capital since the nlsy includes relatively detailed information regarding on and off the job training we place special emphasis on measuring gender differences in the incidence of and returns to formal post school training also considered is the role of nonhuman capital factors such as industry and occupation in explaining the wage gap it is found that about 60 of the gender wage gap in the sample is explained by mean differences in individual characteristics and market circumstances this suggests a smaller role for discrimination in explaining the wage gap than previous research has found the research indicates that training does not affect the gender wage gap also it is found that there is no statistically significant difference in the rate of return to other measures of human capital for women versus men our research suggests that the largest factor

the school to work transition a cross national perspective school to work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies france germany japan the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states the emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position of young people and recent trends therein along with the institutions that regulate youth education training and employment the power of public policies including labor market deregulation labor market programs vocationalization of education and apprenticeship to improve youth outcomes is discussed drawing on national evaluation literatures evidence of extensive policy failure points up the need to develop nationally appropriate institutions to improve school to work transitions

gender differences in training capital and wages this paper constructs an equilibrium job matching model where workers differ in their attachment to the labor force the model predicts that workers with weaker attachment to the labor market will receive lower starting wages and lower post training wages and will be placed in jobs that offer less training and use less capital the implications of the model for gender differences in pay and job assignment are tested with the eopp data set ourfindings suggest that while training intensity during the first three months of employment is similar in positions filled by males and females females are employed in positions that have a shorter duration of on the job training and that use less capital these differences in on the job training and capital in positions filled by men and women as well as a lower market value for women s prior labor market experience account for a substantial part of the gap in wages between males and females

two sided uncertainty and up or out contracts a bilateral moral hazard problem provides a rationale for up or out employment contracts the employer sets a wage higher than opportunity cost to induce the worker to invest in firm specific capital if the individual does not make the grade it is in the firm s interest ex post to fire him had the initial arrangement not included provisions for firing individuals the firm would underreport the value of the employee wrecking the incentive scheme the basic model permits both firm and worker to be risk neutral therefore it admits a straightforward multiperiod extension which we also investigate

uncertainty and incentives empirical work testing for a trade off between risk and incentives has had at best mixed success this article provides two simple reasons associated with subjectivity of performance appraisals why we might not expect to see any negative relationship both reasons relate to empirically observed problems associated with monitoring i supervisors sometimes bias their evaluations based on their personal feelings toward their subordinates and ii supervisors will sometimes offer evaluations that reduce their costs these aspects of monitoring are ignored in the standard model and can reverse the usual negative trade off between risk and incentives

long term impact of minimum wages on workers careers evidence from two decades of longitudinal linked employer employee data i acknowledge the support of the spanish ministry of the economy severo ochoa programme for centres of excellence in r d sev20150563 the aei spain and feder ue grant eco2016 76734 p

uncertainty electoral incentives and political myopia we study the determinants of political myopia in a rational model of electoral accountability with informational frictions and uncertainty when politicians ability is ex ante unknown and policy choices are unobservable elections improve political accountability and selection however incumbents underinvest in costly policies with future returns to signal high ability and increase re election probability surprisingly uncertainty reduces political myopia and may increase social welfare we also address the socially optimal political rewards and the desirability of a one term limit our predictions are consistent with several stylised facts and with a new empirical observation aggregate uncertainty is positively correlated with fiscal discipline

rewarding performance by promotion to a different job abstract use of promotions rather than performance related pay to provide incentives can be justified if performance is non verifiable information this does not explain why promotion is to a different job rather than simply a better paid job the effectiveness of tournaments is undermined however if unsuccessful workers are equally suited to higher paid jobs and can engage in bribery or other influence activity a promotion based reward structure with pay tied to jobs can be made immune to such activity if misallocations of employees to jobs are costly to the firm

a general equilibrium analysis of climate change impacts on tourism this paper studies the economic implications of climate change induced variations in tourism demand using a world cge model the model is first re calibrated at some future years obtaining hypothetical benchmark equilibria which are subsequently perturbed by shocks simulating the effects of climate change we portray the impact of climate change on tourism by means of two sets of shocks occurring simultaneously the first set of shocks translate predicted variations in tourist flows into changes of consumption preferences for domestically produced goods the second set reallocate income across world regions simulating the effect of higher or lower tourists expenditure our analysis highlights that variations in tourist flows will affect regional economies in a way that is directly related to the sign and magnitude of flow variations at a global scale climate change will ultimately lead to a welfare loss unevenly spread across regions 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

job independence as an incentive device a firm can either subject its workers to strict rules and regulations or grant them independence if independent they can make entrenchment investments which will not only raise their productivity but also make the firm depend on their cooperation however in contrast to a standard holdup problem the firm can afterwards take over control thus stripping such workers of a part of their bargaining assets this leads to structural distortions and may aggravate the holdup problem however the threat of partial expropriation may also alleviate the holdup problem and even induce overinvestment

the minimum wage restaurant prices and labor market structure using store level and aggregated consumer price index data we show that restaurant prices rise in response to minimum wage increases under several sources of identifying variation we introduce a general model of employment determination that implies minimum wage hikes cause prices to rise in competitive labor markets but potentially fall in monopsonistic environments furthermore the model implies employment and prices are always negatively related therefore our empirical results provide evidence against the importance of monopsony power for understanding small observed employment responses to minimum wage changes our estimated price responses challenge other explanations of the small employment response too

hedonic wages and labor market search this article investigates the consequences of labor market search for the theory of hedonic wages we find that the introduction of search has surprising consequences for the theory of hedonic wages in particular we demonstrate that the equilibrium distribution of wage and nonwage amenity bundles generally bears little resemblance to workers underlying preferences a consequence of this analysis is that estimates of workers marginal willingness to pay derived from the conventional hedonic wage methodology are biased in addition we demonstrate that search generates differences between firm level and employee level data that can cause substantial deviations in the estimates of hedonic wage equations

worth waiting for delayed compensation training and turnover in the united states and japan this article utilizes a rich data set on workers and their employers in the united states and japan to test several predictions of human capital theory the data set incorporates both prospective and retrospective measures of turnover includes multiple measures of training and provides a basis for calculating plant specific returns to tenure contrary to human capital theory there is no evidence that establishments with high levels of training have either high returns to tenure or low levels of turnover surprisingly establishments with high returns to tenure do not have low levels of turnover

