selection investment and women s relative wages over time in theory growing wage inequality within gender should cause women to invest more in their market productivity and should differentially pull able women into the workforce our paper uses heckman s two step estimator and identification at infinity on repeated current population survey cross sections to calculate relative wage series for women since 1970 that hold constant the composition of skills we find that selection into the female full time full year workforce shifted from negative in the 1970s to positive in the 1990s and that the majority of the apparent narrowing of the gender wage gap reflects changes in female workforce composition we find the same types of composition changes by measuring husbands wages and national longitudinal survey iq data as proxies for unobserved skills our findings help to explain why growing wage equality between genders coincided with growing inequality within gender

uncertainty and disagreement in economic prediction the bank of england survey of external forecasters this article introduces a new source of survey data namely the bank of england survey of external forecasters the survey collects point and density forecasts of inflation and gdp growth and hence offers the opportunity of constructing direct measures of uncertainty we present a simple statistical framework in which to define and interrelate measures of uncertainty and disagreement the resulting measures are compared with other direct measures of uncertainty nationally and internationally a significant sustained reduction in inflation uncertainty followed the 1997 granting of operational independence to the bank of england to pursue a monetary policy of inflation targeting

explanations of the inconsistencies in survey respondents forecasts a comparison of the point forecasts and the probability distributions of inflation and output growth made by individual respondents to the us survey of professional forecasters indicates that the two sets of forecasts are sometimes inconsistent we evaluate a number of possible explanations and find that not all forecasters update their histogram forecasts as new information arrives this is supported by the finding that the point forecasts are more accurate than the histograms in terms of first moment prediction c 2009 elsevier b v all rights reserved

combining economic forecasts a method for combining forecasts may or may not account for dependence and differing precision among forecasts in this article we test a variety of such methods in the context of combining forecasts of gnp from four major econometric models the methods include one in which forecasting errors are jointly normally distributed and several variants of this model as well as some simpler procedures and a bayesian approach with a prior distribution based on exchangeability of forecasters the results indicate that a simple average the normal model with an independence assumption and the bayesian model perform better than the other approaches that are studied here

pride and prejudice using ethnic sounding names and inter ethnic marriages to identify labour market discrimination labour markets discriminate against workers with particular ethnic sounding names we use non random sorting into interethnic marriage and salient differences between sephardic and ashkenazi surnames to evaluate the causal impact of sephardic affiliation on wages using the 1995 israeli census we estimate the effect of a sephardic sounding surname on wages we first compare the wages of israeli jewish males born to sephardic fathers and ashkenazi mothers sa who are more likely to carry a sephardic surname with the wages of israeli jewish males born to ashkenazi fathers and sephardic mothers as we find that israeli labor markets discriminate based on perceived ethnicity sa workers earn significantly less than their as counterparts we then exploit the custom of women to adopt their husbands surnames to disentangle actual ethnicity from the ethnicity perceived by the market consistent with ethnic discrimination based on surnames we find that it is father in law s ethnicity rather than father s ethnicity that shapes female wage rates finally we find that labor markets discriminate based on surname only when those names provide additional information about ethnicity when ethnicity can be discerned from skin tone surnames do not provide additional explanatory power with respect to wages

the importance of noncognitive skills lessons from the ged testing program it is common knowledge outside of academic journals that motivation tenacity trustworthiness and perseverance are important traits for success in life thomas edison wrote that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration most parents read the aesop fable of the tortoise and the hare to their young children at about the same time they read them the story of the little train that could numerous instances can be cited of high iq people who failed to achieve success in life because they lacked self discipline and low iq people who succeeded by virtue of persistence reliability and self discipline the value of trustworthiness has recently been demonstrated when market systems were extended to eastern european societies with traditions of corruption and deceit it is thus surprising that academic discussions of skill and skill formation almost exclusively focus on measures of cognitive ability and ignore noncognitive skills the early literature on human capital e g gary becker 1964 contrasted cognitive ability models of earnings with human capital models ignoring noncognitive traits entirely the signaling literature e g michael spence 1974 emphasized that education was a signal of a one dimensional ability usually interpreted as a cognitive skill most discussions of ability bias in the estimated return to education treat omitted ability as cognitive ability and attempt to proxy the missing ability by cognitive tests most assessments of school reforms stress the gain from reforms as measured by the ability of students to perform on a standardized achievement test widespread use of standardized achievement and ability tests for admissions and educational evaluation are premised on the belief that the skills that can be tested are essential for success in schooling a central premise of the educational testing movement since its inception much of the neglect of noncognitive skills in analyses of earnings schooling and other lifetime outcomes is due to the lack of any reliable measure of them many different personality and motivational traits are lumped into the category of noncognitive skills psychologists have developed batteries of tests to measure noncognitive skills e g robert sternberg 1985 these tests are used by companies to screen workers but are not yet used to ascertain college readiness or to evaluate the effectiveness of schools or reforms of schools the literature on cognitive tests ascertains that one dominant factor g summarizes cognitive tests and their effects on outcomes no single factor has yet emerged to date in the literature on noncognitive skills and it is unlikely that one will ever be found given the diversity of traits subsumed under the category of noncognitive skills studies by samuel bowles and herbert gintis 1976 rick edwards 1976 and roger klein et al 1991 demonstrate that job stability and dependability are traits most valued by employers as ascertained by supervisor ratings and questions of employers although they present no direct evidence on wages and educational t discussants susan mayer university of chicago cecilia rouse princeton university nan maxwell california state university hayward janet currie university of california los angeles

