factor substitution and discrimination in labor markets the object of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework for explaining the absence of substitution of non discriminated factors for discriminated factors as a consequence of legislation designed to reduce or eliminate their pay differentials an example of such types of regulations or laws is equal pay legislation this absence of substitution has been noted in the empirical literature typical examples in this area are for example hiring of whites vis a vis blacks males vis a vis females migrants versus non migrants and hiring by castes the discriminated factors are usually paid less than their non discriminated counterparts two interesting and related questions arise in this context first why do profit maximizing but discriminating firms hire both types of factors the theory of discrimination fails to provide a satisfactory answer to this question second does an increase in payment to a discriminated factor via legislation necessarily result in a decrease in its usage given a neoclassical production function that allows for substitution two models are presented to show that such an outcome may not result and in fact the relationship may be the exact opposite that is an increase in the payment to a discriminated factor may increase its usage one can distinguish at least two approaches for incorporating the exploitation of a factor of production first one may like to treat the discriminated and non discriminated workers as identical factors of production and argue that the discriminated workers are paid less than the non discriminated workers second both factors may be treated as separate and indispensable factors of production but for institutional or other non economic reasons the discriminated factor is paid less than the value of its marginal product in this latter case the factor is exploited in the robinsonian sense the second approach has some advantages over the first economic rationality in the first approach would suggest that the firms should only hire the cheaper or the dearer factor but not both as a result of discrimination tastes however in the real world it is commonly observed that both types of factors are hired simultaneously in this approach there is the possibility of firms re switching between both types of factors therefore this paper extends the discrimination literature to show how firms may hire both factors using the second approach one can logically raise the question of substitution of non discriminated for discriminated factors as a consequence of higher rewards we show in a robinsonian type exploitation model that there is no substitution theorem

is protection for sale evidence on the grossman helpman theory of endogenous protection grossman and helpman 1994 present a theory of endogenous protection by explicitly modeling government industry interactions for which mere black box models previously existed they obtain a ramsey pricing type solution to the provision of protection which emphasizes the role of inverse import penetration ratios and import elasticities on the lobbying side the model makes predictions about lobbying competition and lobbying spending according to deadweight costs from protection the model not only makes for richer theory in terms of rigor and elegance but its predictions are directly testable whether the grossman helman model stands up to real world data is investigated in this paper predictions from both the protection side and lobbying side are tested using cross sectional u s nontariff barrier data we also compare the second generation grossman helpman model with a more traditional specification our results call for serious consideration of this model in the political economy literature

adjustment to labor productivity an application to the economics of discrimination although issues of uncertainty and insurance often have been applied to the labor market few researchers have employed these approaches to the economics of discrimination the discrimination literature is essentially concerned with quantification of wage or employment differences that can be ascribed to either employer or employee distaste for minority or female workers generally wage or employment differences are dichotomized so as to represent respectively productivity and discrimination components following mincer 21 studies usually estimate personal and labor force determined hedonic earnings functions in order to apply chow tests to the separate sets of black white or malefemale coefficients significant differences in the coefficients are a priori evidence of discrimination

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

a search interpretation of male female wage differentials a general equilibrium search framework is used to examine the role of gender differences in labor market behavior patterns e g quit rates for personal reasons in determining gender wage differentials for samples of high school and college graduates from the national longitudinal survey of youth nlsy these behavioral patterns are found to be significantly different across the sexes and account for 20 30 of the wage differentials in particular they play a key role in explaining the male female wage differential that remains after controlling for the gender composition across occupations

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

incorporating affirmative action into the welfare state abstract in this paper we discuss a novel aspect of affirmative action policy we examine its redistributive role asking whether in an egalitarian society supplementing the tax transfer system with an affirmative action policy would enhance social welfare we demonstrate that affirmative action could be a desirable policy tool even if racial discrimination does not exist in the labor market

modeling multiattribute utility risk and belief dynamics for new consumer durable brand choice this paper proposes a brand choice model to aid in the prelaunch management of a new consumer durable entry in an existing category the model contributes to theory by integrating the critical phenomena of multiattribute preference risk and dynamics in an individual level expected utility framework the integration is based on established theoretical constructs in utility bayesian decision analysis and discrete choice theory measurement and estimation procedures are presented an application is described and the managerial relevance of this work as a planning and forecasting tool is examined

