reconciling the old and new census bureau education questions recommendations for researchers beginning with the 1990 census and the january 1992 current population survey cps the bureau of the census changed the emphasis of its educational attainment question from years of education to degree receipt using a matched sample from the 1991 and 1992 march cps this article addresses how to reconcile the old and new questions the effects of those methods on the estimated return s to education are then examined both the estimated linear return and the estimated college high school wage differential are slightly larger using information from the new question

exporting does sales volume make a difference this research examines the effect that the size of a firm has on export activities perceived problems in exporting and attitudes toward exporting the results indicate that broad generalizations concerning the size of firms and exporting appear to be inappropriate

the employment dynamics of different population groups over the business cycle abstractwe examine differences in employment dynamics across population groups using bayesian vector autoregressions we document that groups who are particularly strongly affected by business cycle fluctuations males young people non whites the less educated and workers in blue collar occupations also tend to be affected early in the build up of a boom or bust we further identify the drivers of the different cyclicalities across population groups supply shocks seem to be most important for the heterogeneous employment fluctuations and particularly for the early effects of recessions and booms on the most affected groups dynamics in sectoral activity and in hiring rates can help to understand our findings

poverty volatility and macroeconomic quiescence a consistent finding in the poverty literature is the diminution of the impact of the macroeconomy on official poverty rates in the united states since the early 1980s up until then measures of aggregate economic activity real gdp growth or the unemployment rate had a more substantial influence on the poverty rate most recently this fact has been documented by hilary w hoynes marianne e page and ann huff stevens 2006 hps hereafter kevin lang 2007 notes that much has changed since the early 1980s with respect to antipoverty policy and labor market factors that affect poverty status important changes include the transition from cash to in kind transfers the stagnation in real median earnings rising earnings inequality and the increase in female headed households nevertheless after considering several factors that influence poverty including wage growth inequality and female employment hps conclude their analysis of poverty trends with the view that explanation of the change in the response of poverty to macroeconomic indicators remains an open issue this paper examines whether traction may be gained on this issue by enhancing our understanding of the volatility of poverty rates specifically we examine the volatility of poverty rates over time and across demographic groups to the extent that poverty rate variability is associated with the risk of poverty incidence it is shown that certain eras have exposed members of particular demographic groups to more poverty risk than others then we contrast the volatility of poverty rates to that of aggregate economic activity margaret m mcconnell and gabriel perez quiros 2000 among others present evidence that the volatility of real gdp has been significantly poverty volatility and macroeconomic quiescence

export promotion agencies do they work abstract the number of national export promotion agencies epas has tripled over the last two decades while more countries made them part of their export strategy studies criticized their efficacy in developing countries epas were retooled partly in response to these critiques this paper studies the impact of today s epas and their strategies based on new survey data covering 103 developing and developed countries results suggest that on average they have a statistically significant effect on exports our identification strategies highlight the importance of epa services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving asymmetric information problems associated with exports of heterogeneous goods there are also strong diminishing returns suggesting that as far as epas are concerned small is beautiful

stochastic intertemporal duality an application to investment under uncertainty abstract we present a duality concept for a class of stochastic dynamic optimization problems that especially includes models of investment under uncertainty this concept allows us to derive explicit characterizations of optimal investment behavior from an adjustment cost model with expectations described by linear or nonlinear stochastic processes it covers settings that are impenetrable with a direct approach like expectations with a multimodal density or certain forms of non convex technologies

