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

did the affordable care act young adult provision affect labor market outcomes analysis using tax data using a data set of us tax records spanning 2008 to 2013 the authors study the impact of the affordable care act aca young adult dependent coverage requirement on labor market related outcomes including measures of employment status job characteristics and postsecondary education they find that the aca provision did not result in substantial changes in labor market outcomes results show that employment and self employment are not statistically significantly affected although some evidence supports the increased likelihood of young adults earning lower wages not receiving fringe benefits enrolling as full time or graduate students and young men being self employed the magnitudes imply extremely small impacts on these outcomes in absolute terms and when compared to other estimates in the literature the authors find these results to be consistent with health insurance being less salient to young adults compared to other populations when making labor market decisions

job queues discrimination and affirmative action james r fain if employers have different becker type discrimination coefficients for different demographic groups then the implementation of affirmative action may have a differential impact on those groups we estimate two vector autoregressive models of the us economy including the unemployment rates of four demographic groups we find that a job queue existed before the implementation of affirmative action and that affirmative action changed the ordering of the job queue in manner that had a negative impact on nonwhite males we find evidence that affirmative action may have increased the unemployment rate of nonwhite males by increasing their duration of unemployment jel j71 j78 j64 j68 i introduction the relative status of demographic groups in the labor force has been undergoing significant change since the early 1960s throughout this period white females and racial minorities have experienced changes not only relative to white males but also relative to one another one such change is exhibited in relative unemployment rates figure 1 shows differentials in the smoothed unemployment rates using a 12 x 2 centered moving average for white females nonwhite males and nonwhite females for the years 1959 83 one can easily see that the relative unemployment burdens have varied over time focusing first on the two lines that are positive over the entire range one may see that prior to the late 1960s the status of nonwhite individuals especially nonwhite males relative to white females was improving however beginning in the late 1960s this trend reversed the unemployment rate differential between nonwhite males and white females increased from a low of 1 03 in july 1969 to a high of 11 12 in march 1983 similarly after declining during the 1960s the unemployment rate differential between nonwhite females and white females increased from a low of 3 49 in october 1969 to a high of 9 16 in august 1983 these reversals in trend indicate the status of white females relative to both nonwhite males and nonwhite females began improving in the late 1960s figure 1 also shows the status of nonwhite females improved relative to that of nonwhite males during the same time period the unemployment rate differential between nonwhite males and nonwhite females increased from a low of 3 13 in february 1968 to a high of 2 38 in february 1983 these three unemployment rate differentials all declined in the 1960s a time of tremendous social change and strong economic growth but all of these trends reversed direction in the 20 month period from february 1968 to october 1969 after the trend reversal the status of white females improved relative to both nonwhite males and nonwhite females and the status of nonwhite females improved relative to that of nonwhite males to put it another way nonwhite males lost ground relative to both nonwhite females and white females our goal is to examine what role if any the implementation of affirmative action in 1968 had in reversing these trends other possible explanations of the above noted reversal in trends certainly exist but several factors point to affirmative action as a potential cause of these changes first the timing is correct the trends reversed in close proximity to the implementation of affirmative action second whatever caused these reversals affected all minority groups did so within a short 20 month time span and its impact was sustained over a number of years a new federal policy designed to change the way firms hire minorities should have exactly this type of effect finally as we will argue below imposing affirmative action on discriminating employers will not benefit all demographic groups equally discriminating employers will continue to discriminate though the pattern of discrimination may change many of the traditional explanations of changes in relative unemployment rates are unlikely candidates to explain these significant and sustained reversals of longstanding trends