protection for sale the case of oligopolistic competition and interdependent sectors in grossman helpman s 1994 canonical protection for sale pfs model political competition among industry lobbies is driven purely by their interests as consumers this paper introduces demand linkages and oligopolistic competition into the pfs framework to address the rivalry among lobbies stemming from product substitutability it shows that increased substitutability weakens the interest groups incentives to lobby and reduces tariff distortions this may explain why empirical tests of pfs find surprisingly little impact of lobbies on the government s trade policy decision the paper also analyzes endogenous lobby formation suggesting that demand linkages may adversely affect the industry decision to organize resume proteger les ventes le cas de la concurrence oligopolistique et des secteurs interdependants dans le modele canonique de grossman helpman 1994 protection for sale pfs la concurrence politique entre lobbyistes est purement alimentee par leurs interets en tant que consommateurs ce texte presente dans ce cadre d analyse les enchainements de la demande et la concurrence oligopolistique pour prendre en compte la rivalite entre lobbyistes qui derive de la substituabilite des produits on montre qu une substituabilite accrue reduit l incitation des groupes d interets a faire du lobbying et reduit les distorsions tarifaires cela peut expliquer pourquoi les tests empiriques du modele pfs ont decouvert un impact etonnamment faible des lobbies sur les decisions des gouvernements dans le monde des politiques commerciales le texte analyse aussi la formation endogene des lobbies suggerant que les enchainements de la demande peuvent affecter negativement la decision de s organiser

search bargaining and employer discrimination this article analyzes becker s 1957 1971 theory of employer discrimination within a search and wage bargaining setting discriminatory firms pay workers who are discriminated against less and apply stricter hiring criteria to these workers the highest profits are realized by firms with a positive discrimination coefficient moreover once ownership and management are separated both highest profits and highest utility can be realized by firms with a positive discrimination coefficient thus market forces like entry or takeovers do not ensure that wage differentials due to employer discrimination disappear

the brother in law effect ordinarily labor market equilibrium implies that the marginal worker is indifferent to employment and that the employer is indifferent between equally productive employees when the marginal worker is indifferent to employment employer preferences do not matter if however the marginal worker strictly prefers to be employed the employer can give favors and may wish to do so even at some cost to efficient production not only may inefficient workers be employed but the employer may also choose to employ too many workers we refer to this as the brother in law effect when the brother in law effect is due to unionization employment of brothers in law leads to increased employment under some circumstances leading even to over employment relative to the workforce that would be employed without unionization if the employment effect is strong because brothers in law are relatively good workers nepotism improves efficiency if the employment effect is weak including in principal agent models where there are informational rents nepotism is inefficient

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

complementarities in organizational design and the diffusion of information technologies an empirical analysis we use a specially designed survey on french firms located in haute savoie to provide empirical evidence suggesting that information and communication technologies adoption is not only influenced by the traditional factors of technology diffusion but also by complementarity effects between strategies organization and information technologies the data collected permitted several advances firstly we could study authentic ict while the recent literature has mainly focused on computer capital stocks or automation tools secondly we constructed measures of the determinants put forward by the models of technology diffusion thirdly we studied three kinds of practices organizational and strategic practices technological choices

the demand for information and the diffusion of a new product abstract the paper examines the implications of the ability of a consumer to learn about the characteristics of a new product on the diffusion of the product over time the demand for information by the consumer is shown to generate a sigmoid diffusion curve for total sales of the product further it is shown that over time the elasticity of demand along the diffusion curve increases

structural change and economic policy in a declining metropolitan region implications of the pittsburgh experience public private partnerships can play a valuable role in regional economic policy but the nature and effectiveness of such alliances depends on the type of problems faced by a region in the contex

protection for sale in a developing country democracy vs dictatorship for a genuine small open economy that has experienced both dictatorship and democracy we find support for the predictions of the grossman helpman 1994 protection for sale model in contrast to previous studies we use various protection measures including tariffs the direct measure of the theoretical model and perform both single year and panel regressions using turkish industry level data the government s weight on welfare is estimated to be much larger than that on contributions more importantly we find that this weight is generally higher for the democratic regime than for dictatorship

nepotism discrimination and the persistence of utility maximizing owner operated firms comment a recent thoughtful paper by singell and thornton thereafter st in the southern economic journal deviates in definitions modeling and a result from the traditional literature on tastes for discrimination and nepotism that originates with becker and arrow this comment provides a critique of these three aspects of the st analysis in particular it shows that st s astonishing result that discrimination will persist in a competitive labor market is unjustified st s unconventional definitions of owners with unbiased and biased preferences are wrong and st s unique modeling of discrimination and nepotism is unsupported

strategic gains from discrimination abstract according to a classical argument an employer handicaps herself if basing hiring decisions on factors unrelated to productivity therefore discrimination is undermined by competition this paper in contrast argues that being discriminatory can be a commitment device that helps an employer and its rivals to partially segment the labor market which leads to lower wages and higher profits discrimination can thus be an endogenous response to competition indeed the relationship between discrimination and competition can be non monotone moreover the logic suggests that a ban on wage discrimination may instead lead to discrimination in hiring

