male interracial wage differentials competing explanations persistent interracial wage differentials present a challenge for neoclassical models of discrimination which claim that long rung competition is not consistent with persistent discrimination this study provides an empirical examination of the missing variable and job competition models of interracial wage inequality the results argue strongly against the missing variables approach and strongly in favor of the job competition model specifically this study finds that about one half of the male african american white and latino white interracial wage differentials are due to market discrimination against african americans and latinos in addition the positive and significant coefficients on the race gender employment density variables strongly affirm the job competition model s contention that access to white especially male dominated jobs increases an individual s wage rate regardless of race racial job segregation then is an important explanatory variable for racial wage discrimination copyright 1999 by oxford university press

the effect of occupational segregation on the relative earnings of black males abstract an earnings model which incorporates racial differences in occupational attainment is employed to investigate sources of the earnings differential between black and white males our results suggest that occupational segregation of black men accounts for nearly half of the observed racial earnings differential

employment and unemployment effects of unions despite an extensive literature examining the effects of unions on wages little attention has been paid to the resultant aggregate employment consequences of this change in the relative cost of unionized labor this article uses 1983 current population survey data to estimate the effects of union strength on the probability of employment and labor force participation union strength which reflects both union coverage and the union wage differential is found to decrease employment and increase unemployment by a small but significant amount these effects are concentrated primarily among females and young males while little impact is found on prime age males

occupational self selection a human capital approach to sex differences in occupational structure a rich and diverse literature exists concerning the distribution of labor incomes one approach namely that of human capital concentrates on lifetime accumulation paths of earnings capacity units human capital individual variations in human capital imply differences in earnings power thereby yielding strong implications concerning earnings distribution within a population despite its explanatory power the human capital model has been widely criticized one criticism centers on its inability to obtain inferences concerning occupational distribution the purpose of this paper is to alleviate at least some such criticism by applying the hedonic price approach so as to embed occupational choice into the human capital framework the significance is that neoclassical economic theory can be used to obtain implications concerning the determinants of occupational structure excerpt

union effects on municipal employment and wages a longitudinal approach this article examines municipal union employment and wage effects in a sample of police fire sanitation streets and highways and finance and control departments from approximately 900 u s cities during 1977 80 cross section results for 1980 suggest positive union contract effects on fire fighter and sanitation employment and wages consistent with demand shifts due to union political influence in municipal bargaining i then model potential omitted variables as nonstationary fixed effects and apply longitudinal models to estimation of employment and wage changes between 1977 and 1980 the longitudinal results provide little support for the demand shift hypothesis

the gender earnings differential in the russian transition economy using data from the russia longitudinal monitoring survey rlms the first nationally representative household survey in the russian federation the author examines the gender earnings differentia

implicit contracts moral hazard and unemployment this paper considers a firm whose marginal revenue product of labor is a random variable we derive the form of an optimal long term contract between workers and the firm under the assumption that labor s marginal product is observed by the firm but not by the workers we show that the existence of asymmetric information causes unemployment to be greater than in a situation where information about labor s marginal product is public or where employment is determined in spot markets in particular unemployment can occur when the marginal product of labor exceeds the reservation wage

the determinants of occupational success in britain this paper is concerned with measuring the true impact of certain human capital variables on an individual s occupational position the particular variables which are analysed are training qualifications and spells of sickness and unemployment the longitudinal nature of the data enables us to control for all relevant individual attributes which remain fixed over the period of the sample this is vitally important because these attributes are strongly correlated with the variables of interest and would seriously corrupt estimates derived from a single cross section a method of generating consistent estimates as n oo t fixed for a dynamic model with fixed effects is also illustrated

a test of lazear s theory of delayed payment contracts according to lazear workers and firms enter into long term implicit contracts that discourage shirking and malfeasance by shifting compensation to the end of the contract such delayed payment contracts are less likely to occur in jobs in which it is comparatively simple to monitor worker effort this paper uses data from the national longitudinal survey and the dictionary of occupational titles to test that hypothesis in particular it tests whether jobs that involve repetitive tasks tend to be characterized by an absence of pensions mandatory retirement long job tenures and high wages for older workers

allocation of individuals to job levels under rationing summary we augment an ordered response model for the job level at which individuals desire to work with allowance for individual reporting of a discrepancy between actual and desired job level and we also investigate possible biases from restricting the observations to the employed and omitting the unemployed we find that the latter bias can be ignored and interpret this as evidence that the unemployed are not choosier than the employed people claiming inadequate capability utilization are not markedly differently allocated than those claiming a proper match women s lower job levels cannot be explained from rationing by capability utilization

