estimates of the returns to quality and coauthorship in economic academia salaries of academic economists are studied to determine if individuals receive differential returns to publishing articles of varying quality and to coauthored versus single authored articles estimates based on detailed data and a flexible nonlinear least squares procedure indicate that substantial returns to quality exist and that an individual s return from a coauthored paper with n authors is approximately 1 n times that of a single authored paper

formulating research policy on expert advice abstract national research assessments represent the principal policy used by countries with public university systems to improve the quality of their universities research they typically employ expert panels of local academics to assess journal quality and use such assessments to reward publications we propose a model of how experts assess quality and test this model using data from the recent australian assessment controlling for objective quality we show that experts cognitive biases dominate their assessments consequently such assessments exaggerate the quality of the experts research and understate that of their colleagues our model can explain 95 of the variation in assessments

productivity in swedish electricity retail distribution this paper examines productivity growth in electricity retail distribution in sweden in a multiple output multiple input framework the approach used is nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea productivity is measured by means of the malmquist index productivity comparisons are made between different types of ownership and between different service areas the study indicates a high rate of productivity growth due to economies of density when measured over a period of 17 years the results show no significant differences in productivity growth between different types of ownership or economic organization

aging and productivity among economists economists productivity over their careers and as measured by publication in leading journals declines very sharply with age there is no difference by age in the probability that an article submitted to a leading journal will be accepted rates of declining productivity are no greater among the very top publishers than among others and the probability of acceptance is increasingly related to the author s quality rather than the author s age

obsolescence of knowledge and career publication profiles some evidence of differences among fields in costs of interrupted careers in recent years women have received about 45 percent of all baccalaureate degrees but only approximately 20 percent of all ph d s does this imply that academic careers as compared with careers of the wider market for college graduates are less conducive to dual career family objectives evidence suggesting the relative tradeoff of these objectives is shown by the fact that over the last thirty years the zero order correlation between average cohort fertility and the proportion of ph d recipients who are women is 0 939 a female recipient of a doctorate is twice as likely as a male recipient to have specialized in the humanities and only one third as likely to have specialized in a physical science field furthermore of those who receive a doctorate in physical science a male is 60 percent more likely than a female to pursue research as a primary work activity in the humanities on the other hand a woman is at least as likely as a man to have research as an initial postdoctoral work activity obviously many factors affect opportunities and resultant decisions to enter particular careers and to select specific occupational specialties this study considers only onethe rate of obsolescence or depreciation of knowledge as reflected in the age profile of cited works this measure of the obsolescence of knowledge refers to the rate of decay in the relative frequency at which citations are made to a particular vintage of research communications as the communications age in other words the usefulness of older published research papers as an input to current research depreciates over time the rate at which this depreciation occurs is interpreted as measuring the durability of a professor s accumulated stock of knowledge evidence presented in section ii indicates that the durability of knowledge varies considerably from discipline to discipline this information raises a number of questions concerning how the durability of knowledge influences career decisions one influence considered here is that of a temporary career interruption for example if a woman experiences a break in her academic career such as for the purpose of raising children she will incur an opportunity cost in the sense that her research knowledge will to some extent become obsolete consequently her accumulated stock of knowledge will decline relative to those professors who have continuous careers the relative cost imposed on a woman who pursues dual family career objectives is higher the less durable the jobrelated knowledge this difference in relative costs is expected to alter career incentives the results presented here suggest that women who pursue academic careers have responded to these incentives before discussing the evidence on female careers i consider a more general model in which a professor is assumed to have a continuous career profile this model which is more appropriately viewed as a male model of investment behavior is used to analyze how the durability of a professor s knowledge affects his research productivity over a career interestingly the evidence suggests that a professor s response to less durable knowledge is not to compact all learning early in his career but rather to smooth learning over the career perhaps the most assistant professor arizona state university i would like to thank an anonymous referee and many friends for helpful comments on earlier drafts i am especially indebted to finis welch for valuable suggestions throughout the development of this paper the views expressed are my own and i am responsible for any possible errors

changing one s mind when the facts change incentives of experts and the design of reporting protocols experts often collect and report information over time what reporting protocol elicits the most information here a principal receives reports sequentially from an agent with privately known ability who observes two signals about the state of the world the signals differ in initial quality and unlike previous work differ in quality improvement the paper finds that mind changes inconsistent reports can signal talent if a smart agent improves faster also sequential reports dominate when the principal s decision is very sensitive to information a single report dominates if the mediocre agent s signals improve faster or the agent is likely mediocre

