black white differences in schooling investment and human capital production in segregated schools the lower level of school quality available for blacks relative to whites in the segregated era is frequently cited as a primary cause for the currently observed gap in black white average wages the inferior education provided to black children is argued to have caused lower levels of human capital production in black schools than white schools the gap in black white wages can be traced to this gap in human capital similarly the convergence in black and white average wages during the 1960 s and 1970 s may be explained by the steady convergence in black and white school quality and attendance which began in the 1940 s this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

estimation of economies of scale in banking using a generalized functional form this paper addresses four issues that arise in the estimation of economies of scale in the commercial banking industry first a common assumption underlying many of the studies of economies of scale in banking is the assumption of a cobb douglas production function with exogenous input prices the use of a cobb douglas production function facilitates the estimation of the output elasticity of cost however there does not appear to be any other reason a priori for such an assumption this paper utilizes a box cox hereafter b c generalized functional form methodology to directly test the assumption of an underlying cobb douglas production function second if the assumption of a cobb douglas production function is inappropriate as a description of the production process of the financial firm estimates of the output elasticity may be biased the sensitivity of the estimates of this elasticity to the choice of functional form can also be examined through the use of a generalized functional form methodology third no general consensus has been reached regarding the appropriate definition of bank output thus a diversity of measures of bank output have been employed in previous estimates of economies of scale in banking the sensitivity of the estimated output elasticity of cost to the selection of several alternative measures of output is examined through the use of the generalized functional form methodology finally the b c estimates of the cost function for commercial banks can be used

the highs and lows of the minimum wage effect a time series cross section study of the canadian law we examine the effects of minimum wage legislation in canada over the period 1975 93 for teenagers we find that a 10 increase in the minimum wage is associated with roughly a 2 5 decrease in employment we also find that this result is driven by low frequency variation in the data at high frequencies the elasticity is positive and insignificant the difference in the elasticity across the bandwidth has implications for the interpretation of employment dynamics as a result of minimum wage policy and experimental design in minimum wage studies it also provides a simple reconciliation of the new minimum wage research which reports very small negative or positive elasticities

the role of permanent income and demographics in black white differences in wealth we explore the extent to which the large race gap in wealth can be explained with properly constructed income and demographic variables in some instances we explain the entire wealth gap with income and demographics provided that we estimate the wealth model on a sample of whites however we typically explain a much smaller fraction when we estimate the wealth model on a black sample using sibling fixed effects models to control for intergenerational transfers and the effects of adverse history we find that these factors are not likely to account for the lower explanatory power of the black wealth models our analysis of growth models of wealth suggests that differences in savings behavior and or rates of return play an important role

using local labor market data to re examine the employment effects of the minimum wage using quarterly census data for 1996 2000 the author evaluates how minimum wages affected teenage employment at the county level an analysis that includes all counties yields small and statistically insignificant effects consistent with previous research using state panels however in counties where the minimum wage was likely binding above the market clearing wage for teens the negative impact on employment was considerably larger the effect was strongest in small counties was restricted to transitory jobs and new hires and apparently was not experienced by young adults ages 19 22 the small employment effects found in much of the literature the author argues at least partly reflect the estimates inclusion of local labor markets where the minimum wage is not binding by averaging the effects across all areas with no disaggregation based on where the minimum wage is binding and where it is not these studies overlook important regional variation

racial discrimination in the labor market theory and empirics we review theories of race discrimination in the labor market taste based models can generate wage and unemployment duration differentials when combined with either random or directed search even when strong prejudice is not widespread but no existing model explains the unemployment rate differential models of statistical discrimination based on differential observability of productivity across races can explain the pattern and magnitudes of wage differentials but do not address employment and unemployment at their current state of development models of statistical discrimination based on rational stereotypes have little empirical content it is plausible that models combining elements of the search models with statistical discrimination could fit the data we suggest possible avenues to be pursued and comment briefly on the implication of existing theory for public policy jel j15 j31 j64 j71

an empirical investigation of changes in scale economies for the commercial banking firm 1979 1986 the period of the 1980s represents a particularly turbulent time for the banking industry a number of technological and regulatory changes have occurred including the elimination of regulation q which had limited the explicit interest payments that banks could pay on some types of deposits it would be expected that these changes would affect the structure of costs for banks the behavior of the cost function is studied over the 1979 1986 time period and in contrast to previous studies using earlier data increasing economies of scale are found in the later years for banks in both unit and branch banking states these results indicate that there may be increased cost pressure for smaller banks to become larger either through mergers and acquisitions or through internal growth this may lead to further consolidation pressures within the industry and reductions in the overall number of banking firms copyright 1991 by ohio state university press

effects of the minimum wage on the employment status of youths an update the large decline in the relative value of the minimum wage during the 1980s makes that period a valuable one for identifying the impact of variation in the minimum wage on youth employment this study produces the robust finding that when the experience of the 1980s is included a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is estimated to reduce teen employment by less than 1 percent the lower end of the range of previous estimates because this small employment effect is offset by a labor force withdrawal effect the study finds no discernible effect on measured unemployment the study also finds no apparent effect of the minimum wage on the employment of young adults aged 20 24