caste and tribe inequality evidence from india 1983 1999 abstract despite policies targeting scheduled castes sc and scheduled tribes st there remain large disparities of living standards between sc st and non sc st households in india the sc st households may be poorer because they possess lower human and physical capital but they may also earn lower returns to these assets this study finds that 30 50 of the welfare disparities are attributable to different returns such structural differences between the sc and the non sc st are partly because the sc earn lower returns to schooling a large part of the structural disparities between the st and the non sc st comes from the fact that the areas where the st live are different from those where the non sc st live in addition the st tend to earn lower returns even with controls for geographical conditions

occupational attainment and gender earnings differentials in mexico women earned about 20 8 less than men in mexico in 1987 a difference that increased to 22 0 by 1993 using 1987 93 data from mexico s national urban employment survey the authors study the role of occupational attainment in this wage differential most of the 1987 93 increase in the gender log monthly earnings gap they find can be explained by relative chnges in human capital endowments wage coefficient changes would have slightly reduced the gap all else equal the increasing male female earnings differential was tempered by a substantial decline in gender differences in occupational attainment from 1987 to 1993 most of the male female differences in earnings in both 1987 and 1993 can be explained by differences in rewards to individual endowments rather than gender differences in endowments

labor earnings discrimination and the racial composition of jobs this paper examines the effect of the racial composition of labor markets on wage rates and the racial wage gap the wage rates of white as well as black workers are significantly lower in industry occupationregional groups with high densities of black workers while the racial wage gap does not vary systematically with respect to racial density interpretation of racial gap estimates can be sensitive to inclusion of a racial density variable particularly in sparse specifications an explanation for the wage density relationship cannot be established but results are most consistent with a quality sorting explanation and to a lesser extent the crowding hypothesis

estimating wage discrimination in the labor market if labor supply curves are not perfectly inelastic wage discrimination induces some minority workers to leave the labor force studies of discrimination that focus only on wage differentials overlook these disincentive effects on minority employment

caught in a productivity trap a distributional perspective on gender differences in malawian agriculture in targeting poverty gains sub saharan african governments have emphasized the alleviation of gender differences in agricultural productivity the empirical studies on the gender gap however have frequently used data that were limited regarding geographic and topical coverage and or details on intra household dynamics the study provides a nationally representative analysis of the gender gap in malawi and decomposes it for the first time at the mean and at selected points of the agricultural productivity distribution into i a portion driven by gender differences in levels of observable attributes the endowment effect and ii a portion driven by gender differences in returns to the same set of observables the structure effect sequentially the authors unpack the relative contributions of different factors towards the gender gap and suggest future research priorities to inform policy interventions the authors find that while female managed plots are on average 25 percent less productive 82 percent of this differential is explained by differences in endowments mainly due to high value crop cultivation and levels of household adult male labor inputs the factors driving the structure effect include child dependency ratio and effectiveness of household adult male labor and inorganic fertilizer the gender gap increases across the productivity distribution ranging from 22 percent at the 10th percentile to 37 percent at the 90th percentile while it is explained predominantly by the endowment effect in the first half of the distribution the contribution of the structure effect towards the gender gap increases steadily above the median standing at 34 percent at the 90th percentile

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

job satisfaction trade unions and exit voice revisited many studies have found that unionized workers express less job satisfaction than nonunion workers the exit voice explanation of this phenomenon is that dissatisfied nonunion workers tend to qui

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 transition and country of origin effects in the early stage occupational assimilation of immigrants some evidence from australia we examine the occupational attainment of recent immigrants at 2 years post migration in order to study their early stage assimilation into the labour market in australia human capital endowments and country of origin effects are examined for six occupational groups we also study transitions across occupations from source to host country the empirical approach utilizes the ordered generalized extreme value ogev model which embodies differing utility functions across occupational outcomes as well as accounting for any ordering in these outcomes the results suggest that the transferability of knowledge and skills is affected by cultural and social backgrounds and that non western immigrants are disproportionately channelled into inferior jobs post migration the investigation of the country of origin effect on the skilled migrants occupational transition process is especially apt in the context of skill shortages in many host countries

measurement of inequity in health care with heterogeneous response of use to need we propose a method of measuring and decomposing inequity in health care utilisation that allows for heterogeneity in the use need relationship this makes explicit inequity that derives from unequal treatment response to variation in need as well as that due to differential effects of non need determinants under plausible conditions concerning heterogeneity in the use need relationship and the distribution of need existing methods that impose homogeneity will underestimate pro rich inequity this prediction is confirmed for four middle income asian countries in those countries around one half of the observed socioeconomic inequality is due to utilisation being more responsive to need among the higher wealth and urban dwelling individuals