post keynesian monetary theory some issues abstract post keynesian monetary theory is of increasing interest to economists in the light of world wide financial deregulation of financial markets this paper offers an exposition of the main issues in this area including an overview of the most divisive issue that of interest rate determination and hence the slope of the money supply function post keynesian monetary theorists divide into two camps with respect to the determination of interest rates the markup school and the liquidity preference school it is argued in the paper that the post keynesian theory of the business cycle which incorporates endogeneity of the money supply requires a liquidity preference notion of interest rate determination

full wages part time employment and the minimum wage the economic effects of the minimum wage have become increasingly ambiguous historically economists have asserted that increases in the minimum wage result in increases in unemployment this relationship has been challenged recently by card and krueger katz and krueger and card these authors have provided empirical evidence that seems to indicate that there is no relationship between various economic variables such as level of employment and product price among others and the minimum wage in addition these authors have not provided a cogent presentation of the effects of the minimum wage on part time employment this study examines from a theoretical standpoint the effects of the minimum wage on employment furthermore we emphasize the distinction between money wages and full wages and the role that part time employmentplays in the analysis after incorporating these factors into a theoretical presentation we provide empirical evidence by way of an ols regression we conclude that firms re

non commitment in performance evaluation and the problem of information distortions abstract auditing is modeled in a sequential game without commitment the manager must decide whether and where to audit a worker s output taking into account all interim information he has obtained the worker will work just hard enough and show it to divert the manager from making an audit or cover up withholding information about his work to make an audit more difficult this usually raises the costs of setting work incentives so incentives are softened sometimes drastically moreover when a worker s on the job information is valuable for entrepreneurial decisions work incentives must be softened to improve the internal flow of information

economy wide estimates of the implications of climate change human health we study the economic impacts of climate change induced change in human health viz cardiovascular and respiratory disorders diarrhoea malaria dengue fever and schistosomiasis changes in morbidity and mortality are interpreted as changes in labour productivity and demand for health care and used to shock the gtap e computable general equilibrium model calibrated for the year 2050 gdp welfare and investment fall rise in regions with net negative positive health impacts prices production and terms of trade show a mixed pattern direct cost estimates common in climate change impact studies underestimate the true welfare losses

the impact of climate change on the labor allocation empirical evidence from china abstract climate change may significantly affect the labor market by generating disproportionate damage to marginal returns to labor across sectors however this potentially important channel through which climate change may affect social welfare has not received the attention it deserves we provide the first estimate of the long term effects of climate change on the labor market based on the hedonic approach which accounts for individual long term adjustments to climate change using a panel of field survey data from 8076 working age residents in 279 rural communities in china we find that a 1 c increase from current mean temperature will reduce an average rural resident s time allocated to farm work by 7 0 increase the time allocated to off farm work by 7 8 and reduce the time allocated to leisure by 0 8 we also find differential responses to climate change across gender higher temperatures mainly shift males time from leisure to off farm work but mainly shift females time from farm work to off farm work

private sector training and graduate earnings this paper uses a survey of british graduates to estimate the impact of employer provided training on the earnings of men and women graduates the results indicate that although the training impact is reduced after controlling for endogeneity some forms of training have a considerable impact however there are substantial gender differences in the earnings impact of various typ es of training moreover men graduates are more likely to receive training than otherwise identical women

minimum wages on the job training and wage growth using data from the employment opportunities pilot project we examine the relationships between minimum wages wage growth and on the job training we find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs particularly for men we find no evidence however of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities we conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process

minimum wages and youth unemployment abstract this paper constructs a labor search model to explore the effects of minimum wages on youth unemployment to capture the gradual decline in unemployment for young workers as they age the standard search model is extended so that workers gain experience when employed experienced workers have higher average productivity and lower job finding and separation rates that match wage and worker flow data in this environment minimum wages can have large effects on unemployment because they interact with a worker s ability to gain job experience the increase in minimum wages between 2007 and 2009 can account for a 0 8 percentage point increase in the steady state unemployment rate and a 2 8 percentage point increase in unemployment for 15 24 year old workers in the model parameterized to simulate outcomes of high school educated workers minimum wages can also help explain the high rates of youth unemployment in france compared to the united states

why the gender gap in wages narrowed in the 1980s since 1976 the gender gap in wages on average declined by about 1 per year this article focuses on identifying the factors underlying this trend three data sets are analyzed the current population survey the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we find that convergence in measurable work related characteristics schooling and work experience explains one third to one half the narrowing the remainder is attributable to a relative increase in women s returns to experience as well as to declining wages in blue collar work and other factors

employer size and on the job training decisions the effect of employer size on labor market outcomes have been the subject of extensive although relatively recent research by economists it has been widely demonstrated that large and small firms exhibit a number of differential characteristics with regard to their employment relationships 29 42 employees at large firms have higher wages and fringe benefits 16 10 15 22 32 35 higher levels of job mobility within the firm 19 greater job stability 44 a greater tendency to have mandatory overtime rules 23 higher education levels 8 a more structured work environment 20 26 46 and higher levels of investments by the firm both in the form of search costs 4 5 and direct on the job training 6 10 while numerous theories exist that account for many of these relationships such as monitoring and on the job training models no single explanation has been able to account definitively for the observed empirical patterns clearly size of employer is a significant factor in the dynamics of labor markets that still requires much investigation the focus of this paper is on one particular aspect of employer size effects the observed higher training investments in large firms we propose and test a model in the human capital tradition of viewing on the job training ojt as an investment 9 36 38 39 42 which not only explains the greater investment in on the job training by larger firms but additionally generates predictions with regard to the allocation of the firm s resources across investment in people with different demographic characteristics these latter implications of the model facilitate empirical comparisons to alternative explanations our central hypothesis is that large employers exhibit different behavior from small employers with regard to the risk component of the investments in their employees other training decision models that have addressed firm behavior under uncertainty have done so in the context of monitoring difficulties introduced by either the higher opportunity cost of managers time 43 or diseconomies of scale in monitoring 16 in larger firms although both of these approaches