the effects of minimum wages on wage dispersion and employment evidence from the u k wages councils using data on wages council coverage from the united kingdom new earnings survey the authors examine the impact of mandated minimum wages on wage dispersion and employment in the united kingdom in the 1980s they find evidence that a dramatic decline in the toughness of the regulation imposed by the wages councils through the 1980s a decline that is in the level of the minimum wage relative to the average wage significantly contributed to widening wage dispersion over those years there is however no evidence of an increase in employment resulting from the weakening bite of the wages council minimum pay rates instead consistent with the conclusions of several recent u s studies the findings suggest that the minimum wage had either no effect or a positive effect on employment

job search and asset accumulation under borrowing constraints this article examines the relationship between wealth accumulation and job search dynamics it proposes a model in which risk averse individuals search for jobs save and borrow to smooth their consumption one motivation for accumulating wealth is to finance voluntary quits in order to search for better jobs using data on men from the national longitudinal survey 1979 cohort i estimate the individual s dynamic decision problem the results show that borrowing constraints are tight and reinforce the influence of wealth on job acceptance decisions namely that more initial wealth and access to larger amounts of credit increase wages and unemployment duration

happy birthday you re fired the effects of an age dependent minimum wage on youth employment flows in the netherlands the dutch minimum wage for workers aged 15 to 23 is defined as a stepwise increasing function of a worker s calendar age using dutch administrative records the author shows that the birthday disc

the diffusion of production processes in the u s banking industry a finite mixture approach abstract this article applies finite mixture distributions to the estimation of cost functions for financial firms through time the mixture approach allows the estimation of multiple technologies when firms technology choices are unobservable technology switching diffusion and underlying technical change are simultaneously evaluated an application to large samples of u s banks for the years 1982 1986 illustrates the approach results suggest banks switch to lower cost production technologies when unburdened by strict branching regulations

the measurement of labor force dynamics with longitudinal data the labour market activity survey filter this article explores the measurement of labor force dynamics using longitudinal data focusing in particular on the canadian labour market activity survey lmas which represents a potential advance in longitudinal data collection because it measures aspects of dynamics not available in existing panel data such as the panel study of income dynamics and the national longitudinal survey we examine the implications of the lmas questionnaire structure the lmas filter for the study of labor market dynamics and undertake simulations to provide a quantitative assessment of the importance of this filter for labor force spells and transitions between labor force states

does wealth explain black white differences in early employment careers in this article i inquire about the effects initial wealth has on black white differences in early employment careers i set up a dynamic model in which individuals simultaneously search for a job and accumulate wealth and fit it to data from the national longitudinal survey 1979 cohort regime changes and decompositions of racial differences reveal that differences in the labor market environment and in preferences account fully for racial gaps in wealth and in wages persisting several years after high school graduation differences in initial wealth partially explain differences in early employment careers

multiproduct monopoly regulation and firm costs regulation of public utiilties has traditionally been justified on the grounds that firm long run average costs fall with increased output in these industries for this reason it has been argued that cost efficiency dictates that a single firm supply the product ideally regulation of public utilities prevents monopolistic pricing while still permitting the most cost efficient industrial structure a large amount of theoretical and applied research has shown however that regulation in these industries generally does not guarantee that regulated firm costs are held at the lowest possible level for a given amount of output it seems then that regulation results in a tradeoff between cost savings from efficient industrial organization and cost inefficiencies generically known as x inefficiencies in this paper a new dimension of this tradeoff is examined specifically the paper explores whether cost efficiencies that are thought to characterize multiproduct public utilities are offset by increased costs permitted by a lack of inter energy competition in the next section a framework is constructed that is capable of identifying the cost structure for multiproduct firms and its relationship to efficient industrial structure section iii examines the sources of multiproduct economies and diseconomies for regulated multiproduct public utilities the cost structure is then estimated in section iv for single and multiproduct electricity and natural gas utilities section v considers the implications of the empirical analysis

employment effects of minimum and subminimum wages panel data on state minimum wage laws using panel data on state minimum wage laws and economic conditions for the years 1973 89 the authors reevaluate existing evidence on the effects of a minimum wage on employment their estimates indicate that a 10 increase in the minimum wage causes a decline of 1 2 in employment among teenagers and a decline of 1 5 2 in employment for young adults similar to the ranges suggested by earlier time series studies the authors also find evidence that youth subminimum wage provisions enacted by state legislatures moderate the disemployment effects of minimum wages on teenagers

using regional variation in wages to measure the effects of the federal minimum wage the imposition of a national minimum wage standard provides a natural experiment in which the treatment effect varies across states depending on the fraction of workers initially earning less than the new minimum the author exploits this fact to evaluate the effect of the april 1990 increase in the federal minimum wage on teenagers wages employment and school enrollment comparisons of grouped and individual state data confirm that the rise in the minimum wage increased teenagers wages there is no evidence of corresponding losses in teenage employment or changes in teenage school enrollment