the effect on competition of banking sector consolidation following the financial crisis of 2008 abstract consolidation of the spanish banking sector after the financial crisis of 2008 raises concerns about potential negative effects on competition i use structural econometric methods to examine these anti competitive concerns in the spanish mortgage market i estimate a mixed logit model of mortgage demand and recover bank level cost information with a strategic model of price competition counterfactual experiments reveal that the observed increase in concentration is associated only with small variations in mortgage rates and market shares staying far from collusive levels this moderate change in industry conduct implies a small direct effect of consolidation on bank exposures to mortgage risk

anti herding and strategic consultation in this paper i analyze how careerist decision makers aggregate and use information provided by others i find that decision makers who are motivated by reputation concerns tend to anti herding i e they excessively contradict public information such as the prior or others recommendations i also find that some decision makers may deliberately act unilaterally and not consult advisers although advice is costless moreover advisers to the decision maker may not report their information truthfully even if the advisers care only about the outcome they bias their recommendation since they anticipate inefficient anti herding behavior by the decision maker

decision making in committees transparency reputation and voting rules in this paper i analyze the effect of the transparency of the decision making process in committees on the decisions that are eventually taken i focus on committees whose members are motivated by career concerns so that each member tries to enhance his own reputation when the decision making process is secretive the individual votes of the committee members are not exposed to the public but only the final decision thus individuals are evaluated according to the group s decision i find that in such a case group members are induced to comply with preexisting biases for example if the voting rule demands a supermajority to accept a reform individuals vote more often against reforms and exacerbate the conservatism of the voting rule when the decision making process becomes transparent and individual votes are observed this effect disappears and such committees are then more likely to accept reforms i also find that coupled with the right voting rule a secretive procedure may induce better decisions than a transparent one

misselling through agents this paper analyzes the implications of the inherent conflict between two tasks performed by direct marketing agents prospecting for customers and advis ing on the product s suitability for the specific needs of customers when structuring salesforce compensation firms trade off the expected losses from misselling unsuitable products with the agency costs of providing market ing incentives we characterize how the equilibrium amount of misselling and thus the scope of policy intervention depends on features of the agency problem including the internal organization of a firm s sales process the transparency of its commission structure and the steepness of its agents sales incentives jel m31 m37 m52 when purchasing unfamiliar products consumers often rely on information and advice pro vided by representatives of the seller this creates the possibility of misselling the question able practice of a salesperson selling a product that may not match a customer s specific needs 1 this problem is particularly severe in markets for technically complex products such as con sumer electronics auto repairs medical care and retail financial services including securities pensions insurance policies and mortgages an important feature of these markets is that the seller often deals with the customer through an agent rather than directly for example financial brokers typically recommend purchase of a specific product after inquiring about their customers particular circumstances and needs the possibility of abuse has led to regulation in some of these markets most notably for securities transactions the financial industry regulatory authority finra the major self regulatory organization for securities firms operating in the united states mandates that broker dealers make a reasonable effort to obtain information about the individual characteristics of their noninstitutional cus tomers and to ensure that their recommendations are suitable to customers financial situations

well informed intermediaries in strategic communication this paper studies how a sender with private information can influence the decisionmaker through well informed intermediaries both the sender and the intermediary may be independently objective or biased with the objective type assumed to pass on the most accurate information while the biased type wanting to push a particular agenda but also to appear objective although using one s own information is a sign of objectivity the biased intermediary selectively incorporates the sender s information to push his agenda and his truth telling incentives always decrease in those of the biased sender s hence measures raising the sender s reputation cost worsen the intermediary s distortion and may make the decisionmaker strictly worse off in contrast the biased sender s and the intermediary s truth telling incentives are strategic complements if they report simultaneously

efficiency analysis of german electricity distribution utilities non parametric and parametric tests this study applies non parametric and parametric tests to assess the efficiency of electricity distribution companies in germany traditional issues in electricity sector benchmarking are addressed such as the role of scale effects and optimal utility size as well as new evidence specific to the situation in germany labour capital and peak load capacity are used as inputs and units sold and the number of customers as output the data cover 307 out of 553 german electricity distribution utilities a data envelopment analysis dea is applied with constant returns to scale crs as the main productivity analysis technique whereas stochastic frontier analysis sfa with distance function is the verification method the results suggest that returns to scale play but a minor role only very small utilities have a significant cost advantage low customer density is found to affect the efficiency score significantly in particular in the lower third of all observations surprisingly east german utiliti