discretion and bias in performance evaluation most of the economics literature on compensation and organizations builds from the theory of agency for the most part the literature analyzes situations in which agents performance can be controlled by tying compensation to objective performance measures such as output or sales it ignores the fact that most compensation arrangements involve superiors subjectire and hence non contractible judgements about employee performance in our view much of what is interesting about actual employment relations follows from the observation that performance appraisal is a process by which humans judge other humans milkovich and wigdor 1991 this paper studies the implications of subjective performance evaluation for compensation policies and for the efficiency of employment relations our objectives are two fold first we propose the importance of subjectivity of evaluations to better understand organizatlonal practices such as politicking favoritism and compression of wage scales second we hope to orient the study of subjective performance evaluation in ways that are consistent with empirical evidence on what organizations actually do

incentives between firms and within this paper reviews the significant progress in agency theory i e the economic theory of incentives during the 1990s with an eye toward applications to supply transactions i emphasize six recent models in three pairs 1 new foundations for the theory of incentive contracts 2 new directions in incentive theory and 3 new applications to supply transactions by reviewing these six models i hope to establish three things first the theory of incentive contracts needed and received new foundations second new directions in incentive theory teach us that incentive contracts are not the only source of incentives finally and especially relevant to supply transactions the integration decision is an instrument in the incentive problem

job assignments signalling and efficiency this article analyzes a model in which information about a worker s ability is only directly revealed to the firm employing the worker other firms however use the worker s job assignment as a signal of ability three results recur throughout the analysis first wage rates tend to be more closely associated with jobs than with ability levels second there is frequently an inefficient assignment of workers to jobs i e even when a firm has complete information about a worker s output third the severity of this inefficiency tends to be negatively correlated with the level of firm specific human capital in the economy

cohort effects in promotions and wages evidence from sweden and the united states abstract this paper studies the long term effects of the business cycle on workers future promotions and wages using the swedish employer employee matched data we find that a cohort of workers entering the labor market during a boom gets promoted faster and reaches higher ranks this procyclical promotion cohort effect persists even after controlling for workers initial jobs and explains at least half of the wage cohort effects that previous studies have focused on we repeat the same analyses using personnel records from a single u s company and obtain the same qualitative results

sources of training and their impact on wages using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth from 1986 to 1990 the author investigates the wage impact of various sources of training among them company training programs apprenticeships business schools vocational and technical institutes correspondence courses and seminars outside the workplace time spent in training of whatever kind apparently did not affect 1990 wage levels the incidence of two kinds of training however company training and seminars outside work was positively related to wage levels as well as to wage change between 1986 and 1990 that is workers who undertook such training enjoyed higher wages than those who did not time spent in vocational schools was also positively associated with wage change though not with 1990 wage levels the other forms of training had no apparent impact on either wage levels or wage change

an evolutionary macroeconomic model of australian dollar m3 determination 1967 93 an evolutionary macroeconomic approach stressing institutional behaviour is used to estimate a model of australian dollar m3 it is estimated in first differences by both ordinary and two stage least squares a very stable endogenous money supply model is discovered a novel aspect is the inclusion of a real property value variable which plays a key role a small but very stable interest elasticity is recorded it is concluded that financial deregulation does not prevent us from discovering a stable australian m3 equation as is often suggested conclusions are drawn with respect to the conduct of monetary policy

training and worker effort a signalling perspective this paper analyzes the interaction between firms investment in general skills training and workers incentives it shows that when a firm has an informational advantage over its workers its provision of free general skills training can serve as a signal that there will be a long term relationship between the firm and its workers this signal induces the workers to exert more effort in learning firm specific skills which enhances the firm s profits in contrast with most of the existing literature the model implies that firms may provide free general skills training even if there is no labour market friction ce memoire analyse l interaction entre l investissement des entreprises dans l acquisition d habiletes generales de leurs employes et les incitations des travailleurs a fournir un effort on montre que quand une firme a un avantage informationnel sur ses travailleurs le fait de fournir gratuitement de la formation qui permette aux employes d acquerir des habiletes generales peut servir de signal qu il va y avoir une relation a long terme entre la firme et ses travailleurs ce signal incite les travailleurs a investir plus d effort dans l acquisition d habiletes specifiques a la firme ce qui augmente les profits de l entreprise ce modele en porte a faux par rapport au gros de la litterature existante suggere que les entreprises peuvent fournir gratuitement de la formation permettant aux employes d acquerir des habiletes generales meme s il n y a pas de friction dans le marche du travail

why do global long term scenarios for agriculture differ an overview of the agmip global economic model intercomparison recent studies assessing plausible futures for agricultural markets and global food security have had contradictory outcomes to advance our understanding of the sources of the differences 10 global economic models that produce long term scenarios were asked to compare a reference scenario with alternate socioeconomic climate change and bioenergy scenarios using a common set of key drivers several key conclusions emerge from this exercise first for a comparison of scenario results to be meaningful a careful analysis of the interpretation of the relevant model variables is essential for instance the use of real world commodity prices differs widely across models and comparing the prices without accounting for their different meanings can lead to misleading results second results suggest that once some key assumptions are harmonized the variability in general trends across models declines but remains important for example given the common assumptions of the reference scenario models show average annual rates of changes of real global producer prices for agricultural products on average ranging between 0 4 and 0 7 between the 2005 base year and 2050 this compares to an average decline of real agricultural prices of 4 p a between the 1960s and the 2000s several other common trends are shown for example relating to key global growth areas for agricultural production and consumption third differences in basic model parameters such as income and price elasticities sometimes hidden in the way market behavior is modeled result in significant differences in the details fourth the analysis shows that agro economic modelers aiming to inform the agricultural and development policy debate require better data and analysis on both economic behavior and biophysical drivers more interdisciplinary modeling efforts are required to cross fertilize analyses at different scales

the provision of incentives in firms i ncentives are the essence of economics despite many wide ranging claims about their supposed importance there has been little empirical assessment of incentive provision for workers the purpose of this paper is to critically overview existing work on the provision of incentives since the interests of workers and their employers are not always aligned a large theoretical literature has emphasized how firms design compensation contracts to induce employees to operate in the firm s interest this literature has reached into many areas of compensation and has pointed to a multitude of different mechanisms that can be used to induce workers to act in the interests of their employers these include piece rates options discretionary bonuses promotions profit sharing efficiency wages deferred compensation and so on my objective here is to evaluate this literature in the light of a growing empirical literature on compensation where possible i will address the literature from two perspectives first an underlying assumption of this literature is that individuals respond to contracts that reward performance accordingly i consider whether agents behave in this way and whether these responses are always in the firm s interest second i address whether firms write contracts with these responses in mind in other words do contracts look like the predictions of the theory incentives are provided to workers