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

on the determination of occupational attainment and mobility the underlying motivation for much of the research into the determinants of occupational attainment is to enable inferences to be made as to the relative position of various groups at a point in time or an individual s economic mobility over time in this paper we compare unordered and ordered discrete choice approaches to estimating models of occupational attainment estimates from these methods differ substantially indicating that the determination of which technique is more appropriate is an important issue the ordered method appears to be more consistent with the motivation of previous research and requires less computer time unordered models however are better able to predict occupational distribution

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

earnings and ethnicity in trinidad and tobago this study employs 1993 continuous sample survey of the population cssp data for trinidad and tobago to investigate the determinants of earnings by ethnicity the data organised into three ethnic groupings reveal lower levels of remuneration in the labour market for africans and indians than for individuals of other ethnicities taken as a whole while the larger portion of the earnings differentials generally appears to be explained by ethnic differences in characteristics valued by the labour market africans and indians would benefit substantially if they were to receive the same rates of remuneration for their educational endowments as workers of other ethnicities in the trinidad and tobago labour market notwithstanding indians lowest average earnings africans appear more likely to be discriminated against

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

discrimination and the unemployment durations of white and black males in this study we develop a model to decompose the longer unemployment duration of blacks into discriminatory and non discriminatory components by extending becker s theory of discrimination to job search theory the discriminatory component is seen to be the result of two separate effects first a white treatment advantage shortens the unemployment duration of whites because they receive more frequent and higher wage offers than would prevail in the absence of discrimination for working alongside blacks second a black treatment disadvantage lengthens the jobless spell of blacks because blacks receive lower wage offers than would prevail without discrimination as discriminating employers extract quasi rents from their labour we estimate our model using date from the cps displaced workers survey the results show that 3 81 of the 4 58 weeks longer unemployment spell for blacks is due to discrimination with 3 11 weeks resulting from the white treatment advantage and 0 7 weeks emanating from the black

the sexual orientation wage gap the role of occupational sorting and human capital using data from the 2000 u s census the authors explore two alternative explanations for the sexual orientation wage gap occupational sorting and human capital differences they find that lesbian women earned more than heterosexual women irrespective of marital status while gay men earned less than their married heterosexual counterparts but more than their cohabitating heterosexual counterparts results of a oaxaca blinder decomposition indicate that the relative wage advantages observed for some groups of lesbians and gay men were mainly owing to greater levels of human capital accumulation particularly education while occupational sorting had little or no influence the relative wage penalties that were observed in other cases however cannot be attributed either to differences in occupational sorting or to human capital an analysis employing a dinardo fortin and lemieux decomposition which allows for variation in the wage gap at different points along the wage distribution broadly confir

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

mandatory retirement as a clause in an employment insurance contract this paper postulates the existence of an employment insurance contract in which firms insure the employment of workers at a predetermined wage against potential age related declines in productivity to limit its liability the firm establishes an age limit to its promise the mandatory retirement age it is demonstrated that pareto efficient contracts exist which involve mandatory retirement at a specific age the existence of these contracts including mandatory retirement increases workers life time utility and encourages the accumulation of human capital empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the model

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

new evidence on sex segregation and sex differences in wages from matched employee employer data we use new matched employer employee data to estimate the contributions of sex segregation and wage differences by sex within occupation industry establishment and occupation establishment cells to the overall sex gap in wages in contrast to earlier data used to study this question our data cover all industries and occupations across all regions of the united states we find that segregation of women into lower paying occupations industries establishments and occupations within establishments accounts for a sizable fraction of the sex gap in wages nonetheless approximately one half of the sex gap in wages remains attributable to the individual s sex

evaluation of deadweight spending in regional enterprise financing tokila a and haapanen m evaluation of deadweight spending in regional enterprise financing regional studies the problem of deadweight spending has been previously studied using diverse methods however regional variations in deadweight spending have not yet been considered an evaluation of regional business subsidies in finland during 2000 2003 is conducted the analysis reveals regional differences in deadweight spending in proportional and particularly in monetary terms deadweight spending is dependent on many firm project and regional level factors which also largely account for regional differences however there seems to be some regional variation in deadweight spending that originates from differences in the subsidy processes among regions tokila a et haapanen m evaluer les investissements non productifs dans l aide regionale a la creation d entreprise regional studies dans le passe la question des investissements non productifs a ete etudiee a partir de diverses methodes cepend