negative returns to seniority new evidence in academic markets recent research has suggested that the long observed negative association between seniority and pay among college faculty largely reflects below average research productivity of senior faculty a possibility that most earlier studies did not examine overlooked in both waves of studies however is match quality because the higher quality of the faculty institutional match implied by higher seniority should all else equal result in higher salaries failure to account for match quality inflates the estimated returns to seniority indeed that positive bias the authors find is roughly equal in magnitude to the negative bias caused by failure to account for research quantity and quality when they account for both match quality and faculty research productivity in an analysis of data on economics faculty at five research universities over a 21 year period the authors estimate that holding experience and other factors constant the penalty for twenty years of seniority is 16 of salary

labour force ageing and productivity performance in canada abstract this paper studies the direct impact of labour force ageing on productivity growth in 10 canadian provinces over the period 1981 2001 with an outlook to 2046 it shows that older workers are on average less productive than younger workers and that labour force ageing has a modest negative direct impact on productivity growth in canada the impact has increased since the middle of the 1990s will peak in 2001 11 and tail off afterwards during the peak period productivity growth in canada will be reduced by 0 13 to 0 23 percentage points per year with newfoundland being hit the hardest jel classification j21 o47

gender and promotion in the economics profession the authors use unique panel data on american economic association members to test for gender differences in promotion in a profession with a well defined promotion and job hierarchy and in which men and women exhibit similar labor market attachment the results suggest that over the period from the 1960s through the early 1980s female economists had lower levels of professional attainment and career advancement than did their male colleagues with similar attributes these gender differences remain in evidence despite controls for unobserved heterogeneity and self selection between academic and non academic jobs there is evidence however that promotion prospects for female economists significantly improved during the 1980s not only at all ranks but also within both ph d granting institutions and non ph d granting institutions in fact the results reveal no unexplained gender specific differences in promotion by the end of the 1980s

peddling influence through intermediaries a sender may communicate with a decision maker through intermediaries in this model an objective sender and intermediary pass on information truthfully while biased ones favor a particular agenda but also have reputational concerns i show that the biased sender and the biased intermediary s reporting truthfulness are strategic complements the biased sender is less likely to use an intermediary than an objective sender if his reputational concerns are low but more likely to do so if his reputational concerns are moderate moreover the biased sender may be more likely to use an intermediary perceived to be more biased

the relative impacts of economics journals 1970 1990 our data collection and database assembly efforts were assisted by john p sophocleus mark gwartney michele butler and scott ralston we received extremely valuable computer programming assistance from jon brunson and edward novak constructive comments were receivedfrom two anonymous reviewers financial supportfrom the faculty development committee at salisbury state university is gratefully acknowledged

network access charges vertical integration and property rights structure experiences from the german electricity markets abstract after the deregulation of the german electricity markets in 1998 the german government opted for a regulatory regime called negotiated third party access which would be subject to ex post control by the federal cartel office network access charges for new competitors are based on contractual arrangements between energy producers and industrial consumers as the electricity networks are incontestable natural monopolies the local and regional network operators are able to set monopolistic charges at their own discretion restricted only by the possible interference of the federal cartel office bundeskartellamt in this paper we analyze if there is evidence for varying charging behaviour depending on the supplier s economic independence structure of property rights or its level of vertical integration for this purpose we hypothesise that incorporated and vertically integrated suppliers set different charges than independent utility companies multivariate estimations show a relation between network access charges and the network operator s economic independence as well as level of vertical integration on the low voltage level for an estimated annual consumption of 1700 kw h vertically integrated firms set in accordance with our hypothesis significantly lower access charges than vertically separated suppliers whereas incorporated network operators charge significantly higher charges compared to independent suppliers these results could not have been confirmed for other consumptions or voltage levels