worker effort decisions and efficient gender specific wage tenure profiles i introduction during the past thirty years women have increased their labor force participation female labor market intermittency has decreased and women s total labor market experience and years of tenure with the current employer have increased what these trends imply about the evolution of the gender gap in wages depends in part on gender differences in returns to tenure it is therefore surprising that economists have all but ignored the empirical finding that women have higher returns to tenure than do men over a significant portion of their working lives one reason why this finding has been ignored or treated as an anomaly may be the lack of theoretical constructs which predict an inverse gender gap in returns to tenure several labor market models predict that women should have lower returns to tenure than men human capital theory offers the most frequently cited explanation of flatter earnings profiles for female workers according to human capital theory gains from specialization and exchange lead to one household member specializing in home production and the other in market work since only women bear children historically the outcome of the exchange has been that women have specialized in home production indeed all surveys of time use indicate that women spend on average two to three times as long on housework as men as a consequence of this allocation women anticipate intermittent labor force participation and fewer years overall in the labor force than men this pattern too is borne out in national surveys which invariably find shorter average tenure and fewer total years of labor market experience for women than for men women typically have shorter completed job spells as well hall 1982 table 5 presents evidence that the gender gap in completed job duration is quite large he estimates that 63 8 percent of men but only 49 6 percent of women hold jobs with eventual tenure of at least five years with 37 3 and 15 1 percent of men and women respectively holding jobs with eventual tenure of at least twenty years because of the greater intermittency and shorter anticipated work history for women than men women will find it optimal to acquire less human capital than men 1 lesser quantities of general human capital tends to flatten both the observed earnings experience profile and the observed earnings tenure profile two factors contribute to this pattern first skills deteriorate during periods out of the labor market as in mincer and polachek 1974 which flattens the earnings experience profile for women relative to men second women anticipating discontinuous work histories select into occupations with flatter earnings profiles to minimize the penalty to labor force withdrawals as in polachek 1981 the effects of firm specific human capital on gender differences in wage tenure profiles vary across models for example kuhn 1993 constructs an elegant game theoretic model of gender differences in training and wages if women have a higher exogenous exit rate than men in equilibrium they will be placed in jobs with lower levels of firm specific training with a positive relation between training and productivity and a common share rate of the costs and benefits of specific training for men and women the wage tenure profiles of men will be steeper than those for women in contrast becker and lindsay 1994 argue that firm specific human capital leads to higher returns to tenure for women than men becker and lindsay assume that men and women have the same level of firm specific training however women have greater variance in their opportunity cost of remaining with a firm and so are more likely than men to separate inefficiently by giving women a greater share of both the costs and benefits of firm specific human capital through a steeper wage tenure profile firms reduce undesirable turnover although human capital arguments dominate the literature on gender differences in the labor market other models of wage growth predict flatter wage tenure profiles for women

prejudice and wages an empirical assessment of becker s the economics of discrimination we test the predictions from becker s 1957 seminal work on employer prejudice and find that relative black wages a vary negatively with the prejudice of the marginal white in a state b vary negatively with the prejudice in the lower tail of the prejudice distribution but are unaffected by the prejudice of the most prejudiced persons in a state and c vary negatively with the fraction of a state that is black our estimates suggest that one quarter of the racial wage gap is due to prejudice with nontrivial consequences for black lifetime earnings

nepotism discrimination and the persistence of utility maximizing owner operated firms reply much debate in the discrimination literature surrounds whether employers with biased preferences can persist in the market 7 10 this issue is a natural extension of the broader literature on owner operated firms which focuses on the consistency of utility and profit maximization 12 13 14 18 26 27 theories of owner operated firms which have a long history in economics model the entrepreneur as both a producer and consumer of goods that determines the level of production and consumption jointly through utility maximization 2 9 16 22 31 this approach is applied in this paper to examine employer discrimination and nepotism our analysis provides necessary conditions for utility maximizing firms to persist in the market and shows how biased preferences can yield seemingly uneconomic input and output choices that are in fact rationally inefficient empirical results using data on family farms support the prediction that utility maximizing entrepreneurs trade profit for nonmarket goods and do not hire inputs to maximize profits competitive neoclassical theories of the labor market do not provide a clear theoretical resolution to the issue of persistence of employer nepotism and discrimination the employer discrimination model proposed by becker 4 5 and extended by arrow 1 postulates that entrepreneurs maximize utility that increases with profit but decreases with a nonmarket attribute of some workers e g race ethnicity or gender these models predict that white male workers may initially have better market opportunities than comparable minority or female workers however entrepreneurs who hire based on nonproductive attributes are also predicted to earn less than a normal rate of return and because they derive disutility from an aspect of owning and operating a firm can improve their welfare by leaving the industry and converting firm assets to those that do not require employment decisions e g stocks and bonds this result has the important policy implication that market intervention may not be necessary to improve the relative pay and employment of disadvantaged groups when employers are the source of the discrimination alternatively goldberg 15 uses the arrow 1 framework but postulates that employers