the polarization of the u s labor market this paper analyzes a marked change in the evolution of the u s wage structure over the past fifteen years divergent trends in upper tail 90 50 and lower tail 50 10 wage inequality we document that wage inequality in the top half of distribution has displayed an unchecked and rather smooth secular rise for the last 25 years since 1980 wage inequality in the bottom half of the distribution also grew rapidly from 1979 to 1987 but it has ceased growing and for some measures actually narrowed since the late 1980s furthermore we find that occupational employment growth shifted from monotonically increasing in wages education in the 1980s to a pattern of more rapid growth in jobs at the top and bottom relative to the middles of the wage education distribution in the 1990s we characterize these patterns as the u201cpolarization u201d of the u s labor market with employment polarizing into high wage and low wage jobs at the expense of middle wage work we show how a model of computerization in which computers most strongly complement the non routine abstract cognitive tasks of high wage jobs directly substitute for the routine tasks found in many traditional middle wage jobs and may have little direct impact on non routine manual tasks in relatively low wage jobs can help explain the observed polarization of the u s labor market this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

cross national comparison of export promotion services the views of canadian and austrian companies export promotion systems in canada and austria are contrasted and their services evaluated from a company perspective the canadian system is government based while the austrian one operates in the private sector apart from the philosophy under which these export support systems operate they differ also in strategic orientation a survey of stratified samples of exporters in canada 271 and austria 312 shows significant differences in perceived usefulness of services given similar exporter needs companies desire more tailored support as well as greater involvement of private sector institutions which are not currently providing export support overall austrian companies appear more inclined to use export support and generally seem more willing to acquire exporting know how externally compared to canadian firms conclusions are offered with respect to improving the respective export promotion systems

state government promotion of manufacturing exports a gap analysis this study empirically examines the level of the export related expertise of manufacturing firms in a midwestern state of the united states various problems they face in export business and types of government assistance desired by their stage of export involvement it also investigates the appropriateness of government export assistance and the gap between governmental export promotion efforts and private sector needs it is shown that the identification of expertise problems and government assistance needs by export stage can help government agencies develop a systematic approach to export promotion

international multilateral negotiations and social networks compared to their bilateral counterparts multilateral negotiations in an international setting present an extremely complex set of negotiation phenomena this paper proposes a model of negotiations that examines how national culture organization specific factors and individual characteristics of the negotiators impact the multilateral negotiation process in a cross national context specifically social network theory and tools are utilized to examine how coalitions form and roles emerge among participants the model also posits the effect of social network activity on negotiation outcomes research propositions are forwarded in hopes of setting an agenda for the research stream implied by the model methods for testing the model and implications for academics and managers are also discussed

the decision maker and export entry and expansion this paper examines the varied empirical findings of the relationship between firm individual characteristics and foreign entry expansion behavior the results support the view that such activity is neither exclusively determined by structural or managerial factors and is really the result of interaction between both types of variables the paper proposes that foreign entry and expansion can best be understood as an adoption of innovation type behavior

the export development process an integrative review of empirical models despite widespread research on the export behavior of firms no integrative review of the empirical work in relation to export development models exists in the extant literature this article reviews the main models on the subject identifies their structural characteristics evaluates the methodologies used for their validation and analyzes the key conceptual issues emerging from their assessment while valuable inroads into the mechanics and constituent parts of the export development process have been made this avenue of empirical inquiry has attracted criticism on structural methodological and conceptual grounds future research in the field should harness the eclectic contribution afforded by existing theory and at the same time enhance its status with contributions from marketing business and other disciplines