the determinants of econometric society fellows elections we study the results of elections of fellows of the econometric society we aremotivated largely by the question of whether these elections are fair where our de ni tion of fairness is that votes are based solely on the quality of the candidates if so thenconditional on quality other characteristics of the candidates such as geographic locationor subspecialty should not in uence the probability of election we nd that conditionalon a number of measures of the quality of the candidates other characteristics do sig ni cantly predict election for example an australian econometrician is less likely to beelected than a north america based economic theorist this is true whether or not wecontrol for quality measures one might object that even fully informed individuals may differ in their assessment ofquality and that neither the voters nor the authors of this study are fully informed aboutcandidates quality this is true in any study of the impact of ascriptive characteristics onoutcomes we discuss various interpretations of our ndings in the conclusion but readersmust draw their own conclusions about what the results imply about the roles of qualityand fairness in this electoral process 1 the electoral institutionmost members of the economics profession consider election as a fellow as an honor it recognizes prior professional achievements within what are the more technical areasof economics there are roughly 500 living fellows names are placed on the ballot inone of two ways i by the nominating committee of the society or ii by petition ofat least three members who need not be but usually are current fellows the ballotcontains the candidate s name and current af liation a list of at most six publications ashort statement of the candidate s contribution to economics and an indication of whetherthe nomination was by committee or by endorsers and if the latter from 1990 through2000 the names of all the endorsers the ballot deadline is april 30 the electorate dues paying current fellows receive the ballot in early autumn alongwith the nomination form for each candidate mark their ballots and return them tothe society s of ce results are announced in december names on the ballot are inalphabetical order with a different starting point in each annual election voters checkthe names of individuals whom they wish to be elected a candidate is elected who isapproved on at least 30 percent of the ballots returned typically about half the eligiblefellows cast votes losing candidates can be nominated in later years by either of thetwo methods but the process must be undertaken de novo

the technical efficiency of schools in chile this paper assesses the technical efficiency of schools in chile which is defined as the capacity of schools to generate the maximum output academic achievement given the quantity of inputs they use two alternative methodological approaches for measuring efficiency are used i estimation of a stochastic production frontier and ii data envelopment analysis dea which allows identification of the efficient production frontier of the schools analysed nonparametrically each of these techniques has advantages and limitations which are discussed in the paper they lead however to the same conclusions when a sample of 2000 schools is analysed the results obtained provide interesting points for educational policy discussion in chile

a theory of yes men this paper illustrates an incentive for workers to conform to the opinion of their supervisors when firms use subjective performance evaluation this desire to conform arises endogenously from the firm s need to induce the worker to exert effort the author shows that firms may optimally eschew the use of incentive contracts to retain workers incentives for honesty the author illustrates that the incentive to conform implies inefficiencies even when workers are risk neutral and is likely to lead to more centralized decision making than in the absence of the desire to conform copyright 1993 by american economic association

benchmarking and incentive regulation of quality of service an application to the uk electricity distribution networks abstract quality of service has emerged as an important issue in post reform regulation of electricity distribution networks regulators have employed partial incentive schemes to promote cost saving investment efficiency and service quality this paper presents a quality incorporated benchmarking study of the electricity distribution utilities in the uk between 1991 92 and 1998 99 we calculate technical efficiency of the utilities using data envelopment analysis technique and productivity change over time using quality incorporated malmquist indices we find that cost efficient firms do not necessarily exhibit high service quality and that efficiency scores of cost only models do not show high correlation with those of quality based models the results also show that improvements in service quality have made a significant contribution to the sector s total productivity change in addition we show that integrating quality of service in regulatory benchmarking is preferable to cost only approaches

the slowdown of the economics publishing process over the last three decades there has been a dramatic slowdown of the publication process at top economics journals a substantial part is due to journals requiring more extensive revisions various explanations are considered democratization of the review process increases in the complexity of papers growth of the profession and cost and benefit arguments changes in the profession are examined using time series data connections between these changes and the slowdown are examined using paper level data there is evidence for some explanations but most of the slowdown remains unexplained changes may reflect evolving social norms

the evolution of the scientific productivity of highly productive economists this paper studies the evolution of research productivity of a sample of economists working in the best 81 departments in the world in 2007 the main novelty is that in so far as a productivity distribution can be identified with an income distribution we measure productivity mobility in a dynamic context using an indicator inspired in an income mobility index suggested by fields 2010 for a two period world productivity is measured in terms of publications weighted by the citation impact of the journals where each article is published in the periodical literature we study the evolution of average productivity productivity inequality the extent of rank reversals and productivity mobility for seven cohorts as well as the population as a whole we offer new evidence confirming previous results about the heterogeneity of the evolution of productivity for top and other researchers however the major result is that contrary to what was expected for our sample of very highly productive scholars the effect of rank reversals between the two periods on overall productivity mobility offsets the effect of an increase in productivity inequality from the first to the second period in the youngest five out of seven cohorts jel a11 a12 b41 d63 i32