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

detecting and removing discrimination under equal opportunities policies abstract this paper surveys part of the recent voluminous literature on the economics of discrimination focusing on two key questions first how should discrimination be measured and can in fact unambiguous estimates be derived as the basis for detecting where discrimination is present and setting in train measures to eliminate it second to what extent has the implementation of equal opportunities legislation improved the relative standing of women and minority workers in the labour force this section includes a discussion of the likely effects of recent changes in the law such as the equal value amendment in the uk or the introduction of comparable worth in the usa the survey concludes that our ability to detect discrimination at all precisely is still rudimentary and consequently policy measures are likely to be inefficient for this reason

do increased premium subsidies affect how much health insurance is purchased evidence from the self employed abstract this paper estimates the effect of recent federal and state level increases in the deductibility of health insurance premiums for self employed individuals which reduced the after tax price of health insurance on both the take up of coverage and the amount of insurance purchased using a panel of tax returns filed by self employed taxpayers from 1999 to 2004 we estimate a take up elasticity of 0 316 overall with significantly higher elasticities for single taxpayers on the intensive margin we find an elasticity of 0 733 overall

the urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets mit administrativen verknupften betriebs beschaftigtendaten fur westdeutschland untersucht diese studie ob ein teil des urban wage premiums durch eine geringere lohnsetzungsmacht von arbeitgebern auf dichteren arbeitsmarkten erklart werden kann wir zeigen zunachst dass das arbeitsangebot an firmen in dichteren arbeitsmarkten lohnelastischer ist die lohnsetzungsmacht der arbeitgeber also weniger ausgepragt ist diese unterschiede lassen eine lohnpramie von 1 1 bis 1 6 prozent bei einem anstieg der bevolke rungsdichte um 100 log punkte erwarten anschliesend zeigen wir dass die geschatzte lohnpramie bei kontrolle fur unbeobachtete zeitkonstante personenheterogenitat um 1 1 bis 1 4 prozentpunkte fallt wenn wir auf die regionalen suchfriktionen bedingen unsere ergebnisse legen nahe dass ein wesentlicher teil des urban wage premiums auf geringere suchfriktionen in dichteren arbeitsmarkten zuruckzufuhren ist

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

the impact of equal opportunity policy on sex differentials in earnings and occupations women began to enter nontraditional occupations at an increasing rate at the same time federal equal opportunity policy was strengthened in 1972 equal employment opportunity eeo policy was strengthened and expanded and equal opportunity in education became federal policy for the first time these policies constitute a two pronged attack on sex discrimination because they address impediments to mobility on both the demand and supply sides of the labor market together they should increase women s access to nontraditional jobs and to the skills necessary to perform them during the 1970 s women made occupational gains that are concentrated disproportionately in the white collar occupations one explanation for this is that the impact of federal equal opportunity policy differs across schooling levels in section i i discuss federal equal opportunity policy section ii contains empirical evidence on the direct effects of eeo policy on sex differentials in earnings and occupational segregation by sex section iii presents estimates of changes in the effect of schooling on women s entry into nontraditional occupations during the 1970 s and attempts to determine what portion may be due to equal educational opportunity policy and to indirect effects of eeo policy

productivity and the role of college in narrowing the male female wage differential in the usa in 1980 this study analyses the impact that productivity factors and the particular role of college have upon the inequality in male and female wages using the 1980 1 100 public use sample the findings herein suggest that whereas both black and white females and black males who entered the labour force in 1975 or later possess productivity characteristics that are superior to their elder counterparts the productivity characteristics of white males entering the labour force over this period are significantly inferior to those possessed by older white males also in sharp contrast to a voluminous literature that concludes that college widens the wage gap between the sexes this analysis shows that college played a paramount role among the productivity characteristics in narrowing the gender wage differential in 1980

intertemporal market effect on gender earnings differentials lawyers in canada 1970 80 the conventional methodology for decomposition of cross sectional earnings differentials is extended to include a market effect on intertemporal changes in earnings and to analyse the changes in gender differentials over time the integrated cross sectional and intertemporal methodology is illustrated by a decomposition of the change in the earnings differential that occurred during the 1970s between male and female lawyers in canada an unprecedented rate of growth in the supply of lawyers during the 1970s in canada was associated with changes in the gender earnings differential in the legal profession this rapid supply growth had an almost negligible net impact on female earnings but a negative impact of 15 on the male earnings this explains the narrowing of the earnings differential by almost 30 over the decade although three fifths of the gender differential in 1970 and half of the differential in 1980 were attributable to the differences in the characteristics of the two groups these chang