classic promotion tournaments versus market based tournaments as initially formulated in the seminal analysis of lazear and rosen 1981 an important perspective for understanding the role of promotions in firms is the tournament perspective that is a promotion and in particular the wage increase associated with a promotion is a prize that serves as an incentive for workers to exert effort and take other actions beneficial to the firm such as the accumulation of human capital in this paper i consider whether the best way to model promotion tournaments is by having firms commit to prizes ex ante as in lazear and rosen s initial formulation or whether promotion prizes should be modeled as arising from the signaling role of promotions and the competition between firms for promoted workers

legal minimum wages and employment duration 1 introductionthe effect of a legal minimum wage on employee turnover is an important consideration when evaluating the effectiveness of a minimum wage policy if an increase in the minimum wage results in greater turnover then firms hiring costs are increased and the direct benefit to workers who are paid the minimum wage may be lessened a reduction in turnover on the other hand would mean more stability for employers and workers though access to minimum wage jobs may be reduced for job seekers despite the recent proliferation of studies on the effects of legal minimum wages their impact on turnover has received relatively little attention from economists this may be due to the fact that much of the literature focuses on the teen labor market where there is more churning than in the adult labor market gardecki and neumark 1998 the fact remains however that a significant proportion of workers hired at the minimum wage are adults and the effects of the minimum wage onthe turnover hazard are understudied 1standard economic theory suggests that a price floor such as a minimum wage results in fewer transactions and in rents for those suppliers who manage to sell in the context of the labor market this means workers in minimum wage jobs may be expected to receive rents and therefore may be less likely to quit another possible consequence of a minimum wage arises from imperfect information in the labor market combined with heterogeneity among workers and jobs prior to the start of an employment relationship the worker does not know all the relevant aspects of the job and the employer does not know all the important characteristics of the worker as a result in the absence of a mandated minimum wage job applicants may use wage offers to infer information about the nonpecuniary aspects of jobs thereby facilitating the matching process a binding minimum wage compresses the wage distribution so that a single wage is associated with a larger array of jobs this means that the wage offer becomes a poor indicator of a job s nonwage characteristics which leads to a higher proportion of poor matches and consequently more turnover this paper uses data on young men and women in the 1988 1994 rounds of the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy to estimate the relationship between the minimum wage and the turnover hazard the extent to which the minimum wage binds varies across states both because of differences in state laws and because of differences in wage levels across states we exploit this variation to estimate turnover hazards as a function of the ratio of the nominal minimum wage to the state median wage this variable measures the extent to which the minimum wage binds we find some evidence that in states where the minimum wage is low relative to the state s median wage men hired at the minimum wage have lower employee initiated separation hazards than other low wage workers as the minimum wage rises relative to the prevailing median wage that is as the minimum wage becomes more binding men hired at the minimum wage are increasingly likely to leave their jobs at any given duration when the minimum wage is high relative to the median wage we find that men hired at the minimum wage have significantly higher employee initiated separation hazards than other low wage workers we interpret these findings as evidence that while rents may accrue to minimum wage workers the job matching process is undermined when the minimum wage binds our results apply to the men in our sample but not to the women indeed for women we find no connection between employment duration and the starting wage rate though we do uncover some evidence that for women in low wage jobs employment duration is more elastic with respect to the presence of family friendly fringe benefits than it is for men the paper proceeds as follows the next section explores the possible reasons minimum wages would affect turnover and discusses the existing empirical and theoretical research on this topic

do new brooms sweep clean when and why dismissing a manager increases the subordinates performance abstract if a manager stays in office for a long time he will have learned much about his subordinates thus competition among them will be weak as the manager has made up his mind who is suited best for which position with a new manager the race for favorable tasks is restarted leading subordinates to exert higher effort but for the firm owner the trade off arises that with a new manager effort is larger but the quality of task allocation is worse since information is lost the optimal dismissal policy will be nonmonotonic in the expected heterogeneity of the subordinates abilities

the role of promotion in inducing specific human capital acquisition workers routinely carry out activities that increase their productivity with their current employer for which they are not directly compensated for example a worker may be asked to develop relationships with clients or shop floor staff or he may develop a better understanding of how his firm operates firmspecific human capital of this type is difficult to quantify so that it is likely to be difficult to directly compensate the worker for its acquisition this paper is concerned with designing compensation schemes for employees to induce them to collect nonverifiable firm specific human capital if firms develop reputations for fairly compensating workers for skill collection the vagueness of these skills may not provide a significant incentive problem i consider the case where firms do not have the opportunity to develop reputations as a result the acquisition of human capital is subject to a dual moral hazard problem first noted in kahn and huberman 1988 first a worker only collects skills if there is a promise of a higher wage if he does so second the employer has an incentive to claim that the worker has not collected these skills even when he in fact has in order to save on wage costs so on the one hand it is difficult to repay the worker after skills are collected as the firm has an incentive to renege however the worker cannot be repaid before collecting skills as he has no subsequent incentive to collect them following the institutional literature i assume that the firm can commit to a labor contract which attaches wages to different tasks the principal purpose of the paper is to show that the firm can use this ability to commit to a wage scale for different tasks to induce a worker to collect firm specific human capital in the presence of this dual moral hazard problem where the worker is rewarded for skill acquisition by promotion to another job assume that a worker can be assigned to one of two jobs d and

work incentives hierarchy and internal labor markets this paper argues that contracts with payment based on a ranking of employee performance can provide performance incentives even under asymmetric information that prevents payment based on individual performance only being enforceable such contracts also fit with five features of labor markets that have aroused considerable interest 1 hierarchical wage structures 2 internal promotion 3 wage rates that rise with seniority and experience more than productivity 4 the variance of earnings increasing with experience and 5 wage rates attached to jobs rather than individuals with differentials set by administrative procedures rather than by reference to external market wages

job protection versus contracts at will trading off entrenchment and shirking i take an efficient contracting approach to answer the question how much job protection to offer employees in particular those at the top of organizations given their privileged information or formal authority senior managers who are not given such protection are likely to take opportunistic actions that make them less dispensable the optimal employment contract trades off the resulting inefficiencies that arise from such self made job security with the reduced incentives and higher compensation costs under explicit employment protection one implication of the model is that more senior managers such as ceos should receive both higher rents and more protection e g through contracts that are explicitly not at will or that specify a longer duration