the inside scoop acceptance and rejection at the journal of international economics abstract there is little work on the inner workings of journals what factors seem to affect the ability to publish in a journal could simple rules which are already used by some journals like the desk rejection of a significant minority of papers help to streamline the process at what cost how well do journals seem to do in choosing papers what can we say about the extent of type 1 and type 2 errors do editors seem to have uniform standards or are some harsher than others we use data on submissions to the journal of international economics to help answer these questions

the evolution of male female earnings differentials in canadian universities 1970 2001 the evolution of academic salaries and the gender earnings gap in canadian universities is analysed using a unique statistics canada data set containing detailed information on all full time teachers at canadian universities over the period 1970 through 2001 male salaries declined across cohorts while female salaries remained stable consequently male female earnings differentials have narrowed recent years have also seen increasing variation in academic salaries for both men and women a gender earnings gap remains the bulk of which can be explained by differences in men s and women s rank and field the unexplained earnings gap has decreased over time on analyse l evolution des salaires et l ecart entre hommes et femmes dans les universites canadiennes entre 1970 et 2001 a l aide d une base de donnees unique de statistiques canada qui contient des renseignements detailles sur tous les professeurs a temps plein des universites canadiennes les salaires des hommes ont decline au fil des cohortes pendant que ceux des femmes demeuraient stables ce qui fait que les differentiels de salaires se sont amenuises au cours des annees recentes on a observe une variabilite croissante des salaires academiques tant pour les hommes que les femmes un ecart entre hommes et femmes persiste qui est attribuable aux differences dans les rangs et dans les champs d activites des hommes et des femmes l ecart qui demeure inexplique a diminue dans le temps

tools or toys the impact of high technology on scholarly productivity i introduction and motivation in the past several decades investment that makes communication easier has increased rapidly in the united states and other developed economies since the mid 1980s a combination of technical change and deregulation has also reduced long distance telephone rates in the united states by 50 reported by allen 1995 pitney bowes 1997 reported that fax usage increased by 20 between 1996 and 1997 alone and electronic mail e mail unknown before 1985 is ubiquitous today popular discussion of a wide range of additional examples of rapidly declining prices and explosive growth of the use of telecommunications is provided by cairncross 1997 attempts to measure the impact on aggregate total factor and labor productivity of these supposedly productivity enhancing investments in broad reaching technical improvements such as computing machinery and communications equipment have not met with great success as in morrison 1997 but see greenan and mairesse 1996 1 an alternative to measuring effects on the broader economy is to measure the impact of generalized technical change on productivity in specific activities observed at the micro level an earlier literature including griliches 1958 and trajtenberg 1989 has clearly traced the effect of specific innovations in raising productivity in specific sectors of the economy this article expands on that tradition by trying to identify the effect of the recent broad revolution in communications on one activity scholarly publishing we propose studying scholarly publishing before and after technical change greatly lowered communication costs we examine in particular whether increasing ease of communication has altered scholars choices about their methods of production and whether those methods yielded changes in the productivity of scholarly activity that are consistent with increasing access to new communications technologies 2 in section ii we discuss a model of the production process in scholarly writing in relation to the cost of communications in section iii we describe the unique data set we assembled to examine the relation between technical change and scholarly productivity section iv presents the results of using these data to test the hypotheses that we develop and section v compares coauthored to solo authored studies and provides a suggestion for the increased prevalence of the former section vi offers a consistent explanation for most of the results ii a model of scholarly production the example that we use in this study of the impact of technology is the nature and outcomes of the choices of co workers by authors of scholarly publications in economics the importance of team research has been stressed by a number of authors studying the economics of innovation including dasgupta 1988 who also presents a research summary so that our specific example has broader implications for the study of technical change has the decline in the cost of communication altered scholars choices in a way consistent with these technologies increasing scholarly productivity in examining scholarly productivity we focus on research output in particular we view scholars as having three production choices 1 work solo s 2 work with close by coauthor s c or 3 work with distant coauthor s d in the model in this section the scholar is assumed to choose a production technology that maximizes his or her scholarly productivity measured as the quality of the article produced in section vi we a dopt an alternative characterization of a scholar s choices we assume that the scholar has a wide range of potential research activities to choose among and has perfect knowledge of the productivity p valued in dollars of all potential matches s c sub i member of c and d sub i member of d 3 each match generates one solo equivalent article per period