the role of importers and exporters in the determination of the u s tariff preferences granted to latin america abstract this paper investigates the role played by domestic importers and foreign exporters in improving preferential access to the domestic market to this end the framework used in this paper extends the protection for sale analysis to explicitly model the role of domestic importers and foreign exporters in the determination of preferential trade treatment the predictions of the model are tested using data on preferential trade between the united states and latin american countries the results suggest that latin american exporters and us importers lobbying efforts have a significant and important role in determining the extent of preferential access granted by the united states more interestingly these findings also show that u s importers capture a very substantial share of the rents generated by tariff preferences these results therefore shed a pessimistic view on preferential trade schemes as a reliable source of gains for developing countries

the effects of competition and equal treatment laws on gender wage differentials discrimination if it is inefficient can be eliminated by competition in most countries it is also forbidden by law this paper evaluates the influence of economic and legal factors on the portion of male female wage differentials that is not explained by other worker characteristics and may be due to discrimination we use a new international data set of suitable gender wage gap measures constructed from the results of existing studies meta analysis of the data shows that increased competition and adoption of international conventions concerning equal treatment laws both reduce gender wage gaps while legislation that prevents women from performing strenuous or dangerous jobs tends to increase it doris weichselbaumer and rudolf winter ebmer

gender differences in bargaining outcomes a field experiment on discrimination abstract relying on a commonly used fixed offer bargaining script we examine gender differences in bargaining outcomes in a highly competitive and frequently used market the taxi market in lima peru our bargaining script secures that only the seller can change prices and terminate negotiations thus we are able to examine differences in the seller s entire path of negotiation and in the reservation price at which they are willing to trade we find that male and female passengers who use the same bargaining script are not treated equally men face higher initial prices final prices and rejection rates these differences are consistent with male drivers being more reluctant to give in to demanding negotiations by male passengers and with male passengers being perceived as having high valuations to identify whether taste based or statistical discrimination drives the inferior treatment of men we conduct an experiment where passengers send a signal on valuation before negotiating the signal eliminates gender differences and the response is shown only to be consistent with statistical discrimination thus in the limiting case of a highly competitive market with experienced traders we do not find evidence of taste based discrimination the differential observed is however consistent with statistical discrimination

modeling location and production an application to u s fully integrated steel plants i n weber s 1929 theory of the location of industry spatial firms produce under conditions of fixed proportions and constant returns to scale while their spatial consumers have priceinelastic demands weber s assumptions are relaxed separately in previous work moses 1958 and alonso 1967 allow either for flexible technologies but inelastic demands or for pricesensitive demands but fixed proportions technologies this paper presents a behavioral and econometric model of spatial firms which simultaneously relaxes restrictive assumptions on both technology and demand assumptions of earlier models become testable hypotheses the behavioral model is general to any spatial firm the econometric model can be estimated for any industry the paper reports an estimation of the model for a sample of fully integrated steel plants in the united states the steel industry is appropriate for illustrating the general model for two reasons first the important inputs in steel are localized weight losing materials while transportation charges are a nontrivial part of the delivered prices of both these inputs and of steel products second previous research lacks agreement about the principal determinants of steel plant locations disagreement also exists over the structure of production and the extent of scale economies in production and the existence of substitution possibilities among inputs each of these disagreements is treated as a hypothesis within this paper first a model which includes the influences of both consumers and materials on location can distinguish the comparative influence of each the literature lacks agreement on whether the steel industry is transport oriented in which case consumer demands are price inelastic and an optimal location minimizes transport costs or market oriented in which case consumer demands are price elastic and an optimal location reflects that sensitivity isard 1948 suggests the influences on location change over time due to changes in technology and relative prices isard and capron 1949 conclude the steel industry is transport oriented more recently hekman 1978 reports that the demand for steel is priceelastic he concludes that locations in the steel industry are sensitive to consumer demands the evidence in this paper portrays the steel industry as transport oriented second there are differing estimates of the extent of scale economies in steel production ranging from constant returns to scale hekman 1978 to a minimum efficient scale m e s of twelve million tons cockerill 1974 scherer 1973 and weiss 1976 estimate m e s of four million tons while tarr 1977 gives the mid1970s m e s at six million tons an estimate reported in this paper as well third the existence of substitution possibilities among inputs has implications for both location and production if substitution possibilities are limited weber models of location may be applied to the steel industry previous research has characterized steelnmaking technology as fixed proportions tsao and day 1971 cobb douglas hekman 1978 or having wide variation in substitution possibilities kopp and smith 1980 moroney and trapani 1981 this paper presents estimated elasticities of substitution suggestive of great substitution possibilities among inputs the behavioral model of location and production is presented and then transformed into an econometric model in section ii a brief discussion of regional markets for steel products and a description of the data appears in section iii received for publication july 31 1981 revision accepted for publication july 7 1982 wayne state university this research is based on my ph d dissertation at the university of wisconsin madison the advice of frank m gollop eugene smolensky and charles a wilson is gratefully acknowledged i have benefited from discussions with james hamilton and li way lee and comments by jan brueckner and several anonymous referees computing support has been provided by the graduate schools at the university of wisconsin madison and wayne state university the responsibility for any remaining errors is mine an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1980 north american meetings of the econometric society