an update on economies of scale in credit unions when employing the benston bell murphy cost specification most studies on economies of scale in financial institutions have consistently found small yet significant economies however when a similar approach on credit unions was used the results were conflicting this paper through the use of a different methodological and statistical approach provides additional evidence on the existence of economies of scale in credit unions

the economic impacts of minimum wage laws a new look at an old question this article uses a radically different methodology to address the question of the impact of minimum wage laws on employment and earnings the methodology uses the adult wage structure which exists prior to a change in the federal minimum wage to identify the members of the subminimum wage population this allows the parameterization of the disemployment effects of the minimum wage amendment on the subminimum population and the spillover employment effects on the above minimum population the members of the subminimum population are found to experience considerably reduced employment probabilities and annual hours worked conditional on employment some evidence of above minimum spillover effects is also found the paper evaluates the impact of the minimum on the earnings distribution and concludes that the burden of the minimum wage falls most severely on females this effect on adult females is surprisingly neutral with respect to race the greatest beneficiaries of the minimum among the adult populati

the minimum wage and the employment of youth evidence from the nlsy using panel data on individuals from the national longitudinal survey of youth we find that employed individuals who were affected by the increases in the federal minimum wage in 1979 and 1980 were about 3 percent less likely to be employed a year later even after accounting for the fact that workers employed at the minimum wage may differ from their peers in unobserved ways

eliminating race differences in school attainment and labor market success in this article we provide quantitative evidence on the effects of monetary incentive schemes designed to reduce racial differences in school attainment and earnings our analysis is based on the structural estimation of a dynamic model of schooling work and occupational choice decisions over the life cycle we consider two recent proposals that although not specifically targeted to blacks can be expected to have differential racial impacts one proposal suggested by robert reich provides a high school graduation bonus to youths from lower income families the other suggested by edmund phelps provides wage subsidies to low wage workers

scale and scope economies in the multi product banking firm abstract the multi product nature of the banking firm is examined utilizing the translog cost function this analysis indicates that contrary to conventional wisdom natural monopoly scale economies and product specific decreasing costs are not robust characterizations of the banking industry there is however evidence that the cost function is characterized by economies of scope the implications of these results are discussed and extensions of this approach suggested

modelling cost structure the bell system revisited this paper analyses a recent public policy decision and the crucial role played by the choice of the functional form the break up of the bell system is indeed a classic case of anti trust settlement and constitutes one of the most prominent and controversial applications of microeconomics to public policy it is argued that demanding multi output cost properties such as economies of scope for this is the considerable robustness problem displayed by the tranlog cost functional form the reason for this is the considerable able to robustness problem displayed by the translog cost function which is the source underlying many of the expert disagreements it is suggested that the non robustness is due to what ils termed the flip flop property and it is shown that the available empirical evidence from the pre divestiture bell system supports this argument to obtain robust results we propose that the analysis is constrained to the proper region of the cost function we propose that the analysis is con

getting handcuffs on an octopus theoretical work on minimum wage policy emphasizes labor market dynamics but the resulting implications for worker mobility remain largely untested the authors show that in the teenage labor market higher minimum wage standards reduce worker flows and increase job stability furthermore they find that the employment effects of a relatively higher minimum wage vary considerably across markets with different levels of turnover and labor market tightness results help to explain the small effects of minimum wage standards on employment commonly found in the aggregate data and are consistent with labor market models that involve search frictions

institutions of higher education as multi product firms economies of scale and scope a multiple output cost function is estimated for institutions of higher education in the united states employing data for 1981 82 the authors flexible fixed cost quadratic function includes three outputs undergraduate teaching graduate teaching and research grants and one input price average faculty salaries results indicate the existence of scope economies at least up to a point for both public and private institutions of higher education ray economies of scale are more pronounced in the private sector and product specific economies of scale are observed only in the public sector for research and graduate teaching copyright 1989 by mit press

scale economies in banking a restructuring and reassessment the issue of scale economies in banking has a rich history most earlier studies report modest operating cost scale economies for small institutions those with less than about 50 million of deposits in 1968 dollars but are unclear where these economies might end if at all unfortunately these studies are limited in four important respects first those that were well specified did not measure the total cost of banking operations but concentrated on estimating scale economies for individual banking functions e g demand deposits separately from commercial loans second an average cost curve that could take a u shape over the full range of banks was not fitted either because larger banks were not included or because of the functional form used cobb douglas consequently the optimum or minimum cost size of a bank or office could not be determined third the variables measuring the costs of branching were misspecified fourth the branch

the determinants of black white differences in early employment careers search layoffs quits and endogenous wage growth this paper studies the transition from school to full time employment and subsequent labor mobility during the first five postschooling years for several recent cohorts of black and white male terminal high school graduates using unique data from the 1979 youth cohort of the national longitudinal surveys of labor market experience a constrained optimization model of labor force dynamics is implemented empirically integrating features of models previously described in the literature the estimates of the model provide quantitative evidence on underlying structural differences in labor market constraints faced by blacks and whites for example while blacks have overall a substantially smaller wage return to work experience and face a less disperse wage offer distribution blacks face a higher probability of receiving job offers