public health insurance individual health and entry into self employment we investigate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into self employment health insurance systems that distinguish between the two sectors of employment create incentives or disincentives to start a business for different individuals we estimate a discrete time hazard rate model of entry into self employment based on representative household panel data for germany which include individual health information the results indicate that an increase in the health insurance cost differential between self employed workers and paid employees by 10 per month decreases the probability of entry into self employment by 1 7 of the annual entry rate this shows that entrepreneurship lock which an emerging literature describes for the system of employer provided health insurance in the usa can also occur in a public health insurance system therefore entrepreneurial activity should be taken into account when discussing potential health care reforms

an analysis of the effects of higher education on wage differentials between blacks and whites by gender in the united states previous analyses that have examined the effect to higher education on the wage differences between blacks and whites have largely been focussed on males and failed to provide quantitative estimates of the impact that higher education has on discrimination and the black white wage differential for both genders in 1980 in particular we find that equalizing the years of college completed by black and white males reduces the wage differential by 14 conversely equalizing the years of college completed by black and white females exacerbates wage inequality by increasing the wage advantage accruing to black females by nearly 24 hence the egalitarian policy mission of higher education in narrowing wage inequality between blacks and whites is complicated by the issue of gender

health insurance and self employment evidence from massachusetts previous studies have found that health insurance is an important component of workers labor market decisions in this article the author studies the effect of health insurance availability and p

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

the gender pay gap fringe benefits and occupational crowding using data from the 1991 national longitudinal survey of youth the authors estimate earnings equations for each of seven occupational categories and the aggregate sample when fringe benefits are excluded from the compensation measure a gender coefficient is statistically significant that is women are found to have received significantly lower compensation than men within six of the seven occupational categories the exception being the most female dominated category when an index of compensation that includes fringe benefits is used however a gender coefficient is significant in only one category which contains relatively heterogeneous jobs gender specific regressions are used to estimate what part of the earnings gap between men and women is due to differences in traits the results indicate that occupational assignment is the primary determinant of the pay gap a result that is consistent with a crowding explanation of that gap

direct estimates of the demand for race and sex discrimination for empirical economists one of the most fruitful areas of research has been the examination of racial sexual differences in wages and employment opportunities the dynamic movement of relative wages during the 1960s not only aroused widespread interest among the academic community it also spurred the search for ways to quantify both the level of wage discrimination and the secular changes in wage discrimination the two principle research models used in this regard have been what i shall refer to as the relative demand curve and wage decomposition approaches both approaches are inspired by the model exposited in gary becker s seminal work the economics of discrimination the relative demand curve approach interprets the intercept and time trend variables and secular changes in these variables as discrimination shifters in regression of relative wages on the relative quantities of blacks to whites the wage decomposition approach on the other hand looks at separate race specific wage regressions and takes the difference in the regression coefficients weighted by the mean value of the respective variable as indicators of wage discrimination in the next section i argue that both of these empirical approaches to estimating wage discrimination or changes in wage discrimination are intrinsically incapable of measuring becker s tastes for discrimination variable in section iii a new empirical approach to estimating wage discrimination the production function approach is presented and applied in section iv to a time series cross section of black and white

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

does health reform affect self employment evidence from massachusetts this paper evaluates whether the implementation of the 2006 massachusetts health reform law affected the decision of taxpayers to be self employed using both difference in differences and synthetic control methods on a panel of tax returns that spans 1999 2010 though tenuous our results suggest that the reform led to a decline in the rate of taxpayers earning a majority of income from self employment in addition it appears to have had a positive impact on earning some self employment income among joint filers and earning the majority of income from self employment among older taxpayers but these were offset by negative impacts on single filers and taxpayers age 35 49