the elasticity of scale and the shape of average costs different concepts of returns to scale the first which is most widely used for defining returns to scale is the relative increase in output as all input quantities are increased proportionally along a ray through the origin the second which is the more relevant concept for micro economic analysis is the increase in output relative to costs for variations along the expansion path where input prices are constant and costs are minimized at every output 2 as it turns out these two concepts yield equal measures for the elasticity of scale3 e at every minimum cost point in the input space however the change in e with output is generally different for the two concepts 4 since expansion paths do not coincide with rays unless the production function is homothetic 5 but it is the change of e along the expansion path and not along the raywhich determines the shape of the average cost curve ac and which is therefore relevant for the analysis of firms and industry behavior under competition 6 these relations are stated and analyzed below it is shown that assumptions made in the literature7 which are related to the behavior of e along rays or to the slope of the technically optimal surface where returns to scale are locally constant are irrelevantbeing neither necessary nor sufficient for implying classical u shaped average cost curves the following definitions and results are used here

piercing the corporate veil the closure of wisconsin steel in south chicago clark g l 1990 piercing the corporate veil the closure of wisconsin steel in south chicago reg studies 24 405 420 restructuring is usually associated with technological change the transformation of the workplace and the communities affected by cross plant capacity rationalization however restructuring should also be understood as a corporate strategy specifically the actions of management to protect and foster their core economic interests while limiting the costs of adjustment by shifting those costs to others a case study of international harvester company s restructuring strategy which led to bankruptcy and closure of wisconsin steel in south chicago in the early 1980s is the basis of the paper the significance of plant closing pension liabilities in corporate restructuring is emphasized as is the regulation of restructuring with respect to those liabilities by the united states federal government s pension benefit guaranty corporation analytically the case is interpreted in part a

a multinomial logit nondiscriminatory approach to estimating racial wage and occupational discrimination this paper combines a technique to measure nondiscriminatory wage structures with a multinomial logit model to estimate both occupational racial discrimination and within occupation racial wage underpayment and overpayment using a recent south african october household survey it is found that racial discrimination against blacks and in favour of whites still persists in the south african labour market implying the persistence of white employer nepotism and or white employee discrimination

adoption of competing inventions by united states steel producers a hstract this research investigates innovative behavior in the u s steel industry under the assumption that basic oxygen and large electric furnaces are competing technologies the empirical model of innovation is based on recent theoretical research the coefficients are estimated by a seemingly unrelated tobit approach the research finds innovation is strongly influenced by a demonstration effect adoption is also influenced by potential cost savings and technical progress there is no evidence that large u s steel producers modernized more slowly than their smaller rivals the large electric furnace becomes sufficiently attractive by 1980 that firms choose not to adopt basic oxygen

discrimination nepotism and long run wage differentials the wage discrimination model developed by becker has been criticized for predicting that competitive forces will lead to the disappearance of racial discrimination in the long run we have reformulated the model in terms of nepotism toward white workers rather than discrimination against black workers in this new framework both nepotistic and taste neutral firms are expected to survive the competitive struggle in the long run therefore the new framework is consistent with long run as well as short run racial wage differentials

a theory of urban decline economy demography and political elites during the past decades large cities in advanced industrialised countries have experienced different demographic and economic trajectories some are continuing to grow in population and jobs many have experienced decline to account for the process of decline and its consequences a general model of urban decline is proposed it specifies the relationship between employment population political elites and urban fiscal revenues constructs and propositions are drawn from economic and ecological theorems empirical evidence is based on literature predominantly from germany and the us