learning by drilling interfirm learning and relationship persistence in the texas oilpatch author s kellogg ryan m abstract production in many industries such as construction and heavy manufacturing relies on inputs from both lead firms and contractors these firms joint productivity often hinges on their ability to share information and coordinate activities suggesting that they have strong incentives to learn about each other s personnel procedures and expertise this learning differs from standard learning by doing in that it is relationship specific its benefits are not appropriable outside the relationship in which the learning takes place in this paper i empirically examine the importance of relationship specific learning using high frequency data from oil and gas drilling i find that the joint productivity of a lead firm and its drilling contractor is enhanced significantly as they accumulate experience working together this result is robust to other relationship specificities i also find that firms appear to recognize the benefits of joint experience controlling for other specificities lead firms are more likely to work with contractors with which they have substantial prior experience than those with which they have worked relatively little

the sectoral and regional economic consequences of outdoor air pollution to 2060 abstract this paper provides an assessment of the costs of inaction of outdoor air pollution in the coming decades focusing on the market impacts relative to additional health expenditures changes in labour productivity and crop yield losses the results show that the global economic costs of outdoor air pollution gradually increase to 1 of global gdp by 2060 with highest gdp losses in china the caspian region and eastern europe these economic consequences stem from a combination of exposure to high concentrations aging population and relatively high pollution related health expenditures that crowd out other consumption and savings while the direct costs of these market impacts grow more or less at the same pace as total economic activity the indirect economic costs induced by these impacts become increasingly significant over time numerical results are more sensitive to the specification of the feedbacks to the economic model than to the parameter values used in calibrating the impacts the most optimistic specifications lead to significantly lower costs of air pollution but qualitative conclusions on the sign of effects and ordering of regional consequences are robust non market damages especially the welfare losses from premature deaths are potentially an order of magnitude larger than the market damages that this paper focuses on but those do not directly affect the economy these findings on the costs of inaction of outdoor air pollution underline the need for policy action that would reduce the health and environmental impacts as well as lead to economic benefits

an opposing responses test of classic versus market based promotion tournaments we use a systems based econometric method to show that classic and market based tournament models are empirically distinguishable since the role of risk differs across these models implementing the method using a large finnish worker firm matched panel we find support for classic tournaments given that promotions depend on relative performance the firm s wage structure is convex promotion probabilities are decreasing in the number of competitors performance is increasing in the wage spread and workers and firms adjust their choice variables in opposite directions when the variance of the stochastic component of worker performance changes

firm sponsored general education and mobility frictions evidence from hospital sponsorship of nursing schools and faculty this study asks why hospitals provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty this support is striking because nursing education is clearly general clearly paid by the firm and information asymmetries appear minimal using aha and survey data i find hospitals employing a greater share of their msa s registered nurses are more likely to provide direct financial support to nursing schools and faculty net of size and other institutional controls given the institutional context i interpret this result as unusually specific evidence that technologically general skill training may be made de facto specific by imperfect and costly mobility

extensive search intensive search and hiring costs new evidence on employer hiring activity this paper presents recent evidence on employer search to fill a position a 1982 employer survey sponsored by the national institute of education and the national center for research in vocational education provides the basis for analyzing employer search and hiring costs the paper examines the effects of such factors as employer size dismissal costs unionization on the job training adjustment costs capital and labor market conditions on intensive employer search extensive employer search and hiring costs intensive employer search is measured by the average number of hours the employer spends recruiting screening and interviewing per applicant extensive search is measured by the number of applicants seen per applicant interviewed and the number interviewed per employment

differences in income elasticities and trends in real exchange rates abstract one might expect that differences in income elasticities in trade and or differences in growth rates among countries would give rise to strong secular trends in real exchange rates for example fast growing countries might need steady depreciation to get the world to accept their growing exports in fact however income elasticities are systematically related to growth rates by the 45 degree rule under which fast growing countries appear to face high income elasticities of demand for their exports while having low income elasticities of import demand the net effect of this relationship between elasticities and growth rates is that secular trends in real exchange rates are much smaller than one might otherwise have expected relative ppp holds fairly well this paper documents the existence of a 45 degree rule and suggests an explanation in terms of increasing returns and product differentiation

temperature and income reconciling new cross sectional and panel estimates this paper presents novel evidence and analysis of the relationship between temperature and income first using sub national data from 12 countries in the americas we provide new evidence that the negative cross country relationship between temperature and income also exists within countries and even within states second we provide a theoretical framework for reconciling the substantial negative association between temperature and income in the cross section with the even stronger short run effects of temperature estimated by panel models the theoretical framework suggests that half of the negative short term effects of temperature may be offset in the long run through adaptation this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the minimum wage law and youth crimes time series evidence gtrowing evidence indicates that the federal minimum wage law has adversely affected the employment rate the labor force participation rate and on the job training of young workers 1 insofar as the minimum wage has adverse effects on youth labor markets it is also expected to affect the time spent in activities outside the labor market including criminal activities 2 little research has been done on the minimum wage