selection on observed and unobserved variables assessing the effectiveness of catholic schools in this paper we measure the effect of catholic high school attendance on educational attainment and test scores because we do not have a good instrumental variable for catholic school attendance we develop new estimation methods based on the idea that the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in a model provides a guide to the amount of selection on the unobservables we also propose an informal way to assess selectivity bias based on measuring the ratio of selection on unobservables to selection on observables that would be required if one is to attribute the entire effect of catholic school attendance to selection bias we use our methods to estimate the effect of attending a catholic high school on a variety of outcomes our main conclusion is that catholic high schools substantially increase the probability of graduating from high school and more tentatively attending college we find little evidence of an effect on test scores

will affirmative action policies eliminate negative stereotypes a key question concerning affirmative action is whether the labor market gains it brings to minorities can continue without it becoming a permanent fixture in the labor market the authors argue that this depends on how the policy affects employers beliefs about the productivity of minority workers they study the joint determination of employer beliefs and worker productivity in a model of statistical discrimination in job assignments the authors prove that even when identifiable groups are equally endowed ex ante affirmative action can bring about a situation in which employers correctly perceive the groups to be unequally productive ex post copyright 1993 by american economic association

is it better to average probabilities or quantiles we consider two ways to aggregate expert opinions using simple averages averaging probabilities and averaging quantiles we examine analytical properties of these forecasts and compare their ability to harness the wisdom of the crowd in terms of location the two average forecasts have the same mean the average quantile forecast is always sharper it has lower variance than the average probability forecast even when the average probability forecast is overconfident the shape of the average quantile forecast still offers the possibility of a better forecast using probability forecasts for gross domestic product growth and inflation from the survey of professional forecasters we present evidence that both when the average probability forecast is overconfident and when it is underconfident it is outperformed by the average quantile forecast our results show that averaging quantiles is a viable alternative and indicate some conditions under which it is likely to be more useful than averaging probabil

a game theoretic mathematical programming analysis of cooperative phenomena in oligopolistic markets this paper investigates cooperative behavior in an industry that supplies a homogeneous product and consists of oligopolistic firms the analysis is conducted within a game theoretic framework in which each firm is viewed as a player whose strategy is its level of production by defining a suitable characteristic function that evaluates the worth of each possible coalition we attempt to quantify the individual and collective bargaining powers of firms in order to predict merger or contractual agreements and production strategies in particular we define three games via three characteristic functions each of which is based upon some assumed market behavior on the part of the players for each game we investigate whether the firms would choose to remain separate or form a grand coalition or some other coalition structure for some insightful special cases we are able to establish the resulting outcome and assert whether a core allocation of profits among members of an emerging coalition exists and whether the shapley value allocation belongs to the core in the more general case we use the u s copper industry as an example to illustrate how shapley values may be used to determine possible emerging coalition structures

a multiple leader stackelberg model and analysis this paper presents a new multiple leader follower model that is a consistent extension of stackelberg s leader follower duopoly the development contrasts with other existing extensions by demonstrating how the leader firms can utilize the true reaction curve of the follower firms it also provides sufficient conditions for some useful convexity and differentiability properties of this function for the proposed model we conduct a static analysis and discuss the existence uniqueness and computation of an equilibrium solution as well as study certain issues regarding the relative profits of leader and follower firms since the cournot oligopoly and the stackelberg leader follower models are special cases of this model the analysis in this paper hopefully provides some further insights about these types of models