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

neither ore nor coal nor markets a policy oriented view of steel sites in the usa markusen a 1986 neither ore nor coal nor markets a policy oriented view of steel sites in the usa reg studies 20 449 462 locational work on steel stresses the growing role of consuming markets over resources in shaping the evolution of mill sites here it is argued that four additional factors have governed steel siting in the usa agglomeration economies oligopolistic behaviour the role of the state and conflict between capital and labour the relative strength of each factor varies by era and region as a result the economic development prospects for places like pittsburgh and chicago are quite different

expected interruptions in labor force participation and sex related differences in earnings growth the paper analyzes the joint determination of wives earnings and labor force participation over the life cycle given the interruptions in wives work careers the interruptions affect the profitability of the investment in human capital which in turn determines earnings the earnings prospects feed back into the participation decision namely the decision whether and for how long to drop out of the labor force the formal analysis compares the age earnings profiles of persons who drop out of the labor force with those who do not during the pre and post interruption period the comparison is carried out where interruptions are assumed to be exogenous and when they are endogenous the effect of productivity at home the initial stock of human capital and its rental value on the length of the interruption is investigated this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

protection for sale with imperfect rent capturing we extend the protection for sale framework to non tari barriers introducing partial rent capturing leads to a testable specification that bridges the gap between the grossman and helpman 1994 model and its empirical implementation where coverage ratios have been used to measure protection the econometric analysis supports our augmented specification and leads to more realistic estimates for the structural parameters of the model jel classification f13

investigating the causal relationship between quits and wages an exercise in comparative dynamics this paper examines the causal relationship between wages and quits in u s manufacturing industries logit and regression models then relate causality test results to industrial characteristics once these relationships are identified they can be used to predict the causality classification for each industry based on the characteristics of that industry this technique can help the researcher choose the appropriate theoretical model for analysis one finding is that quits respond to wages in most industries but not in industries with highly skilled workforces

retirement pensions and ageing we study the effects of demographic shocks and changes in the pension system on the macroeconomic performance of an advanced small open economy facing a given world interest rate we construct an overlapping generations model which includes a realistic description of the mortality process individual agents choose their optimal retirement age taking into account the time and age profiles of wages taxes and the public pension system the early retirement provision in most pension systems acts as a trap inducing most workers to retire well before the normal retirement age simulations show that pension reform must be drastic for it to have any effects on the retirement behaviour of workers

substitutability and protectionism latin america s trade policy and imports from china and india this article examines the trade policy response of latin american governments to the rapid growth of chinese and indian exports in world markets to explain more protection in sectors where a large share of imports originates in china and india the protection for sale model is extended to allow for region specific degrees of substitutability between domestic and imported varieties of a good the results suggest that more protection toward chinese and indian goods can be explained by the higher substitutability of chinese and indian goods with domestic varieties the data support the model which performs better than the original protection for sale framework in explaining latin america s structure of protection

investment activity and the exit decision using level data from the u s steel industry this paper tests and finds support for the hypothesis that firms in a contracting industr y first disinvest from and then close their high cost plants an investment decision model is estimated using a panel data set composed of the major replacement investments made in forty three steel plants during the years 1960 81 the results indicate that the firms disinvested from those plants are least likely to remain profitable in an environment of strong competition from imports minimills and stagnating domestic demand copyright 1988 by mit press

the influence of non pecuniary factors on labor supply the case of navy enlisted personnel this paper expresses the elasticity of labor supply to an occupation in terms of the variances and covariances of the distributions of non pecuniary factors across the alternative occupations we then apply our results to an analysis of reenlistment rates among navy enlisted personnel we argue that those navy skills experiencing a higher incidence of sea duty will have lower pay elasticities this prediction is confirmed empirically using probit analysis

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

does the law of supply hold under uncertainty a widely held conjecture of economists is that the quantity supplied by pricetaking producers increases with an increase in output price law of supply this cornerstone of economics has been proven repeatedly with many techniques under many different sets of assumptions and is found in all textbooks on principles of economics most of these proofs assume full certainty of production relationships single product technology and or risk neutrality in a world of uncertainty one of the most crucial aspects of economic behaviour is risk aversion with risk aversion diversification is a basic response to economic uncertainty thus models of producer behaviour under uncertainty need to consider multioutput technology where diversification is a possibility this paper points out that the widely held law of supply may fail when these generalities risky multioutput production with risk aversion are introduced simultaneously where diversification is also affected by a capacity constraint in production conditions are developed under which the law fails holds the peculiar result occurs because increasing price can increase profit risk more than proportionally while expected profit increases proportionally this relative increase in risk causes a tendency to shift production capacity into an alternative activity the first section introduces a model of production under uncertainty the second section analyses the behaviour of supply in the special case of additive production risk without price risk the third section shows that similar problems can be encountered with other cases as well empirical examples which demonstrate relevance of the results are also given