do minimum wages fight poverty i introduction one of the most compelling rationales for a national minimum wage floor is to raise the incomes of poor or near poor families with members in the workforce this general point however is often missed in the debates over the merits of a higher minimum wage in contrast to these oft stated distributional goals much of the focus in such debates has been on the employment effects of minimum wages especially among the teenage population in large part this focus is probably attributable to the extensive body of economic research on the effects of minimum wages on employment of low skilled workers however although negative employment effects represent a cost of minimum wages such costs do not necessarily imply that minimum wages constitute bad social policy in particular the employment losses associated with a higher minimum wage may be more than offset by positive effects on low income families especially if minimum wages are a significant factor in helping move families out of poverty 1 this is not to argue that research on employment effects of minimum wages is irrelevant but such research may be more important as a test of the theory of labor demand and as a method of learning how employers and individuals adjust to exogenous wage increases than as a method of assessing the wisdom of the policy in addition we do not mean to suggest that the short run effects of minimum wages on the incomes of poor families should be the sole criterion for evaluating such policies other studies have found evidence suggesting for example that minimum wage increases reduce school enrollment rates and training neumark and wascher 1996a hashimoto 1982 factors that may affect longer run earnings or earnings growth these deleterious longer run effects might offset the benefits of shorter run effects of minimum wages on family incomes nonetheless our perception is that potential increases in the incomes of poor families provide the main motivation for raising the minimum wage making it important to assess the evidence on whether minimum wage increases achieve this goal in this regard there are two questions that pertain to the influence of minimum wages on family incomes generally and on poverty in particular first there is the question of the effects of minimum wages on low wage workers that is do the wage gains received by employed workers more than offset the lost earnings suffered by those who lose or cannot find jobs 2 second there is the question of how minimum wages affect workers in different parts of the family income distribution because many roughly speaking a large minority of minimum wage workers are in relatively affluent families gramlich 1976 card and krueger 1995 burkhauser et al 1996 which workers gain and which lose will have an important influence on the effects of minimum wages on the distribution of family incomes in this article we present evidence on the effects of minimum wages on family incomes focusing in particular but not solely on the effectiveness of minimum wages in reducing poverty using matched march current population surveys cpss we estimate the effects of minimum wages on the probabilities of various transitions in the family income distribution such as transitions into and out of poverty given that federal changes in minimum wages may be confounded with other aggregate level shocks influencing family income we rely heavily on state level changes in minimum wages to identify minimum wage effects in a nutshell our empirical strategy is to compare rates of transition through the family income distribution in states in which minimum wages do and do not increase for example if poor families are more likely to escape from poverty when minimum wages increase in their states of residence we would infer that minimum wage hikes help families move out of poverty on the other hand if transitions in to poverty are more common when minimum wages increase we would infer that the disemployment effects of minimum wages play a dominant role among the low income population

minimum wages and the incentives for skill formation we show that minimum wages may have beneficial effects on human capital allocation in a situation when the marginal product of skilled labor is shared between firm and worker according to bargaining strength firms prefer more productive workers to less p

ambiguous changes in product quality economic goods are frequently sold according to a price per unit quantity where the quantity characteristic does not measure all the economically important characteristics of the good milk is sold by the quart automobiles rented by the mile physicians services bought by the visit and tennis lessons by the hour in all cases heterogeneous units are available in the market and the price per unit quantity depends upon the amount of the unpriced characteristic contained in each unit the per quart price of milk depends upon the butterfat content the mileage costs of automobile rentals on the cars make and the price per unit time for personal services on the providers skill and training the common distinction made between these variants of the same good is that they differ in quality where quality refers to the amounts of the unpriced attributes contained in each unit of the priced attribute thus milk is packaged according to the attribute milk liquid and the quality of milk refers to the ratio of butterfat per unit of liquid 2 this paper considers some of the unique aspects of the economics of supply and demand under this situation where products contain at least two desired attributes only one of which is quantified and measured prior to purchase product quality is here defined by the ratio of the second quality attribute per unit of the measured quantity attribute 3 this simple specification of quality allows a direct link between standard economic models of related products and the economics of variable product quality previous analyses which treat quality simply as a shift parameter in the demand function are shown to obscure the actual subtleties of supply and demand with variable endogenous quality 4 the paper proceeds by first examining the efficient quality and quantity and the competitive equilibrium the market equilibrium under monopoly is then contrasted in the second section the general theme of the

training and the new minimum wage using the british household panel survey we estimate the impact of the national minimum wage introduced in april 1999 on the work related training of low wage workers we use two treatment groups those workers who explicitly stated they were affected by the new minimum and those workers whose derived 1998 wages were below the minimum using difference in differences techniques for the period 1998 to 2000 we find no evidence that the introduction of the minimum wage reduced the training of affected workers and some evidence that it increased it

the firm as the locus of social comparisons standard promotion practices versus up or out we suggest a parsimonious dynamic agency model in which workers have status concerns a firm is a promotion hierarchy in which a worker s status depends on past performance we investigate the optimality of two types of promotion hierarchies i standard promotion practices where agents have a job guarantee and ii up or out in which agents are fired when unsuccessful we show that up or out is optimal if success is difficult to achieve when success is less hard to achieve standard promotion practices are optimal provided the payoffs associated with success are moderate otherwise up or out is again optimal

the impact of minimum wages on job training an empirical exploration with establishment data human capital theory suggests that workers may finance on the job training by accepting lower wages during the training period minimum wage laws could reduce job training then to the extent they prevent low wage workers from offering sufficient wage cuts to finance training empirical findings on the relationship between minimum wages and job training have failed to reach a consensus previous research has relied primarily on survey data from individual workers that typically lack both detailed measures of job training and important information about the characteristics of firms this study addresses the issue of minimum wages and on the job training with a unique employer survey we find no evidence indicating that minimum wages reduce the average hours of training of trained employees and little to suggest that minimum wages reduce the percentage of workers receiving training

the layoff rat race we investigate how discretionary investments in general and specific human capital are affected by the possibility of layoffs after investments are made firms may have to lay off workers and will do so in inverse order of the profit that each worker generates greater skill investments especially in specific human capital contribute more to a firm s bottom line so that workers who make those investments will be laid off last we show that as long as workers bargaining positions are not too weak workers invest in specific human capital in order to reduce layoff probabilities indeed workers over invest in skill acquisition from a social perspective whenever their bargaining power is strong enough even though they only receive a share of any investment more generally we characterize how equilibrium skill investments are affected by the distribution of worker abilities within firms the probability that a firm will downsize and the distribution of employment opportunities in the economy

general training by firms apprentice contracts and public policy workers will not pay for general on the job training if contracts are not enforceable firms may if there are mobility frictions private information about worker productivities however prevents workers who quit receiving their marginal products elsewhere their new employers then receive external benefits from their training in this paper training firms increase profits by offering apprenticeships which commit firms to high wages for those trainees retained on completion at these high wages only good workers are retained this signals their productivity and reduces the external benefits if they subsequently quit regulation of apprenticeship length a historically important feature enhances efficiency appropriate subsidies enhance it further