does monetary policy affect relative educational unemployment rates this paper examines the empirical relationship between relative educational unemployment rates and monetary policy such an examination is warranted because policymakers attempts to understand the distributional effects of monetary policy may be confounded by vintages of the theoretical literature that offer contrasting views of how skill based relative unemployment with unemployment of the less skilled in the numerator might behave over the business cycle a traditional view emphasizes characteristics of labor markets that could induce countercyclical movements in skill based relative unemployment for example arthur okun 1973 argues that an important benefit of high levels of aggregate economic activity is that opportunities for employment in the high quality jobs sector open up to the relatively unskilled a mechanism for the relative improvement of the employment prospects of the unskilled is changes in hiring standards of high quality job providers that occur over the cycle changes that occur during expansion and boom periods mentioned by okun include accepting younger and less experienced workers or workers without diplomas and more intensive screening of applicants a forceful statement of this highpressure economy view is contained in rebecca blank 2000 a more recent view of the impact of technological adoption could have quite different implications for movements in skill based relative unemployment over the cycle for example dale mortensen and christopher pissarides 1999 show that in their equilibrium search and matching framework the relationship between skill and unemployment is convex in the presence of labor market policies such as unemployment compensation in this environment skill biased technology shocks increase overall unemployment rates with a disproportionate share of the unemployment falling on the unskilled in his popular account of the matter krueger 2002 ties cyclical investment in new technologies to the conduct of monetary policy thereby linking relative educational unemployment to monetary policy my answer to the title question emerges from quantitative results designed to assess the dynamic effect on relative educational unemployment of a monetary policy surprise controlling for supply shocks and the introduction of new technical ideas these findings appear to resolve some of the tension between alternative views on relative unemployment dynamics in favor of the high pressure economy hypothesis discussants seth b carpenter federal reserve board jonah b gelbach university of maryland bridget terry long harvard university

why have aggregate skilled hours become so cyclical since the mid 1980 s this paper documents and discusses a dramatic change in the cyclical behavior of aggregate hours worked by individuals with a college degree skilled workers since the mid 1980 s using the cps outgoing rotation data set for the period 1979 1 2003 4 we find that the volatility of aggregate skilled hours relative to the volatility of gdp has nearly tripled since 1984 in contrast the cyclical properties of unskilled hours have remained essentially unchanged we evaluate the extent to which a simple supply demand model for skilled and unskilled labor with capital skill complementarity in production can help explain this stylized fact within this framework we identify three effects which would lead to an increase in the relative volatility of skilled hours i a reduction in the degree of capital skill complementarity ii a reduction in the absolute volatility of gdp and unskilled hours and iii an increase in the level of capital equipment relative to skilled labor we provide empirical evidence in support of each of these effects our conclusion is that these three mechanisms can jointly explain about sixty percent of the observed increase in the relative volatility of skilled labor the reduction in the degree of capital skill complementarity contributes the most to this result

on the structure of us unemployment disaggregated by race ethnicity and gender abstract we present empirical evidence regarding the structure of unemployment in the us disaggregated by race ethnicity and gender popp s 2008 unit root test reveals that the dynamics of unemployment for all groups is characterized by the hysteresis hypothesis except for hispanic males

evaluating export promotion programmes uk overseas trade missions and export performance this paper examines the extent to which firms knowledge and structural characteristics as well as firms behaviour in foreign markets following trade mission participation impacts upon trade mission success and export performance the findings suggest that 1 a diversification strategy in terms of export markets benefits future expansion into new foreign markets 2 specific knowledge about the targeted markets should be acquired prior to participating in the trade missions 3 communication with potential business partners should be established prior to participating in the trade missions and 4 the business relationships established before and during the trade missions should be cultivated through regular contacts using not only communication technology but also regular visits in summary overseas trade missions contribute to the generation of incremental sales in foreign markets by enhancing the relationship building process between business partners

dynamic adjustment in us agriculture under climate change we construct a stochastic dynamic dual model to investigate the structural adjustment of two aggregate output and three aggregate input categories in us agriculture under stochastic climatic change more than a century of national annual data 1910 2011 is used in the empirical analysis no constraints on asset fixity are imposed results indicate that with rational expectations both output categories as well as all input categories exhibit quasi fixity in response to market change and stochastic climate change crops adjust more than twice as fast as livestock 49 versus 20 of the way toward their long run equilibrium in one year fertilizer adjusts most rapidly toward equilibrium levels 88 in one year and capital adjusts most slowly 5 in one year labor oscillates rather than converging smoothly toward equilibrium its distance from equilibrium is the same as if it adjusted 59 of the way toward its optimal level in one year failing to anticipate climate change dramatically slows the estimated rate of adjustment for two netputs and modestly speeds the rate for two others thus likely increasing overall adjustment costs failing to account for uncertainty in anticipated climate change has little impact on adjustment rates