racial differences in patterns of wealth accumulation making use of psid data for 1984 1989 and 1994 we examine race differences in patterns of asset accumulation our results indicate as expected that inheritances raise the rate of wealth accumulation of whites relative to that of african americans but while whites devote a greater share of their income to saving racial differences in saving rates are not significant once we control for income though our results may be period specific we also do not find evidence that the rate of return to capital is greater for whites than for african americans simulations suggest that african americans would have gained significant ground relative to whites during the period if they had inherited similar amounts saved at the same rate had comparable income levels and more speculatively had portfolios closer in composition to those of whites

technological change in large u s commercial banks this article examines technological change its relationship to firm size and its impact on the efficient scale of output and product mix for large u s commercial banks the results suggest that technological change lowered real costs by about one percent per year increased the cost minimizing scale of outputs and affected product mix the authors do not find support for the galbraith schumpeter hypothesis this suggests that the largest banks cannot use innovation alone to outpace smaller banks the major implications are that public policies allowing freer banking combinations do not necessarily run counter to the public interest copyright 1991 by university of chicago press

human capital discrimination and the gender wage gap in bangladesh summary this paper investigates changes in the gender wage gap in bangladesh over the period 1999 2009 the gap in average wages between men and women decreased by 31 over this period this paper shows that a key driver of this change was an improvement in female educational qualifications it also demonstrates that the gender wage gap across the wage distribution narrowed much more at the lower end of the wage distribution than at the upper end it attributes this mainly to a decline in discrimination against women implications for policies aimed at more equal access to education and enforcement of equal pay legislation in bangladesh are also identified

product line deregulation and the cost structure of us savings and loan associations recent legislative actions restrict thrift powers which were broadened by deregulatory actions in the early 1980s using nationwide data for savings and loans s ls evidence is found that these restrictions may rise intermediation costs for s ls by limiting their ability to exploit economies of scope between mortgage related and other outputs in addition economies of scale for a wide size range of s ls are found evidence is also found to suggest that insolvent s ls have higher costs for the same level of outputs than solvent s ls

estimating the effect of racial discrimination on first job wage offers in this paper we develop and implement a method for bounding the extent to which labor market discrimination can account for racial wage differentials the method is based on a two sided search matching model that formally accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and unobserved offered wages we find that racial differences in offered wages are proportionately twice three times as large as racial differences in accepted wages for high school dropouts high school graduates the results indicate that discrimination could account for the entire racial wage offer differential for high school dropouts and for high school graduates i e the bound on the extent of discrimination is not informative

trucking deregulation and the black white wage gap the only previous study of the effect of product market deregulation on the black white wage gap found that this gap in the trucking industry declined after trucking deregulation in 1978 that study did not however estimate the separate effects of deregulation on union and nonunion members or on black and white drivers this study does so through an analysis of individual worker information from the march and may cps files for the years 1973 through 1988 the authors find that deregulation is associated with significantly declining black white wage gaps among both union and nonunion drivers this wage pattern is attributable to significant reductions in the real wages of white drivers the real wages of black drivers did not change with deregulation

black white wealth inequality is inheritance the reason i introduction on average black americans have less wealth than white americans previous studies of wealth reveal that blacks hold on average between 10 and 25 of the wealth held by whites as reported in terrell 1971 smith 1975 sobol 1979 blau and graham 1990 and wolff 1992 a number of possible explanations for this gap have been suggested particularly differences in income and various socio economic characteristics between black and white households however the average difference in black white household income is much less than the difference in black white household wealth wolff 1992 reports that black household income averaged 63 of white household income in 1989 a ratio which had persisted over the previous twenty years consequently there must be additional factors which explain the greater racial wealth differential recently economists such as blau and graham 1990 and wolff 1992 have surmised that differences in intergenerational transfers might account for much of the unexplained racial difference in wealth we document the large difference in wealth between blacks and whites and then attempt to account for this difference paying particular attention to the effect of inherited wealth a number of investigators have speculated on the possible importance of inheritances in explaining racial differences in wealth in a comment on smith s 1975 analysis of black white wealth differentials vito natrella 1975 noted that smith only explained 25 of the wealth differential through differences in economic variables natrella conjectured that the really significant determinants not included in smith s analysis were prior income inherited wealth and the propensity to save p 370 wolff 1992 suggested that differences in intergenerational transfers provide a plausible explanation of the black white wealth gap but provided no supporting evidence in a recent article blau and graham 1990 attempted to explain racial differences in wealth at the household level as a result of differences in household income location and demographic factors however they found that three quarters of the racial difference in wealth remained unexplained they speculated that racial differences in inheritance and other intergenerational transfers most likely play an important part p 338 in explaining the remaining black white differences in wealth if true this explanation would have important policy implications e g higher rates of inheritance taxation could reduce wealth differences between races ii data in this paper we attempt to empirically verify the hypothesized importance of inheritances in explaining the differences in black and white household wealth our empirical analysis makes use of two data sets which report both household wealth and household inheritances the 1976 national longitudinal surveys of mature men nls76 and the 1989 survey of consumer finances scf89 the nls76 sample was chosen to be representative of the u s male population aged 45 to 59 years old in 1966 with an oversampling of black households our analysis focuses on the sample of 2 019 respondents who survived through 1976 and reported all variables required for our analysis 1 more information about the nls76 can be obtained from the center for human resource research 1992 the scf89 sample was chosen to provide a comprehensive picture of the financial situation of all u s households in 1989 the scf89 oversampled high income households we make use of the complete sample encompassing the multiple imputation procedure employed by researchers at the board of governors of the federal reserve system more information about these data can be obtained in kennickell and shack marquez 1992 since both data sets employ oversampling of particular population segments all sample statistics reported in this paper are sample weighted in the nls76 respondents were asked to report whether they or their spouse had received any girl inheritance or prize such as a lottery or award greater than 1 000