do legal minimum wages create rents a re examination of the evidence the effects of minimum wage laws have interested economists for many years while much of the research regarding minimum wage laws has focused on its employment effects several economists have been concerned with the laws effects on the non pecuniary aspects of jobs there is disagreement in the literature as to whether minimum wage legislation creates rents in those jobs for which the law is a constraint several researchers have argued that firms will offset any rent created by the minimum wage by reducing the non wage aspects of the job 4 7 14 15 in a recent paper holzer katz and krueger 5 present evidence suggesting that employers do not completely offset the minimum wage they use information on application rates for job openings found in the employment opportunities pilot project data set eopp to test for the existence of rents on minimum wage jobs minimum wage jobs are found to have longer queues of applicants than other jobs ceteris paribus which suggests the existence of rents this paper presents additional tests of the existence of rents using the eopp data we find that workers who received starting wages equal to the minimum wage have a significantly higher probability of quitting than workers paid either less than or more than the minimum wage this result seems to contradict the findings of holzer katz and krueger regarding minimum wage jobs as we see it our findings support wessels 15 contention that since wages are more visible than non pecuniary aspects of compensation low wage workers mistakenly queue for minimum wage jobs thinking them more attractive than they are but then quit when reality sets in the paper is organized as follows section ii discusses the existing theoretical and empirical research regarding minimum wages section iii presents our empirical procedures section iv discusses the eopp data set and in section v we discuss our results finally in section vi we draw some tentative conclusions and discuss future research

the wage and employment dynamics of minimum wage workers this study uses panel data to examine the wage and employment dynamics of minimum wage workers compared with workers earning above the minimum minimum wage workers are much more likely to be new entrants or to exit the labor market changes in industry occupation and access to job training are particularly important to improving the wages of minimum wage workers many minimum wage workers earn less than their potential wage temporarily because of nonwork circumstances that make higher paying jobs less attractive duration of minimum wage employment at one extreme if minimum wage workers were entry level workers who quickly accumulate skills that push their wages above the minimum a minimum wage hike would have a relatively short term effect on any given worker s income on the other extreme if all minimum wage workers find themselves in dead end jobs that provide no opportunities for wage growth a hike in the minimum wage could have long term effects on their incomes there are several studies that provide insights into the wage growth of minimum wage workers using 1984 1985 data from the survey of income and program participation sipp smith and vavrichek 1992 show that over 60 of workers earning the minimum wage in 1984 were earning more than the minimum wage one year later for those with wage gains the typical wage increase was approximately 20 long 1999 finds similar results using the 1992 1993 sipp using national longitudinal survey data from the early 1980s schiller 1994 finds that after entering a minimum wage job only 15 of continuing workers were still earning the minimum wage after three years while most minimum wage workers realize sufficient wage growth to rise above the minimum wage relatively quickly a significant minority does not the existing literature provides some insight into which workers are most likely to be stuck at the minimum a fairly consistent finding is that less educated workers and part time workers are less likely to rise above the minimum however the understanding of the processes at work in determining the extent of wage growth is limited

water competition through the water energy nexus assessing the economic impacts of climate change in a mediterranean context abstract the impacts of climate change on water resources availability are expected to be adverse especially in drier climate regions such as the mediterranean increased water scarcity will exacerbate competition for water resources not only between sectors but also between countries sharing transboundary river basins due to the mutual dependence of the energy sector on water resources and of the water services provision sector on energy inputs the water energy nexus is acknowledged as a major challenge for the near future with hydropower representing one of the most direct links in this nexus the aim of this paper is to assess the economy wide impacts of the concurrent effects of climate change driven impacts on water availability and the sectoral and regional competition for scarcer water resources in order to accomplish that goal an integrated modelling approach is developed where a computable general equilibrium model including raw water as a production factor is linked to times pt a bottom up model of the energy sector a case study is provided for the mediterranean country of portugal results for 2050 show that macroeconomic impacts are significant and encompass important inter sectoral differences that in turn depend on the degree of competition between sectors impacts are stronger when water consumption by spanish sectors is considered as this intensifies water scarcity in portugal thus the paper allows to gain insight in the broader water energy economy nexus and the additional costs that the dependence on water resources availability in transboundary river basins represents to an economy both aspects being of utmost importance for climate adaptation and energy policy making

an evaluation of yts the youth training scheme yts is much the most significant public policy intervention in the uk training market since the 1964 industrial training act ita this paper presents an economic evaluation of yts we begin in part ii by outlining the history and mechanics of the scheme part iii describes the market failure or failures which yts addresses and part iv assesses how successful it has been in tackling these problems finally part v considers the scheme s future what further changes are needed to improve its effectiveness

do minimum wages affect non wage job attributes evidence on fringe benefits although many studies have tested neoclassical labor market theory s prediction that employers will react to binding minimum wages by reducing employment levels much less empirical research has explored the possibility that employers also respond to minimum wages by adjusting non wage components of the job such as fringe benefits job safety and access to training using current population survey data for 1979 2000 this study investigates the effect of minimum wage legislation on the provision of employer health insurance and employer pension coverage the authors examine effects of state and federal variation in minimum wages on groups likely to be affected by the minimum wage and compare these effects to estimates found for groups unlikely to be affected whether the analysis uses only state level variation or federal and state variation in minimum wages the results indicate no discernible effect of the minimum wage on fringe benefit generosity for low skill workers

training and union wages abstract this paper investigates whether unions through imposing wage floors that lead to wage compression increase on the job training our analysis focuses on germany based on a model of unions and firm financed training we derive empirical implications regarding apprenticeship training intensity layoffs wage cuts and wage compression in unionized and nonunionized firms we test these implications using firm panel data matched with administrative employee data we find support for the hypothesis that union recognition via imposing minimum wages and wage compression increases training in apprenticeship programs

the economics of private sector training a survey of the literature abstract this survey organizes and summarizes existing theoretical work on private sector training the theoretical models focus on investment efficiency finance and turnover recent developments in the on the job training literature are characterized by strategic interaction between employers and employees and emphasize market imperfections

minimum wage effects in the longer run exposure to minimum wages at young ages could lead to adverse longer run effects via decreased labor market experience and tenure and diminished education and training while beneficial longer run effects could arise if minimum wages increase skill acquisition evidence suggests that as individuals reach their late 20s they earn less the longer they were exposed to a higher minimum wage at younger ages and the adverse longer run effects are stronger for blacks if there are such longer run effects of minimum wages they are likely more significant than the contemporaneous effects on youths that are the focus of research and policy debate

central wage setting under multiple technological equilibria a mechanism for equilibrium elimination instituting an initial round of centralized wage setting before an ultimate round of decentralized wage bargaining may actually raise employment a general multi equilibrium model is set up with strategic complementarities in the implementation of a new technology through aggregate demand spillovers in this model centralized wage setting to establish an outside option wage which is selectively binding on lo tech firms may achieve the big push to a hi tech general equilibrium with higher employment output wages and profits