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

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

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

discrimination fact or fiction an examination using an alternative approach women earn less than men blacks earn less than whites these facts are blatantly observable in the economy with the proliferation of civil rights legislation in the last two decades social scientists have become increasingly concerned with the determination of the wage gap attributable to discrimination because workers have different productivities statistical methods have been used to isolate the discrimination effect from wage differences justified by differences in productivity the primary method estimates an equation with wages expressed as a function of productivity and sex or race since productivity cannot be directly observed a number of proxies for productivity have been used such as education tenure and experience statisticians 11 have shown that the necessity of using proxies results in statistical biases which may tend to overestimate discrimination they have shown that mismeasuring any independent variable can impart a bias on each regression coefficient thereby causing a severe misestimate of discrimination these errors are proportional to the degree of mismeasurement the relative degree of error variance in the independent variables as well as to the amount of intercorrelation between each variable and race or

trends in earnings differentials by gender 1971 1981 this paper clarifies trends in relative earnings by sex over the decade 1971 1981 and decomposes these trends to determine which factors contributed to a decline and which to an increase our analyses are based upon data from the annual demographic files of the current population survey for 1972 and 1982 this study is unique in that it estimates earnings functions in each year which are corrected for selectivity bias it is found that such a correction markedly raises the progress of white women relative to men among blacks the impact of the selectivity bias correction was to substantially lower the relative earnings increase of women however the coefficients on the selectivity variable were not significant the findings suggest declining sex role specialization and discrimination as conventionally measured over the decade on the other hand contrary to expectations the total effect of variables reflecting the sex composition of the individuals occupation worked to widen the sex differential over the period the sex differential was also adversely affected by a decline in the relative return to education especially for whites authors modified

identification of job lock and inefficient labor market mobility the common practice of linking employment with certain fringe benefits notably health insurance has long been thought to impede labor market mobility thereby producing a phenomenon called job lock a sizable literature has developed theoretical frameworks for how job lock impacts the labor market and empirically estimated the magnitudes of these effects however most empirical studies rely on identification strategies that do not separately identify productivity enhancing from productivity reducing labor market mobility this article develops a simple theoretical framework showing how prior identification strategies confound both types of mobility and outlines conditions where productivity reducing mobility is of greatest concern

informality and the expansion of social protection programs evidence from mexico many countries are moving from employer based to universal health coverage which can generate crowd out in mexico seguro popular provides public health coverage to the uninsured using the gradual roll out of the system at the municipality level we estimate that seguro popular had no effect on informality in the overall population informality did increase by 1 7 for less educated workers but the wage gains for workers who switch between the formal and the informal sector were not significantly affected this suggests that marginal workers do not choose between formal and informal jobs on the basis of health insurance coverage

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

tax incentives and the decision to purchase health insurance evidence from the self employed the tax reform act of 1986 introduced a new tax subsidy for health insurance purchases by the self employed we analyze the changing patterns of insurance demand before and after tax reform to generate new estimates of how the after tax price of insurance affects the discrete choice of whether to buy insurance we employ both traditional regression models and difference in difference methods that compare changes in insurance coverage across groups around tra86 the results from our most carefully controlled comparison suggest that a 1 percent increase in the cost of insurance coverage reduces the probability that a self employed single person will be insured by 1 8 percentage points

measuring direct discrimination in labor markets using a frontier approach evidence from cps female earnings data numerous studies of earnings differentials have attempted to measure discrimination against females or minorities by decomposing the total differential between males and females or whites and non whites into an explained and unexplained portion typically these studies follow the work of oaxaca 8 however a number of criticisms can be raised with these techniques 9 5 4 of which two are particularly important that the reduced form wage equations for the two groups will not be identical in every case and that there may be large and unobservable differences between the characteristics of the two groups for which the wage equations cannot account either of these problems are sufficient to make it impossible to use residual analysis to measure discrimination attempts to address these problems and obtain reliable and consistent estimates of the extent of discrimination are important for policy purposes low and villegas 7 address the first of these problems by suggesting the use of hedonic wage equations which contain only human capital characteristics or proxies and characteristics which directly affect the hedonic parameters in this framework perfect substitution between the workers is assumed their work however leaves the second problem unresolved in this paper a stochastic earnings frontier with a discrimination discount is used to estimate discrimination against women an earnings frontier for females that depends upon marginal productivity as measured by human capital and labor market characteristics of females is estimated discrimination is assumed to be the amount female earnings are removed from the frontier less any labor market inefficiency since these estimates will depend solely on female data they do not depend upon an assumption of similarity between males and females this procedure allows