the limitations of structural theories of commercial policy if a structural theory is one that purports to explain behavior in terms of environmental conditions and that largely eschews analysis of the internal processes of decision makers then it is difficult to identify a theory of commercial policy which is not structural most microeconomic theory is structural so are most balance of power theories in the realm of theories of commercial policy hegemonic stability theories as well as some recently developed theories of international tariff levels fit this description in the latter category judith goldstein s work which attempts to account for american commercial policy in terms of the ideology of american central decision makers and charles kindleberger s ambitious sketch of a general theory of 19th century tariff changes in terms of the diffusion of liberal ideology constitute lonely examples of nonstructural research strategies

when will the gender gap in retirement income narrow among recent retirees women receive substantially less retirement income from social security and private pensions than men increases in women s labor market attachment and earnings relative to men over the past 50 years provide some optimism for an improvement in female retirement income particularly for married women this study shows that women s income from social security and private pensions has improved only slightly relative to men over the past 25 years using data on people approaching retirement age over the next 20 years prospects for future improvement are investigated one of the main conclusions is that pension income among women particularly married women will rise sharply relative to men s over the next few decades but a substantial gap could remain even if women close the gap in experience and salaries

public sector unions and municipal employment using 1980 data for a large sample of u s cities the author reexamines recent empirical findings of a positive association between public sector unionization and municipal employment several researchers have interpreted this correlation as evidence that public employee unions successfully exert political pressure to raise the demand for municipal services structural estimates of labor demand and the determinants of police and fire unionization reveal however that economies of scale in union formation are at least partly responsible for any positive association between public sector unionization and municipal employment the author concludes that previous studies overstate the amount of political clout wielded by municipal labor unions

gender and racial earnings differentials in academic labor markets this study estimates earnings differentials across racial and gender groups among college faculty and decomposes these differentials into the components attributable to differences in individual and institutional characteristics and that which remains unexplained we find that white females earn approximately 4 percent less than white males black males earn 7 4 percent more black females earn one percent more hispanic males earn 2 7 percent more hispanic females earn 1 7 percent less and asian males earn 7 7 percent more than comparable white males we also find a significant earnings penalty for being a naturalized citizen or noncitizen versus an u s born citizen

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

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

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

a comparison of choice based multinomial and nested logit models the family structure and welfare use decisions of divorced or separated women home based work differs from other employment because the work site is the home itself this difference means that the fixed costs of working at home are less than the fixed costs of working on site and that home based workers may engage in joint market

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

the impact of unionization on male female earnings differences in canada the impact of unionization on male female earnings differences in canada is analyzed using data spanning 1981 to 1988 a period in which the male female unionization gap narrowed considerably gender differences in union density union wages and nonunion wages are decomposed into characteristics related and discriminatory components we find that the drop in the gender unionization gap prevented an increase of 7 percent in the overall wage differential between men and women also male female earnings differences in the nonunion sector make a substantially larger contribution to the gender earnings gap than do those in the union sector

computer simulation for supply demand interaction the most basic result in economics is that for perfect competition equilibrium price and quantity are determined by the intersection of aggregate demand and supply curves how this equilibrium is achieved and the adjustment process have received less attention the adjustment process may be based on aggregate demand and supply curves only via the imaginary actions of an auctioneer or a tatonnement process or on modeling of price and excess aggregate demand interaction such models are less plausible because they assume agents have perfect information about a unique price at which all transactions are concluded alternative assumptions necessitate explicit modeling of individual agents and their search behaviour which increases greatly the level of complication of the model though it is possible to deal with such models analytically stigler 1961 rothschild 1973 fisher 1973 mcafee and mcmillan 1988 special assumptions are needed to obtain desired results lesourne 1992 studies many of these models mostly in a descriptive manner in the framework of self organizing systems dynamic models which explicitly include multiple interacting agents contain many details that are difficult to handle without computers computer simulation makes it possible to include almost any assumption about individual agents and their interactions and to find out the consequences of these assumptions on the path toward equilibrium one of the few examples of such simulation is the work by albin and foley 1992 which deals with geographically dispersed agents with costs of communication applications of computer simulation to other areas of economics can be found in forrester 1961 witt 1986 and orcutt 1990 the current paper describes a computer simulation system that has been organized to enable simulation of interaction using a wide range of assumptions regarding agents search and samples so that the consequences