u k smes decision to discontinue exporting an exploratory investigation into practices within the clothing industry abstract although the decision to internationalise has been viewed in certain studies as an entrepreneurial act research has also indicated that some firms may be better served in concentrating on their domestic market depending on a number of internal and external considerations associated with the profitable exploitation of identified opportunities this investigation reports on first reasons why a sample of executives from small firms discontinued export activities and second perceptions towards policy assistance that may motivate them to recommence overseas activities in the future analysis in this study establishes that differences exist between two distinct groups of firms namely those indicating their discontinuation of exporting was a short term measure compared with those that viewed the decision as longer term entrepreneurial learning was found to be present in firms that influenced some managers to overcome identified obstacles and engage in alternative modes of international activity to the export route whereas others decided to pursue domestic opportunities the study provides recommendations for policymakers in the provision of trade assistance programs

poverty in america trends and explanations despite robust growth in real gdp per capita in the last three decades u s poverty rates have changed very little we summarize some basic facts about poverty in the united states relying on a combination of previously published data from the census bureau and our own tabulations based on current population survey data we then discuss and evaluate four determinants of changes in the poverty rate that have been advanced in the literature the impact of labor market opportunities the role of changes in family structure the role played by government antipoverty programs and the role of immigration

educational attainment and the cyclical sensitivity of employment this article examines whether there are educational premiums on the quantity side of the labor market we document four findings 1 trend employment patterns shifted for most educational levels post 1977 2 the lower the level of educational attainment the more volatile the employment ratio 3 the volatility of employment for female high school dropouts increased over time even as the economy became less volatile and 4 since 1984 the responses of skilled and unskilled employment to the business cycle have become more alike this latter finding is consistent with a reduced degree of capital skill complementarity during this period

the relationship between international diversification and performance in service firms international diversification is a growth strategy that has a major potential impact on firm performance the relationship between international diversification and firm performance has been extensively studied in the international strategy literature a major gap in the literature has been the non existence of studies that have examined the effect of international diversification on performance in service firms previous studies that have tested the international diversification performance relationship were based on samples of manufacturing firms we argue that the form of the relationship between multinationality and performance is different in service firms we provide a theoretical argument for this claim and hypothesize that there is a u shaped curvilinear relationship between multinationality and performance in service firms our sample consists of 81 major german service firms spanning across four industries results show that there is support for a u shaped curvilinear relationship based on the findings implications and directions for future research are provided

time to build option value and investment decisions abstract investment decisions and outlays are often made sequentially for example the rate at which construction proceeds is usually flexible and can be adjusted with the arrival of new information traditional discounted cash flow methods which treat the pattern of investment as fixed ignore this flexibility and understate the value of the project this paper uses contingent claims analysis to derive optimal decision rules and to value such investments we determine the effects of time to build opportunity cost and uncertainty on the investment decision for reasonable parameter values we show how a simple npv rule can lead to gross errors

profiling managers to improve export promotion targeting one of the major criticisms of government export promotion schemes in many countries is that they tend to be poorly targeted awareness levels about export schemes among managers of companies at exporting or pre exporting stages of internationalization are often quite low and the perceived usefulness of schemes may decline as companies internationalize and their needs become more specific one solution may be to develop a better understanding of the needs of managers who make export market development decisions and to target segments of managers rather than companies who share similar strengths and weaknesses this study attempts to address these concerns by devising a typology of senior international marketing managers the most senior marketing decisionmakers in a broad multi industry sample of new zealand exporting firms were surveyed the results of the cluster analysis suggest that groups of managers who share similar characteristics can be identified and profiled based on shared international business attitudes and similar levels of knowledge and skills this appears to be a useful method of segmenting international marketing managers to determine what sort of educational and export assistance particular groups may require