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

teacher quality in public and private schools under a voucher system the case of chile chile is unusual in having long term experience with nationwide school vouchers a key criticism of school voucher systems is that they make it easier for private schools to attract better teachers to the detriment of public schools this paper uses longitudinal data from chile to estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming dcdp model of teacher and nonteacher labor supply decisions and to explore how wage policies affect the composition of the teacher labor force in public and private schools in the model individuals first decide whether to get a teaching degree and then choose annually from among five work home sector alternatives empirical results show that private voucher schools attract better teachers than public schools however the existence of the private voucher sector also draws higher productivity individuals into the teaching profession

the impact of increased tax subsidies on the insurance coverage of self employed families evidence from the 1996 2004 medical expenditure panel survey the share of health insurance premiums that self employed workers can deduct when computing federal income taxes rose from 30 percent in 1996 to 100 percent in 2003 data from the 1996 2004 medical expenditure panel survey are used to show that the increased tax subsidy was associated with substantial increases in private coverage among self employed workers and their spouses estimated effects on public coverage and the coverage of children were smaller in magnitude and less precisely estimated simulation results show that much of the post 1996 subsidy increase represented an inframarginal transfer to persons who would have had held private insurance anyway nevertheless increased subsidization expanded private coverage by 1 1 to 1 7 million persons at a cost per newly insured person less than 2 300 in all simulations a cost below that found in simulations of more broadly based subsidies

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

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

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

are estimates of sex discrimination by employers robust the use of never marrieds current decomposition estimates of sex discrimination by employers are not robust many unobservables like motivation and attitudes toward work are left unmeasured we estimate sex discrimination with two plausible methods of controlling for a major unobservable acceptance of male and female traditional roles in the household the methods offer enormously different estimates of sex discrimination one estimates sex discrimination at over 61 percent of the female wage the other finds little sex discrimination and possibly favoritism toward women the range in estimates is so large that point estimates of sex discrimination by employers are of little use to policymakers

disentangling the effect of arthritis on earnings a simultaneous estimate of wage rates and hours worked poor health affects both wage rates and hours of work here we develop a procedure for examining the separate impact of a specific chronic disease arthritis on wages and hours worked and then translate these results into earnings our methodology provides a consistent approach for measuring how a specific chronic disease affects total earnings as well as its component parts we find that arthritis affects wage rates and hours worked differently and the pattern of these effects differs considerably between men and women

black agricultural economists discussion the authors of these three papers have performed a valuable service by reviewing and analyzing the status of blacks who have chosen agricultural economics as their profession occupation the estimated number of black agricultural economists continues to be small relative to the total number 32 in 1970 41 in 1981 and 56 in 1983 during this period the estimated number of blacks holding ph d degrees has risen slightly from 17 54 in 1970 to 18 44 in 1981 and then to 25 45 in 1983 however the percentage of blacks with ph d degrees remains lower than the percentage for all agricultural economists which has exceeded 60 since 1976 strauss and tarr apparently data on the number of black female economists were not tabulated

employment based health insurance and job mobility is there evidence of job lock the majority of privately insured americans obtain their health insurance through their own or a family member s employment the rationale for employers to provide health insurance is straightforward by pooling the risks of individuals employers can reduce adverse selection and lower administrative expenses in addition they benefit from tax laws allowing businesses to deduct their health insurance costs these advantages of employer provision however must be weighed against the distortions they may generate in individual labor market decisions in particular health insurance may distort job mobility if employees decide to keep jobs they would rather leave for fear of losing coverage for preexisting conditions a possibility that has been termed job lock this paper attempts to quantify the effect of employer provided health insurance on the labor market mobility of individuals the link between employer provided health insurance and