the effect of minimum wages on youth employment in canada a panel study previous u s panel estimates of minimum wage effects have been criticized on the grounds that their identification rests on comparisons of low wage and high wage workers using canadian panel data for 1988 90 i compare estimates based on the traditional u s methodology with those based on samples of low wage workers exclusively the results would appear to vindicate the critics the minimum wage effect from the latter approach is virtually zero yet estimates from different subgroups of low wage workers indicate that there is a significant disemployment effect for those with longer low wage employment histories this highlights the heterogeneity within low wage workers and the importance of carefully defining the target group not solely based on workers wages

minimum wage laws are they overrated l minimum has been fixed in nominal terms at about 55 percent of the current average wage rising wages in the rest of the economy gradually erode the real minimum wage and eventually the process is repeated sometimes the increase in the nominal minimum is accompanied by a permanent reduction in those businesses exempted from the law proposals for a lower minimum wage for young workers or to index the minimum wage to the average wage have been debated but not adopted the minimum wage was last increased to 3 35 in 1981 since then average hourly wages have risen by 25 percent eliminating any momentum for a lower minimum wage for youth but reviving proposals for another increase in the nominal minimum economists are fascinated by the minimum wage because we have strong theoretical predictions about the direction of the effect of the minimum wage on employment and fairly widely accepted methods to estimate the size of that impact it probably didn t hurt that the earliest and later estimates lined up well with the predictions but that is not the only reason for our fascination with the topic depending on whether we include those who say they earn less than the minimum wage minimum wage workers account for 6 to 12 percent of those employed gilroy 1981 p 157 and less than 5 percent of wage and salary income the minimum wage gives economists a relatively rare opportunity to study the impact of an exogenous increase in the price of labor and thus a chance to refine our thinking

branching scale economies and banking costs abstract in this paper we develop and estimate a model of bank costs based on a theory of the branch cost function first we show that convenient branch location is important to banking customers and implies that banks do not necessarily operate branches at minimum average cost this theoretical result provides a rationale for including branch variables in the bank cost function second we estimate a statistical cost equation derived explicitly from assumptions about the branch cost function and including branch output variables our empirical results suggest substantial economies of scale at the branch level but no economies from expansion by branching finally we show that the resulting cost structure of the banking industry does not imply that a highly concentrated banking structure is necessary for efficiency thus economies of scale would not be expected to force small banks out of the market even if current restrictions on interstate banking are liberalized

employment and labour supply effects of the minimum wage some pooled time series estimates from canadian provincial data in this paper the effect of minimum wages on employment and labour supply and hence on unemployment is examined using canadian provincial data for the period 1975 9 the analysis here differs from most previous studies in several important ways for example the minimum wage variable in the regression analysis is the minimum wage rate only rather than a composite of the minimum wage rate and coverage the demand variation variable here is real output rather than the endogenous prime age male unemployment rate and the analysis includes the impact of the minimum wage on the employment and supply of adult age groups as well as teenagers our results show that the minimum wage has a significant negative effect on the employment and labour force levels of most age sex groups and a significant positive effect on the unemployment rates of all age sex groups we conclude that the employment and unemployment effects of the minimum wage are stronger and more broadly felt than was previously realized les effets d emploi et d offre de travail du salaire minimum certaines calibrations a partir d une composition des series chronologiquesprovinciales au canada ce memoire examine a partir de donnees provinciales pour la periode 1975 9 l effet de salaires minima sur l emploi et l offre de travail et donc sur le chomage l analyse differe de celles presentees dans les etudes anterieures de multiples fagons par exemple la variable salaire minimum retenue dans l analyse de regression est le taux de salaire minimum plutot qu une variable composant le taux de salaire minimum et sa couverture la variable qui enregistre la variation de la demande est le niveau de production reelle plutot que le taux de chomage endogene de la population masculine dans la force de l age et l analyse calibre l impact du salaire minimum sur l emploi et l offre de travail tant des groupes adultes que des jeunes gens les resultats montrent que le salaire minimum a un effet negatif significatif sur l emploi et l offre de travail de la plupart des groupes selon l age et le sexe et un impact positif significatif sur le taux de chomage de tous les groupes on conclut que les effets d emploi et de chomage du salaire minimum sont plus forts et plus repandus qu on ne l avait cru this paper is both an extension and abridgement of the authors university of victoria department of economics discussion paper 82 6 entitled an empirical analysis of the employment and labour supply effects of the minimum wage in canada 1975 79 this research has been supported in part by a university of victoria faculty research grant we would like to acknowledge with thanks the research assistance of neil muth mark muth and ingrid strauss and the helpful comments of the editor and two anonymous referees of this journal canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xvi no 1 february f6vrier 1983 printed in canada imprime au canada 0008 4085 83 0000 0086 01 50 1983 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 157 55 39 176 on sat 09 apr 2016 07 05 12 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms employment and labour supply effects 87