decentralized dispersed exchange without an auctioneer abstract we stimulate exchange among geographically dispersed agents who face real costs of communication along with bounds to rationality and calculation exchange is entirely decentralized it is initiated by individual agents who broadcast costly messages indicating their interest in trade it is accomplished by bilateral bargaining between pairs of agents agents use the information gained from previous attempts at local trade to calculate their search strategies for succeeding rounds this decentralized mechanism can achieve a substantial improvement in the allocation of resources and the average welfare of agents in comparison with a randomized initial endowment but in comparison with walrasian equilibrium agents who begin with endowments of equal value end up with substantially unequal wealth although the initial inequality of utility is reduced

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

revisiting forever gained income dynamics in the resettlement areas of zimbabwe 1983 96 this study examines income dynamics for a panel of households resettled on former white owned farms in the aftermath of zimbabwe s independence there are four core findings i over a 13 year period 1983 96 there has been an impressive accumulation of assets and a dramatic increase of crop incomes ii the rise of crop incomes is partly due to asset accumulation but largely to increased asset returns hi differences between households in initial conditions such as previous farming experience have few persistent effects and iv income growth has been widely shared income inequality has fallen sharply and the largest percentage increases in incomes are recorded by households that initially had the lowest incomes

income losses of women and men injured at work women and men injured at work in wisconsin during 1989 and 1990 have similar levels of lost earnings in the quarter of injury however in the three and one half years after the post injury quarter women lose an average of 9 2 percent of earnings while men lose only 6 5 percent even after accounting for covariates with a variant of the oaxaca blinderneumark decomposition the disparity in long term losses remains differences in injury related nonemployment account for about half the covariate adjusted gap over the four year post injury period changes in hours worked may explain all or part of the remaining gap gender differ

firms market behavior under imperfect information and economic natural selection abstract the economic natural selection argument claims superior survival performance for profit maximizing firms this assertion is investigated in a factorial simulation study assuming imperfect information three alternative models of firms behavior are tested with respect to their ability to adapt to the observed realizations of non stationary demand processes findings show that in such a scenario it is the difference in implicit learning and adaption capabilities rather than that in motivation or goals which affects survivability consequently differential bankruptcy and disengagement rates vary with the peculiarities of the market environment the tested assertion cannot generally be confirmed

trade union membership tenure and the level of job insecurity recently there have been suggestions that job insecurity is on the increase two factors which may explain this are the reduced role of the trade unions and increasing flexibility in the labour market with an associated reduction in the proportion of workers in permanent fulltime employment for the first time the relationship between trade union membership tenure and the workers perception of job insecurity is examined using british data drawn from the 1986 7 social change and economic life initiative econometric evidence supports in part the view that while job insecurity encourages workers to join trade unions overall trade unions tend to increase job security and also suggests that there is a strong relationship between tenure and job insecurity

does employee body weight affect employers behavior in this paper we study the possible segregation of overweight individuals already established in the labor market when firms make decisions on hiring firing and promoting most existing studies use wage equations to document wage differences but little is known about the reason for the differences and the sorting of workers using an equilibrium search model search frictions are taken into account additionally sorting is examined using a logit model we find that wage differences between workers who have a normal weight and workers who are overweight or obese can be explained by differential firm behavior with respect to both the job offer arrival rate and the probability of being promoted

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

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

gender segmentation at work in china s privatized rural industry some evidence from shandong and jiangsu abstract in this paper we argue that labor segmentation exists along gender lines in the newly privatized township and village enterprises in rural china the results based upon surveys of workers enterprise managers and local officials indicate that women are segregated into production type jobs in certain industries have less control over their work do not receive a return to experience and are adversely affected by wage discrimination there is a clear gender bias in favor of men in share holding a new and important form of workplace benefit that confers wealth and affects control within the workplace and thus privatization has contributed to gender segmentation the results support the general argument that the process of economic transition is not gender neutral

blinder oaxaca decomposition for tobit models in this article a decomposition method for tobit models is derived which allows the differences in observed outcome variables between two groups to be decomposed into a part that is explained by differences in observed characteristics and a part attributable to differences in the estimated coefficients monte carlo simulations demonstrate that in the case of censored dependent variables this decomposition method produces more reliable results than the conventional blinder oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models finally our method is applied to a decomposition of the gender wage gap using german data