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

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

the reverse regression problem statistical paradox or artefact of misspecification the usual approach to wage discrimination asks whether certain individuals receive lower wages for the same level of productivity characteristics the reverse approach asks whether these individuals are more productive given the same wages when these hypotheses are tested incompatible conclusions seem to result to circumvent specification problems nonparametric techniques were used to estimate canadian male female wage experience profiles the findings indicate that when the correct functional form is specified and the effects of childrearing activities are controlled for there exists a wage experience gap favoring men regardless of the approach suggesting that the paradox may be simply an artifact of misspecification

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

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

the effects of college education on the male female wage differential researchers disagree on the reasons for the observed wage differential between males and females in the united states while some researchers attribute much of the wage differential to differences in endowments of productivity characteristics between the sexes others attribute it to discrimination in the labor market most researchers who believe that differences in endowments of productivity characteristics explain a large part of the wage gap between the sexes do not completely discount the existence of discrimination in the labor market even though there is a general agreement that discrimination accounts for part of the male female wage differential the proportion of wage differential found to be attributable to discrimination in research work depends upon the method of decomposing the wage differential and whether the researcher controls for occupational and industrial differences most estimates of the male female wage differential have used the decomposition analysis popularized by oaxaca 11 and blinder 2 this approach to decomposing the male female wage differential assumes that in the absence of discrimination the equilibrium wage equals either the male wage rate or the female wage rate depending on whether the male or female wage structure is used as the basis for decomposition of the wage differential unless this is true the discrimination component of oaxaca s approach to the decomposition of the wage differential is not consistent with becker s 1 competitive market discrimination coefficient for labor of different productivities defined as the difference between the observed wage ratio and the wage ratio that would prevail in the absence of discrimination if females are paid less than the value of their marginal product and males are paid more than the value of their marginal product as a result of discrimination elimination of discrimination will result in an equilibrium wage that is likely to be less than the male wage and greater than the female wage any decomposition analysis that uses either the female wage or the male wage as the reference wage will over or underestimate the effects of discrimination in explaining the male female wage differential this has led butler 3 to argue that it is impossible to

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

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

the effect of self employed health insurance subsidies on self employment abstract this paper estimates the effect of an increase in the deductibility of health insurance premiums for self employed individuals on the probability of being self employed using a panel of tax returns from 1999 to 2004 we estimate fixed effects instrumental variable regressions for the probability of being self employed entering into self employment and exiting from self employment our results suggest that this policy increased the probability of being self employed by 1 5 percentage points and increased the probability that a taxpayer would be primarily or exclusively self employed by 1 1 and 0 35 percentage points respectively these effects explain about a third to a half of the total increase in self employment by these definitions over the sample period we also find that the probability of entering self employment increased by 0 8 percentage points and find suggestive evidence that the probability of exit decreased by 2 8 percentage points

community rating and the market for private non group health insurance abstract prior research on adverse selection in health insurance markets has found only mixed evidence for adverse selection in group settings we examine the impact of state community rating regulations enacted in the 1990s which greatly limited insurers ability to risk rate premiums to determine if adverse selection is more evident in non group insurance markets using data from large national surveys we find evidence of a shift to a less healthy pool of non group enrollees as a consequence of community rating community rating made healthy people 20 to 60 less likely to be insured by non group health insurance in addition we found evidence that young and healthy people were 20 to 30 more likely to be uninsured as a result of community rating we also find evidence that individuals in poor health were 35 to 50 more likely to be insured in the non group market but only limited evidence suggesting that persons in poor health were less likely to be uninsured our results are further supported by findings suggesting that non group enrollees were sicker as a result of the community rating laws lastly we find evidence suggesting that hmo penetration in the non group market increased disproportionately in states that implemented community rating relative to states that did not