on publication refereeing and working hard we present a model for academia with heterogeneous author types and endogenous effort to evaluate recent changes in the publication process in economics we analyze the implications of these developments on research output lowering the precision of refereeing signals lowers the effort choices of intermediate ability authors but invites more submissions from less able authors increasing the number of journals stimulates less able authors to submit their papers the editor can improve the journal s quality pool of submitted manuscripts by improving the precision of refereeing but not by lowering acceptance standards the submission strategy of an author is informative of his ability

regional differences in electricity distribution costs and their consequences for yardstick regulation of access prices abstract in this paper we estimate an average cost function for a panel of 59 swiss local and regional electricity distribution utilities as a basis for yardstick regulation of the distribution network access prices shleifer 1985 proposed yardstick competition in terms of price to regulate local monopolies producing a homogeneous good the regulated price for the individual firms depends on the average costs of identical firms the yardstick competition concept can also be applied to firms that produce heterogeneous goods if these goods differ only in observable characteristics to correct the yardstick for heterogeneity the regulator can use a multivariate estimation of an average cost function in the case of electricity distribution the heterogeneity of output consists mainly of different characteristics of the distribution service areas in this paper we follow shleifer s suggestion to estimate a multivariate average cost function that can be employed by the regulatory commission to benchmark network access prices at the distribution level several exogenous variables measuring the heterogeneity of the service areas were included in the cost model specification we find that the regional differences of the service areas e g area shares of forests agricultural areas or unproductive land and population density significantly influence electricity distribution costs

technical efficiency of european railways a distance function approach this study has two principal objectives the first objective is to measure and compare the performance of european railways the second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization are unlikely to be applicable using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988 1993 multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares cols the resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0 980 for the netherlands to 0 784 for italy with a mean of 0 863 the distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single output production functions where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a tornqvist index the results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings casting significant doubt upon the reliability of

the efficiency of museums a stochastic frontier production function approach this article examines the technical efficiency of museums based upon data derived from a questionnaire survey of south west england a stochastic frontier production function is estimated with output measured in terms of visitor numbers the cobb douglas function is shown to be the best representation of the production function average levels of efficiency are estimated to be fairly low at 45 5 with wide variations across museums the results indicate that high levels of public funding and voluntary activity have a significantly negative impact on technical efficiency it is argued that further research is needed to develop more sophisticated measures of the output of cultural industries and understand the economic importance of volunteers

the wrong kind of transparency in a model of career concerns for experts when is a principal hurt from observing more information about her agent this paper introduces a distinction between information on the consequence of the agent s action and information directly on the agent s action when the latter kind of information is available the agent faces an incentive to disregard useful private signals and act according to how an able agent is expected to act a priori this conformist behavior hurts the principal in two ways the decision made by the agent is less likely to be the right one discipline and ex post it is more difficult to evaluate the agent s ability sorting the paper identifies a necessary and sufficient condition on the agent signal structure under which the principal bene ts from committing not to observe the agent s action the paper also shows the existence of strategic complementarities between information on action and information on consequence the results on the distinction between action and consequence are then used to interpret existing disclosure policies in delegated portfolio management in particular they are consistent with hitherto puzzling evidence that mutual funds systematically overperform pension funds