a multiproduct cost study of savings and loans this paper investigates the cost structure of savings and loans most studies of financial institutions have failed to take into account the multiproduct nature of these institutions using the multiproduct approach the existence of subadditivity multiproduct global and product specific economies of scale and scope and substitutability between inputs is investigated a translogarithmic cost function is estimated using 1982 data on california savings and loans restrictive functional forms also estimated are rejected standard errors for the statistics calculated are estimated and various statistical tests are conducted previous authors have not calculated standard errors for these statistics no evidence of subadditivity in the industry is found in order to investigate the impact of deregulation on the financial services industry it is necessary to know the cost structure of the industry optimal firm size and product mix can be determined once the structure is known the presence of scale economies would imply that smaller firms or entering firms that operate at a small scale would be at a cost disadvantage compared with larger established firms a finding of economies of scope i e economies of joint production would imply that firms that were specialized would be at a cost disadvantage and that regulations that restrict the outputs a firm is allowed to produce may lead to inefficient production

racial and ethnic differences in wealth in the health and retirement study this paper examines wealth data in the health and retirement study hrs in comparison with asset data in other major surveys the quality of hrs asset data is high missing asset data does remain a problem however to which future hrs analysts must remain sensitive evidence is presented showing that it is no accident that asset data are missing and solutions for imputing missing data are developed finally racial and ethnic wealth disparities are large these minority wealth disparities are due in part to differential inheritances and desired bequests as inequities perpetuate themselves across generations the disparities are also due to lower minority incomes poorer health and an excessively narrow definition of wealth that excludes social security and employer pensions authors

the effect of the minimum wage on the fast food industry using a longitudinal survey of fast food restaurants in texas the authors examine the impact of recent increases in the federal minimum wage on a low wage labor market less than 5 of fast food restaurants were using the new youth subminimum wage in july august 1991 even though the vast majority paid a starting wage below the new hourly minimum wage immediately before it became effective although some restaurants increased wages beyond the level needed to comply with higher minimum wages in both 1990 and 1991 those federal minimum wage increases greatly compressed the distribution of starting wages in the texas fast food industry two findings at variance with conventional predictions are that 1 employment increased more in those firms likely to have been most affected by the 1991 minimum wage increase than in other firms and 2 price changes were unrelated to mandated wage changes

an empirical study of joint production and scale economies in commercial banking this paper utilizes the translog cost function to test the proposition that the bank productionfunction is characterized by jointness the cross section analysis for the years 1973 through 1978 indicates that bank production is in fact characterized by jointness this result calls into question the findings and implications of studies that utilize the assumption of non jointness in production since virtually all of the major bank cost studies employ the assumption of nonjointness the second part of our analysis examines scale economies for the banking firm while allowing for jointness in production our estimates indicate that scale economies characterize bank production at only small bank sizes and that the cost structure of large banks is characterized by diseconomies of scale

separate and unequal in the labor market human capital and the jim crow wage gap competing explanations for the long standing gap between black and white earnings attribute different weight to wage discrimination and human capital differences using new data on local school quality we find that human capital played a predominant role in determining 1940 wage and occupational status gaps in the south despite entrenched racial discrimination in civic life and the lack of federal employment protections the resulting wage gap coincides with the higher end of the range of estimates from the post civil rights era we estimate that truly separate but equal schools would have reduced wage inequality by 29 48

an examination of cost subadditivity and multiproduct production in large u s banks this paper examines the subadditivity of costs for a sample of the largest commercial banks in the u s we introduce into the bank production literature the grid approach developed by evans and heckman 1984 we estimate two models of the bank cost function one where deposits are treated as outputs while in the other deposits are treated as inputs the models are estimated using the commonly used translog and the more flexible miniflex laurent viewed narrowly the findings imply that cost complementarities are not the raison d etre for multiproduct production in the largest commercial banks subadditive costs however are sufficient but not necessary for multiproduct production it is quite possible for multiproduct production to be optimal when output are produced independently levy and haber 1986 and teece 1980 1982 it is only required that inputs be shareable as opposed to joint copyright 1990 by ohio state university press