gender differences in salary and promotion in the humanities in their annual review of academic salaries the american association of university professors observes large gender related salary differentials at doctoral level institutions male professors at the rank of full professor earn 11 4 more than women full professors data on academic labor markets from the survey of doctorate recipients to evaluate gender differences in salaries and promotion probabilities differences in employment outcomes by gender are found using two methods the oaxaca decomposition is used to examine salary differentials and duration analysis is used to estimate promotion to tenure while gender salary differences can largely be explained by academic rank substantial gender differences in promotion to tenure exist after controlling for productivity demographic characteristics and primary work activity

industry migration and growth in the south for at least the last two decades the south and southwest have been the fastest growing regions in the united states during this period we have witnessed considerable shifts in the location of economic activity and overall the movement has been decidedly toward the south since the early sixties when this southern migration began to accelerate an increasing amount of public attention has been directed to this topic so much so that it is now popularly referred to as the sunbelt phenomenon numerous explanations have been advanced to account for this rapid growth in the south but three explanations have persistently evoked an impressive level of debate first many have argued that a significant portion of this regional redistribution can be attributed to differentials in state and local taxing policies in particular the state corporate income tax these rates vary considerably across states but even more important is the observation that there have been significant changes in the structure of corporate taxes over the last few decades beginning in the early 1950s the relative tax rate for several southern states particularly those in the east south central and west south central divisions began to decline sharply on the other hand relative tax rates for three divisions new england the east north central and the midatlantic rose in the early sixties by 1970 the relative tax rate ranged from 0 60 in the west south central down from 1 20 in 1950 to 1 37 in the mid atlantic up from 1 15 in 1950 notwithstanding these stylized facts the consensus from previous empirical work on industry location suggests that state taxes have not influenced the direction or magnitude of industry migration however there are reasons to believe that acceptance of this conclusion may be premature for example in the early body of work results were based on simple correlations of tax levels and changes in either value added or employment 2 more recent attempts to empirically model corporate tax effects have arrived at somewhat ambiguous results carlton 1977 examining three 4 digit industries found that corporate tax differentials failed to explain any of the variation in new births of firms across smsas hodge 1979 while confirming carlton s results for the same industries discovered that taxes have significantly affected regional investment patterns in another industry not covered in carlton s study 3 why taxes mattered in one industry and not in the other three remained a matter of ad hoc speculation a second explanation alleges that states in the south have begun to exhibit a more favorable business climate although it is difficult to measure directly a state s business climate one important manifestation of that climate is its position with respect to the division of power between union and management in the collective bargaining process legal obstacles to union organization and bargaining power will be viewed by firms as a positive signal of a pro business environment the creation of legislative obstareceived for publication october 29 1981 revision accepted for publication april 16 1982 miami university the author is especially indebted to michael ward at the rand corporation for numerouls helpful discussions throughout the preparation of this study also the author benefited from the advice and comments of john antel robert cotterman lee lillard john lunn william j moore james smith finis welch and two referees of this review financial suppoi t was provided by the foundation for research in economics and education at ucla and the university of british columbia humanities and social sciences committee i the relative tax is defined as a state s tax rate divided by the average for all states as in most economic discussions it is relative price that matters 2 for a review of earlier work see due 1961 some of the studies reviewed include bloom 1955 campbell 1958 floyd 1952 and larson 1957 see also garwood 1952 3 most of the other empirical work focused exclusively on intt urban location decisions and hence had no reason to examine state corporate taxes however they found local tax differentials inter zonal were unimportant in determining intra urban movement for example see moses and williamson 1967 and schmenner 1978

the impact of the threat of bankruptcy on the structure of compensation this article builds and tests a model of the impact of a firm s bank ruptcy probability on its propensity to offer deferred compensation schemes using 1983 current population survey data we find that ceteris paribus lower failure rates raise the incidence of pensions for nonunion workers outside manufacturing further we find some evidence that among those workers with a pension a higher industry failure rate steepens tenure earnings profiles jointly controlling for union nonunion and pension no pension selectivity such a result suggests that workers discount implicit promises of future earnings increases by the likelihood that the firm will not survive

an equilibrium search model with coworker discrimination this article analyzes the effect of coworker discrimination on wage and unemployment differentials between males and females using a search model an increase in female participation drives up the wage offer to female workers and raises female employment moreover an increase in the degree of discrimination by males results in gains to them in terms of higher wages and lower unemployment but results in losses to females in terms of lower wages and higher unemployment the benefit to males provides an explanation for the persistence of discrimination