factors influencing the diffusion of electric arc furnace steelmaking technology in this paper the adoption of electric arc furnace steelmaking technology is examined within a growth model of technological diffusion the results indicate that the trend rate of adoption of electric are furnace technology is well represented by the s shaped growth curve further results indicate that the trend rate of adoption is for the most part stable with respect to locally changing factors to production such as input prices and activity levels it appears that inertial aspects have an overwhelming influence on the diffusion process

customer discrimination and affirmative action i introduction beginning with the work of becker 1957 economists have been concerned with the relationship between competitive market forces and the persistence of labor market discrimination 1 a major insight of becker and the literature that followed is that competition could tend to eliminate discriminatory pay differentials if competitive forces do eliminate discrimination then empirical findings of persistent discrimination are either a result of faulty testing or market imperfections economic analysis of the link between competition and discrimination depends on the origins of prejudice becker identified at least three possible sources employers co workers and consumers 2 in each of these instances the group against which prejudice is directed e g women or minorities which will be termed minorities in this paper may be able to escape discrimination first minorities can work for nondiscriminatory employers if there are any moreover stiglitz 1973 shows that with constant returns to scale such employers will take over markets from the discriminators eliminating any pay gap based on prejudice 3 second if there is co worker prejudice then minorities can work in segregated firms which under constant returns to scale may have a cost advantage over integrated or all majority firms again discrimination will be driven away 4 third minorities can theoretically escape customer discrimination by specializing in the production of goods for which there is no contact between producers and consumers a case discussed by cain 1986 while competitive forces may in some cases erode discriminatory wage differentials the rate of decline of race and sex wage differentials has evidently not been rapid enough in the eyes of policymakers u s anti discrimination policy has been guided by two major vehicles title vii of the 1964 civil rights act and the office of federal contract compliance programs ofccp 5 the equal employment opportunity commission eeoc was created to enforce title vii and is empowered to aid plaintiffs or bring suit itself against employers the commission monitors the employment practices of federal contractors not only are contractors barred from discrimination against protected groups these firms are also required to take affirmative action not to discriminate the purpose of this paper is twofold first it demonstrates that in a general equilibrium framework the case of customer discrimination is theoretically distinct from employer or co worker prejudice in particular while constant returns to scale and the existence of nondiscriminatory firms can eliminate the latter two forms of discrimination customer discrimination may persist even under such conditions the persistence of discriminatory wage differentials is shown to depend on consumer demand technology and the relative size of the minority labor force 6 second the general equilibrium framework is then used to evaluate the impact of government anti discrimination policy where customers are the source of discrimination it is shown that if the government requires equal pay and proportional representation for minorities then the resulting allocation of resources will under particular assumptions be the same as if customers did not discriminate i then contrast these theoretical results with the predicted general equilibrium impact of affirmative action when there is employer or co worker prejudice among previous general equilibrium models of affirmative action welch 1976 assumed no discrimination while freeman 1978 did not specify the source of discrimination it is shown here that the source of prejudice markedly affects one s conclusions about affirmative action further even in some cases where segregation has eliminated discriminatory wage differentials the introduction of affirmative action has allocative effects finally evidence from studies evaluating the impact of affirmative action is used to distinguish among the various equilibrium models

can we obtain realistic parameter estimates for the protection for sale model in the grossman and helpman 1994 model of endogenous trade protection sectoral lobbies try to influence an incumbent government that maximizes a weighted sum of political contributions and aggregate welfare we empirically investigate this model using u s and turkish data our specification is more tightly tied to theory than those in existing studies additionally we assume all specific factor owners to be organized into different lobbies these changes validated by hypothesis tests yield more realistic parameter estimates of the government s concern for aggregate welfare and of the fraction of population organized into lobbies peut on obtenir des calibrations realistes des parametres du modele de protection en vue d augmenter les ventes dans le modele de protection commerciale endogene de grossman helpman 1994 des lobbys sectoriels tentent d influencer un gouvernement en place qui maximise une somme ponderee des contributions politiques et du bien etre collectif les auteurs utilisent ce modele pour analyser les donnees pour les etats unis et la turquie on specifie le modele d une maniere qui serre de plus pres la theorie que ce qui a ete le cas dans les etudes anterieures de plus on assume que tous les proprietaires de facteurs de production specifiques sont organises en lobbys differents ces changements valides par des tests d hypotheses engendrent des estimations plus realistes des parametres de la fonction d interet du gouvernement pour le bien etre collectif et pour la fraction de la population organisee en lobbys

wage discrimination and population composition in the long run we derive the conditions that sign the effects of changing population composition on wage levels and ratios when labor supply and discrimination preferences vary the overall effect depends on an aggregate market a relative market and a preference distribution effect