implications for minimum wage policies of an s shaped labor supply curve abstract a model of family labor supply provides a rationale for raising minimum wages when the labor supply response is negative at low wages under those circumstances the labor market can be caught in a malthusian poverty trap of excess supply unemployment overextended workdays child labor and falling wages raising minimum wages may therefore help resorb this excess supply and stabilize the labor market setting a virtuous cycle in motion in a two sector context such a policy would increase wages in both the covered and uncovered sectors evidence from a study of costa rica in particular is consistent with those conclusions

performance promotion and the peter principle this paper considers why organizations use promotions rather than just monetary bonuses to motivate employees even though this may conflict with efficient assignment of employees to jobs when performance is unverifiable use of promotion reduces the incentive for managers to be affected by influence activities that would blunt the effectiveness of monetary bonuses when employees are risk neutral use of promotion for incentives need not distort assignments when they are risk averse it may sufficient conditions for this are given the distortion may be either to promote more employees than is efficient the peter principle effect or fewer

understanding price controls and nonprice competition with matching theory we develop a quality competition model to understand how price controls affect market outcomes in buyer seller markets with discrete goods of varying quality while competitive equilibria do not necessarily exist in such markets when price controls are imposed we show that stable outcomes do exist and characterize the set of stable outcomes in the presence of price restrictions in particular we show that price controls induce non price competition price floors induce the trade of inefficiently high quality goods while price ceilings induce the trade of inefficiently low quality goods

enriching a theory of wage and promotion dynamics inside firms in previous work we showed that a model that integrates job assignment human capital acquisition and learning can explain several empirical findings concerning wage and promotion dynamics inside firms in this article we extend that model in two ways first we incorporate schooling and derive further testable implications that we then compare with the available empirical evidence second and more important we show that introducing task specific human capital allows us to produce cohort effects we further argue that task specific human capital is a realistic concept and may have many important implications we also discuss limitations of our extended approach

specific training sometimes cuts wages and always cuts turnover turnover falls with tenure but wages do not always rise and sometimes fall with tenure we reconcile these findings by revisiting an old issue how gains from firm specific training are split between workers and firms the division is determined by a stationary distribution of outside offers the lower the wage a firm pays to a specifically trained worker the more profit it makes but the more likely the employee is to leave the optimal time paths of wages and turnover show that if marginal product is increasing wages need not be increasing but it always implies a falling turnover rate

price controls non price quality competition and the nonexistence of competitive equilibrium we investigate how price ceilings and floors affect outcomes in continuous time double auction markets with discrete goods and multiple qualities when price controls exist the existence of competitive equilibria is no longer guaranteed hence we investigate the nature of non price competition and how markets might evolve in its presence we develop a quality competition model based on matching theory equilibria of the quality competition model always exist in such price constrained markets moreover they naturally correspond to competitive equilibria when competitive equilibria exist additionally we characterize the set of equilibria of the quality competition model in the presence of price restrictions in a series of experiments we find that market outcomes closely conform to the predictions of the model in particular price controls induce non price competition between agents both in theory and in the experimental environment market behaviors result in allocations close to the predictions of the model

the sectoral and regional economic consequences of climate change to 2060 this paper presents a new detailed global quantitative assessment of the economic consequences of climate change i e climate damages to 2060 the analysis is based on an assessment of a wide range of impacts changes in crop yields loss of land and capital due to sea level rise changes in fisheries catches capital damages from hurricanes labour productivity changes and changes in health care expenditures from diseases and heat stress changes in tourism flows and changes in energy demand for cooling and heating a multi region multi sector dynamic computable general equilibrium model is used to link different impacts until 2060 directly to specific drivers of economic growth including labour productivity capital stocks and land supply as well as assess the indirect effects these impacts have on the rest of the economy and on the economies of other countries it uses a novel production function approach to identify which aspects of economic activity are directly affected by climate change the model results show that damages are projected to rise twice as fast as global economic activity global annual gross domestic product losses are projected to be 1 0 3 3 by 2060 of the impacts that are modelled impacts on labour productivity and agriculture are projected to have the largest negative economic consequences damages from sea level rise grow most rapidly after the middle of the century damages to energy and tourism are very small from a global perspective as benefits in some regions balance damages in others climate induced damages from hurricanes may have significant effects on local communities but the macroeconomic consequences are projected to be very small net economic consequences are projected to be especially large in africa and asia where the regional economies are vulnerable to a range of different climate impacts for some countries in higher latitudes economic benefits can arise from gains in tourism energy and health the global assessment also shows that countries that are relatively less affected by climate change may reap trade gains

the determination of sterling m3 1963 88 an evolutionary macroeconomic approach an evolutionary approach which focuses upon the behavior of banks and their institutional links with the bank of england is used to understand the process of sterling m3 determination over 1963 88 it is argued on several grounds that this supply side approach is more fruitful than one that applies money demand theory furthermore the econometric methodology adopted is different to that generally found in the money demand literature in addition to the discovery of a stable evolutionary model of sterling m3 an important finding is that property prices are influential in its determination copyright 1992 by royal economic society

ex post unbalanced tournaments tournaments create strong incentives under the assumption that the competition between the agents is balanced if at the outset one agent is stronger than the other the tournament is ex ante unbalanced and incentives break down handicaps can in this case restore incentives in practice competing agents are often overall equally strong but have different sorts of strengths then competition will typically be unbalanced ex post and incentives break down but handicaps cannot be used we show how a simple means introducing the possibility of a tie can often resolve the problem we examine under what conditions incentives are maximized by ties

the effect of individual uncertainty on the specificity of human capital empirical evidence from career developments in professional soccer this study looks at careers in professional soccer to investigate the determinants of human capital hc specificity inspired by labour market research we formulate three hypotheses on how uncertainty about the usefulness of individuals more productive specific skills affects their investment in more flexible general skills the empirical analysis is based on unique panel data on school grades soccer evaluations and sociodemographic characteristics of 90 elite players from the youth academy of a german bundesliga club we find that senior and long serving players who are comparably certain that their soccer specific capital will be sufficient to pursue a lucrative professional career invest less in general hc at school expected soccer performance in contrast has a counterintuitive positive effect our results expand knowledge on the factors influencing hc specificity from the macro to the subject level and highlight practical implications for institutions that train gifted individuals