an investigation into sexual orientation discrimination as an explanation for wage differences this study explores the effects of sexual orientation on earnings it is found that ceteris paribus men living with male partners tend to earn less than other men and women living with female partners tend to earn more than other women these earnings differentials tend to vary by region they also vary by education and occupation for men and with the presence of minor children for women in addition the age earnings profiles of women living with female partners tend to be higher flatter and less concave than those of other women

technical change organizational form and the structure of bank production of those technological characteristics related to the nature of competition among firms in an industry or market scale economies and technical change are especially important economies of scale are said to exist when an equiproportional increase in all inputs results in a greater than proportional increase in output or equivalently when an increase in output at constant input prices leads to a less than proportional increase in total costs thus average costs decline as output expands depending upon the extent to which costs decline as output increases regulation of the firms in the industry may be necessary l the literature analyzing scale economies in commercial banking is voluminous the early studies on scale economies in banking include those by benston 1965 1972 greenbaum 1967 murphy 1972 and bell and murphy 1968 more recent studies include those by benston hanweck and humphrey 1982 and clark 1984 2 this literature has established that mild scale economies exist in bank

a reassessment of the new economics of the minimum wage literature with monthly data from the current population survey we estimate the employment effects of federal minimum wage increases using monthly current population survey cps data from 1979 through 1997 we find that the empirical differences in the new minimum wage literature based on cps data primarily can be traced to alternative methods of controlling for macroeconomic conditions we argue that the macroeconomic controls commonly included in models where no employment impact is found are inappropriate we consistently find a significant but modest negative relationship between minimum wage increases and teenage employment using alternative controls or allowing employer responses to the policy to occur with some delay

the effect on black white wage differences of differences in the quantity and quality of education using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth for the years 1979 88 the author examines the extent to which black white differences in educational attainment educational quality and unmeasured individual ability can explain black white wage differences an analysis that corrects for both selectivity and ability biases inherent in estimating the education wage relationship shows that the main source of the black white wage differential is the racial difference in the quality rather than quantity of schooling in fact the author concludes closing the racial gap in the basic skills learned in school could reduce the wage differential by two thirds

changes in the cost of intermediation the case of savings and loans the minimum cost output configuration for a firm may change as the result of a variety of factors including changes in market structure in this paper we test this structural change hypothesis with savings and loan data we find support for the hypothesis that separable constant returns to scale production functions characterize the average savings and loan in our sample in 1983 this is in contrast to the cost complementarities found in 1978 we argue that this result may be the result of regulatory changes that allowed savings and loans to alter their production mix to fully capture the benefits of joint production it seems reasonable to assume that the cost minimizing configuration of a multiproduct firm is potentially subject to nonstationarity during periods of structural change in input and or output markets the late 1970s and early 1980s represent such a period of turbulence for many markets in the financial services industry volatile interest rates combined with technological and regulatory changes may have caused firms in this industry to alter their output mixes in an effort to capture cost complementarities from joint production the purpose of this paper is to test this hypothesis of structural change in the savings and loan industry using both a translog and minflex laurent translog mlt specification of the production function we have chosen to investigate savings and loans s ls during the late 1970s and early 1980s for two reasons first s ls provide an ideal vehicle for testing our hypothesis because they were restricted almost exclusively to mortgages and securities as outputs before the passage of the depository institutions deregulation and monetary control act of 1980 and the garn st germain act of 1982 moreover there were also market changes with respect to both the pricing and mix of inputs i e deposits our second rationale involves the fact that there is a large and growing body of literature in the area of what is now called the

discrimination and skill differences in an equilibrium search model in this paper we analyze an equilibrium search model with three sources for wage an d unemployment differentials among workers with the same observed human capital but differen t appearance race unobserved productivity skill search in tensities and discrimination becker 1957 due to an appearance based employer disutility factor because they affect the earnings distributions differently empirical identification of these potential sources for the explanation of wage an d unemployment differentials is possible we show that the structural parameters of the model including the firm s disutility from certain workers are identifiab le using standard labor market survey data we demonstrate identification using data from the national longitudinal survey of youth estimation of these parameters by matching moments from a sample of black and white high school graduate s implies a blacks have a 9 lower productivi ty level than whites b the disutility factor in employer s preferences is one third of the white s productivity level and c 50 of firms have a disutility factor in their utility toward blacks

the specification and estimation of dynamic stochastic discrete choice models a survey our main goal is to quantify the returns to a career in the united states congress we specify a dynamic model of career decisions of a member of congress and estimate this model using a newly collected dataset given estimates of the structural model we

estimation of semiparametric censored regression models an application to changes in black white earnings inequality during the 1960s building on the work of chay 1995 this study examines the impact of civil rights policies on black economic progress using individual level panel data many earnings records are censored and the degree of censoring changed during the period of interest consequently valid estimates of the program effects must account for this censoring maximum likelihood estimation can be used if the error terms of the model are identically normally distributed we investigate the value of using weaker assumptions on the error process to estimate the laws impact the analysis shows that there was significant black white earnings convergence in the south during the 1960s we also find that semiparametric estimation methods are informative in pinpointing which parts of the model are mis specified