regulating the restructuring of the us steel industry chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code and pension obligations clark g l 1991 regulating the restructuring of the us steel industry chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code and pension obligations reg studies 25 135 153 the past two decades have seen enormous changes in united states manufacturing industries restructuring of production has greatly affected levels of employment the volume of productive capacity and the location of work if these aspects of restructuring are now very well known less appreciated are the regulatory dilemmas posed by restructuring private corporations and public regulatory agencies have become enmeshed in litigation over the design and consequences of restructuring due in part to the fact that restructuring strategies have brought corporations into conflict with fundamental but competing public policy interests the apparent failure of the federal government to develop an explicit industrial policy has only exacerbated these conflicts based upon a case study of the chapter 11 bankruptcy of the ltv steel corporation and competi

endogenous lobby formation and endogenous protection a long run model of trade policy determination this paper provides a theory of lobby formation within a framework in which trade policy is determined through political contributions under certain conditions free trade turns out to be an equilibrium outcome either when the government has a high affinity for political contributions or when it cares a great deal about social welfare moreover greater inequality in asset distribution results in a greater number of lobbies and in most cases more protection for each of these lobbies furthermore industries with higher levels of capital stock fewer capitalists more inelastic demand and smaller geographical dispersion are the ones that get organized

environmental regulation and the spatial structure of the u s dairy sector substantial public scrutiny about adverse environmental impacts of the dairy sector has resulted in increased environmental regulations a behavioral model of location and production is developed to examine the impacts of environmental regulations traditional location factors and agglomeration economies on the spatial structure and geographical location of dairy production the results show that counties in the states with more stringent environmental regulations tend to lose dairy inventories to those with less stringent policies there are substantially meaningful spatial patterns of dairy production current dairy production levels are positively correlated while changes in production levels are negatively correlated across counties

the protectionist bias of duty drawbacks evidence from mercosur in a political economy setting where tariffs and duty drawbacks are endogenously chosen through industry lobbying it is shown that full duty drawbacks are granted to exporters who use imported intermediates in their production this in turn decreases their incentives to counter lobby against high tariffs on their inputs in equilibrium higher tariffs will be observed on these goods the creation of a regional block will change the political equilibrium duty drawbacks will be eliminated on intra regional exports which in turn will lead to lower tariffs for goods used as inputs by intra regional exporters evidence from mercosur suggests that the elimination of duty drawbacks for intra regional exports led to increased counter lobbying by users of intermediate products in its absence the common external tariff would have been on average 3 5 percentage points 25 percent higher

inside the family firm the role of families in succession decisions and performance this paper uses a unique dataset from denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance we focus on the decision to appoint either a family or an external chief executive officer ceo the paper uses variation in ceo succession decisions that result from the gender of a departing ceo s first born child this is a plausible instrumental variable iv as male firstchild firms are more likely to pass on control to a family ceo relative to female first child firms but the gender of a first child is unlikely to affect firms outcomes we find that family successions have a large negative causal impact on firm performance operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points around ceo transitions our iv estimates are significantly larger than those obtained using ordinary least squares furthermore we show that family ceo underperformance is particularly large for firms in high growth industries and for relatively large firms overall the empirical results demonstrate that professional non family ceos provide extremely valuable services to the organizations they head

the impact of differences in turnover rates on male female pay differentials economic theory suggests that wages vary with turnover rates because of hiring and training costs workers viewed as likely to quit can anticipate a wage discount workers in industries with high layoff rates may demand a compensating wage premium by pooling time series industry turnover rates by sex with 1970 census data we are able to examine the effect of past industry turnover on current earnings turnover proves to be important for both males and females although the wage discount for a high quit probability is larger for females when differences in turnover are taken into account the portion of the male female earnings gap explainable by human capital and socioeconomic variables increases by a factor of one half

endophilia or exophobia beyond discrimination the discrimination literature treats outcomes as relative but does a differential arise because agents discriminate against others exophobia or because they favour their own kind endophilia using a field experiment that assigned graders randomly to students examinations that did did not contain names we find favouritism but no discrimination by nationality nor by gender we are able to identify these preferences under a wide range of behavioural scenarios regarding the graders that endophilia dominates exophobia alters how we should measure discriminatory wage differentials and should inform the formulation of anti discrimination policy

competition small business financing and discrimination evidence from a new survey we analyze credit applications loan denials and interest rates paid by small businesses across owner gender race and ethnicity in addition we examine data from owners who said they did not apply for credit because they believed that their applications would have been turned down after controlling for a rich set of explanatory variables including personal and business credit histories substantial differences in denial rates between firms owned by african americans and white males remain moreover consistent with becker s classic theories 1957 we find evidence that increases in competition in the firm s local banking market reduces these differences

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