contributions to cournot oligopoly theory abstract this work contributes to a number of questions concerning oligopoly models in particular uniqueness of the cournot equilibrium point is demonstrated under the assumption that either the unit price function is differentiable and the derivative is strictly negative or the cost functions are strictly convex also under the assumption of either strictly decreasing unit price function or strictly convex cost functions it is shown that a the total production level at equilibrium increases with entry of additional players b that cooperation between some of the players necessarily entails profit for the others and c cooperative grouping causes decrease in production levels

equity and efficiency in human capital investment the local connection a general model of community formation and human capital accumulation with social spillovers and decentralized school funding is used to analyse the causes of economic segregation and its consequences for equity and efficiency significant polarization arises from minor differences in endowments preferences or access to capital markets this makes income inequality more persistent across generations but the same need not be true for wealth equilibrium stratification tends to be excessive resulting in low aggregate surplus whether state equalization of school resources can remedy these problems hinges on how purchased social and family inputs interact in education and in mobility decisions

orchestrating impartiality the impact of blind auditions on female musicians a change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras adoption of blind auditions with a screen to conceal the candidate s identity from the jury provides a test for sex biased hiring using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed effects framework we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras

comparing the point predictions and subjective probability distributions of professional forecasters we use data from the survey of professional forecasters spf to compare point predictions of gross domestic product gdp growth and inflation with the subjective probability distributions held by forecasters we find that most spf point predictions are quite close to the central tendencies of forecasters subjective distributions tend to be asymmetric with spf forecasters tending to report point predictions that give a more favorable view of the economy than do their subjective means medians modes

a mathematical programming approach to a nash cournot equilibrium analysis for atwo stage network of oligopolies this paper deals with the existence characterization and computation of equilibrium solutions arising from related mathematical programming problems associated with a particular market structure the generic structure analyzed herein represents a two stage production process in which a set of some firms produces a semifinished product that serves as an input to another set of firms which converts this to a final good in addition there exists a third set of vertically integrated firms these firms perform the operations jointly performed by the other two sets of firms in producing the final product on the demand side an econometrically derived demand curve is specified for the final product the aim of this paper is to characterize the nature of the equilibrium solutions for such problems under various market behavioral structures derive sufficient conditions under which one can claim the existence of these equilibrium solutions and prescribe methods for computing equilibrium solutions the analysis provides a machinery for considering the effects of mergers and integrations on a firms profits and on industry outputs and prices thereby suggesting incentives or otherwise to merge or integrate

stackelberg nash cournot equilibria characterizations and computations the supply side of an oligopolistic market supplying a homogeneous product noncooperatively is modeled in this market there is one leader and n followers the followers operate under the cournot assumption of zero conjectural variation and are accordingly called cournot firms the leader called a stackelberg firm specifically takes into account the reaction of the cournot firms to its output for this situation we study the behavior and implications of the joint cournot reaction curve as generated by plausible economic market assumptions in particular we study the existence and uniqueness of a stackelberg nash cournot equilibrium in addition we prescribe an efficient algorithm to determine a set of equilibrating output quantities for the firms

trimmed opinion pools and the crowd s calibration problem we introduce an alternative to the popular linear opinion pool for combining individual probability forecasts one of the well known problems with the linear opinion pool is that it can be poorly calibrated it tends toward underconfidence as the crowd s diversity increases i e as the variance in the individuals means increases to address this calibration problem we propose the exterior trimmed opinion pool to form this pool forecasts with low and high means or cumulative distribution function cdf values are trimmed away from a linear opinion pool exterior trimming decreases the pool s variance and improves its calibration a linear opinion pool however will remain overconfident when individuals are overconfident and not very diverse for these situations we suggest trimming away forecasts with moderate means or cdf values this interior trimming increases variance and reduces overconfidence using probability forecast data from u s and european surveys of professional forecasters we present empirical evidence that trimmed opinion pools can outperform the linear opinion pool this paper was accepted by rakesh sarin decision analysis

percentage and relative error measures in forecast evaluation properties of two large families of scale free forecast accuracy measures that include popular measures such as mean absolute percentage error relative error and squared percentage error are examined in this paper we describe the optimal reports when forecasts are evaluated using these measures we also provide analytic expressions for the optimal bayes act associated with these measures under a general power transformation for several well known probability distributions we then show that using measures from these two families may inadvertently provide incentives for either pessimism or optimism among forecasters i e rewarding underforecasts or overforecasts relative to some reference measure of central tendency as an illustration of these concepts we examine the use of these measures for model selection in a forecast aggregation example using stock price forecasts derived from the thomson reuters institutional brokers estimate system this example illustrates how aggregation methods that alw