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

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

teacher mobility and merit pay evidence from a voluntary public award program abstract this paper analyzes the effect on teacher mobility of a program that rewards excellence in teaching practices in chile successful applicants receive a 6 annual wage increase for up to 10 years and an award that publicly recognizes their excellence the paper uses a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of the public merit award the program does not alter transitions out of teaching however it increases the mobility of awardees within the school system this is consistent with the program providing a credible public signal of teacher quality

earnings differentials and market structure theoretical models suggest that market structure may influence the magnitude of earnings differentials and or discrimination observed in the marketplace empirical results with regard to wage differentials and labor force participation patterns have been mixed most wage differential studies have focused on males due to difficulty in obtaining reliable data for women and to the sample selection problem of women s labor force participation decisions this paper characterizes market structure by four categories regulated nonprofit government and nonregulated industries within these structural categories earnings differentials are examined for men and women adjusting for race occupational stratification and sample selection bias

an alternative approach to the analysis of wage differentials a key question in many studies of male female or black white wage differentials is how much of the differential can be explained by economic factors and how much remains unexplained the unexplained portion is then ascribed to discrimination since oaxaca 17 first formalized this decomposition the residual difference methodology has been the dominant methodology utilized in empirical studies of wage differentials 4 7 8 10 15 18 but recently the validity of the assumptions underlying the residual difference methodology have been called into question by butler 5 6 in this paper the theoretical underpinnings of the residual difference methodology are reexamined and an alternative theoretical framework for this methodology is suggested the new framework overcomes the shortcomings inherent in oaxaca s specification of the model and therefore provides a sound theoretical foundation for the residual difference decomposition

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

errors in variables and reverse regression in the measurement of wage discrimination abstract several recent articles have proposed reverse regression as a solution to errors in variables problems in wage discrimination regressions this note demonstrates that the reverse regression approach is biased against finding evidence of discrimination

on the decomposition of wage differentials the often used method for decomposing wage differentials into human capital and discrimination components is reformulated so that both t he disadvantage or cost discrimination it imposes on a black or minority wage earner and the advantage or benefit it bestows on a white or majority wage earner can be estimated copyright 1988 by mit press

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

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

schooling and changes in the inequality in male and female earnings in the united states over the 1970s ref jnl au fn j s sn akin eau au fn i sn garfinkel eau chti the quality of education and cohort variation in black white earnings ditferentials comment title american economic review vol 70 year 1980 fp 186 lp 191 ejnl bk au fn g sn becker eau title the economics of discrimination pub name university of chicago press cty chicago year 1957 epub ebk jnl au fn a h sn beller eau chti the impact of equal opportunity policy on sex differentials in earnings and occupations title american economic review vol 72 year 1982a fp 171 lp 175 ejnl jnl au fn a h sn beller eau chti occupational segregation by sex determinants and changes title journal of human resource vol 17 year 1982b fp 371 lp 192 ejnl jnl au fn b r sn bergmann eau chti the effect on white income of discrimination in employment title journal of political economy vol 6 year 1971 fp 294 lp 313 ejnl jnl au fn a s sn blinder eau chti wage discri

is there monopsonistic discrimination against immigrants the authors investigate immigrants and natives labor supply to the firm within an estimation approach based on a dynamic monopsony framework applying duration models that account for unobserved worker heterogeneity to a large administrative employer employee data set for germany they find that immigrants supply labor less elastically to firms than do natives under monopsonistic wage setting the estimated elasticity differential predicts a 7 7 log points wage penalty for immigrants thereby accounting for the entire unexplained native immigrant wage differential of 5 8 to 8 2 log points when further distinguishing immigrant groups differing in their time spent in the german labor market their immigration cohort and their age at entry the authors find that the observed unexplained wage differential is larger for those groups that show a larger elasticity differential relative to natives these findings not only suggest that search frictions are a likely cause of employers more pronounced monopsony

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

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