productivity of highly skilled immigrants economists in the postwar period larry d singell jr prior work finds declining immigrant quality in the postwar period that is linked to source country and skill composition changes associated with the 1965 immigration act this paper uses a unique panel of foreign and native born american economic association members to show that the highly skilled experienced a similar shift away from european migrants toward those from asia however the findings do not indicate that this change in source country composition has been accompanied by a decline in quality rather the most recent cohorts of foreign born economists appear to be more productive than their native counterparts jel j61 i introduction this article is the first systematic analysis of the attributes and abilities of foreign born u s economists since a descriptive study of the brain drain by grubel and scott 1967 it also provides some of the first formal evidence for the largely theoretical proposition in earlier work by bhagwati and rodriquez 1975 that the united states draws the best skilled workers from abroad however recent immigration literature has not focused on the brain drain but has generated considerable debate concerning whether the 1965 immigration and nationality act has reduced the skill quality of u s immigrants in particular descriptive evidence in borjas 1987 and greenwood 1983 respectively indicates that the 1965 law shifted the composition of u s immigrants toward non european nations and increased the number of low skilled migrants to the united states our article extends this work by examining whether there has been a post 1965 change in the source country mix of ph d economists and whether such chan ges impact the productivity of the foreign born in comparison to their native counterparts most empirical studies of immigrant productivity have focused on earnings early cross sectional studies of immigrant earnings including chiswick 1978a concluded that the age earnings profile of immigrants is steeper than that of comparable native born workers and though initially lower crosses the native profile 10 to 15 years after immigration these results are consistent with the widely held belief that the immigration process self selects the highly motivated and industrious from their respective source countries thus immigrants although they initially enter the united states with relatively low levels of human capital eventually become more productive than their native counterparts more recent work by borjas 1985 1987 has contested these conclusions arguing that it is not possible to separately identify assimilation and cohort effects using a single cross sectional data set in particular the positive correlation between earnings and years since migration in cross sectional data may be due to immigrant assimilation or a cohort effect that arises from the declining skill quality of more recent immigrant groups borjas combines multiple cross sectional data sets to separately identify assimilation and cohort effects and finds evidence indicating that earlier cohorts of immigrants do relatively better than both natives and more recent immigrant cohorts suggesting a decline in immigrant quality although chiswick 1986 challenges the contention of declining immigrant quality and funkhouser and trejo 1995 find evidence that immigrant quality may have increased during the 1980s borjas 1995 contends that the empirical evidence consistently shows that immigrant quality has declined for most of the postwar period however the decline in immigrant quality has not necessarily been found within specific groups of immigrants in particular greenwood and mcdowell 1986 find that the change in skill quality is related to the shift in the source country composition of immigrants away from european nations toward those from asia and latin american after the 1965 immigration act thus explanations for the relatively poor performance of recent immigrants including those in lalonde and topel 1991 1992 and borjas 1992 focus on the post 1965 changes in the incentives to migrate to the united states that have increased the number of low skilled non european immigrants

on the in efficiency of swiss hospitals the efficiency of hospitals is of interest to health insurers government authorities and hospital management itself however econometric methods for determining in efficiency have severe drawbacks since hospitals are multiproduct firms and because the duality between production and cost functions cannot be assumed in this work non parametric deterministic data envelopment analysis dea is used to measure the relative inefficiency of 89 swiss hospitals covering the years 1993 1996 310 observations special attention is given to the role of patient days in the production of health the findings depend on whether patient days are viewed as an input of patient time or as an output as in previous studies while the probability of a unit being inefficient cannot be explained using the available data the degree of overall inefficiency is shown to significantly depend on the financial incentives faced by management in particular due to subsidization private hospitals do not seem to be less inefficien

the journals of economics we examine the principal journals of economics with particular attention to the communication between journals as reflected by the network of interjournal citations during 1987 90 and the changes over the past century in the characteristics of the authors and the techniques they have used the numerical results and those of the statistical modeling of these results reinforce the importance of economic theory as an exporter of intellectual influence to applied economics the study includes an examination of the degree of specialization among different subfields of economics a statistical model is presented for measuring the flow of intellectual influence as measured by citations in terms of simple univariate scores

determinants of technical efficiency of crop and livestock farms in poland la pologne est l un des pays d europe de l est candidats a une accession a l union europeenne qui rencontre de graves problemes de restructuration agricole l article etudie l efficacite technique en 2000 d exploitations agricoles individuelles polonaises specialisees en elevage et en grandes cultures l efficacite est estimee par la methode de frontiere stochastique et sa variabilite statistique evaluee par la construction d intervalles de confiance l article examine egalement les determinants de l efficacite les resultats obtenus pas la methode de frontiere stochastique sont compares avec ceux obtenus par la methode de data envelopment analysis dea en moyenne l efficacite technique des exploitations d elevage est superieure a celle des exploitations de grandes cultures pour les deux specialisations la relation entre l efficacite et la taille des exploitations est positive les grandes exploitations sont les plus efficaces les resultats obtenus par la methode de frontiere stochastique sont generalement confirmes par la methode dea la qualite de la terre et le degre d integration dans les marches d aval sont d importants determinants de l efficacite la faible education est un obstacle majeur a l efficacite en particulier pour les exploitations de grandes cultures de plus celles ci utilisent beaucoup les marches de facteurs terre et travail alors que les exploitations d elevage utilisent plutot leurs propres terres et le travail familial