economic inequality new methods for new trends two positions dominate the debate over the recent increases in economic inequality in the united states the job skill mismatch thesis attributes rising inequality to growth in the number of high skill high wage jobs that leaves less skilled workers behind the polarization thesis in contrast argues that the service shift generates growth in the number of both high wage and low wage jobs and declines in the middle standard summary measures of distributional inequality cannot discriminate between these depictions of where job growth is occurring we propose new methods for measurement that provide both summary and detailed information about the distributional shifts in earnings and aframework for statistical inference using data from the curent population survey cps on yearly earnings from 1967 to 1987 we show that the trends in distributional inequality vary considerably by race gender and time while the evidence provides more support for the polarization argument this thesis needs refinement if it is to account for the variations in changing inequality observed here

employment effects of two northwest minimum wage initiatives i introduction the impact of a minimum wage on employment has long been of interest to economists such as stigler 1946 because it provides a relatively direct test of a conventional theoretical prediction that a binding increase in the minimum wage should reduce employment among low skilled workers although this theoretical prediction has not gone unchallenged as in lester 1946 early empirical work summarized in brown gilroy and kohen 1983 confirmed theoretical predictions using aggregate time series data for young workers which indicated that a minimum wage has a small negative employment effect by 1990 there was general consensus in the profession that minimum wage laws reduced employment among teenage and low wage workers albeit by a small amount ehrenberg 1995 and others have argued that subsequent empirical evidence provides less confidence in both the conventional view that the minimum wage lowers teenage or low skilled employment and that neoclassical theory can account for the relationship between them for example card and krueger 1995 show in a 30 study meta analysis that past time series results are sensitive to the specification and suggest that when appropriately specified the minimum wage has had no significant effects on employment over the last 25 yr alternatively neumark and wascher 1998 find negative employment effects of the minimum wage consistent with structural change using time series data and specifications that do not suffer from the biases present in earlier work cross sectional studies as in currie and fallick 1996 burkhauser couch and wittenburg 2000 and neumark and wascher 2001 also find mixed evidence of employment effects on low wage workers due to the minimum wage thus traditional empirical assessments of the minimum wage yield mixed evidence on the employment impact of the minimum wage the natural experiment methodology was introduced as an alternative to the cross sectional and time series approaches and exploits both the time series wage variation before and after the treatment of a minimum wage increase and the cross sectional wage variation between the treatment state and a control state that did not experience a change in the minimum wage for example card and krueger 1994 analyzed employment growth in 410 fast food restaurants in new jersey and pennsylvania before and after the 1992 minimum wage increase in new jersey from 4 25 to 5 05 they find no evidence linking the increase in the minimum wage to reduced employment in fast food restaurants both when comparing new jersey with pennsylvania and when comparing impacted versus nonimpacted restaurants in new jersey neumark and wascher 2000 reexamine the impact of the 1992 new jersey minimum wage increase using payroll data for hours worked by fast food employees and bureau of labor statistics bls eating and drinking employment data and find that the minimum wage significantly reduced employment in new jersey versus pennsylvania thus even studies that apply similar natural experiment techniques and data for a given minimum wage treatment as in katz and krueger 1992 deere murphy and welch 1995 kim and taylor 1995 and card and krueger 2000 can yield different conclusions regarding its employment effect our empirical analysis exploits a unique natural experiment initiated by oregon and washington voter initiatives that raised the minimum wage over three successive years 1997 1999 in oregon and 1999 2001 in washington by approximately 37 in both states following prior work we focus on the eating and drinking industry sic 58 which is a low wage industry that has been extensively studied in prior work due to an expectation of a binding minimum wage bls wage data available between 1997 and 2001 indicate that the successive minimum wage increases become increasingly binding for most but not all eating and drinking jobs at the lower end of the wage distribution

finite mixture estimation of multiproduct cost functions this paper presents a technique of cost function estimation based on the theory of finite mixture distributions which allows for the simultaneous existence of multiple technologies of production when the researcher does not know which observations correspond to which technologies the finite mixture technique provides estimates of the proportions of firms using the various technologies facilitates comparisons between technologies and preserves the traditional interpretations of cost estimation after describing the mixture procedure the technique is illustrated on a large sample of savings and loan associations and it is concluded that this industry exhibits multiple technologies of production copyright 1991 by mit press

returns to scale and input substitution for large u s banks the united states commercial banking industry has experienced significant changes in recent years the recent wave of mergers and the near term prospects of interstate banking suggests that the industry is moving toward much larger average banking organizations rhoades 1985 will a more concentrated banking industry result in lower costs due to scale economies we address this question by examining the cost function for large banks numerous studies of economies of scale in banking exist generally tracing their roots to the classic papers by benston 1965 and bell and murphy 1968 a good review of the most recent studies can be found in clark 1988 the majority of the papers uses samples of smaller banks that is under 1 billion in deposits finding generally that economies of scale are quickly exhausted and that further increases in bank size occur at constant or possibly increasing cost the extrapolation of previous findings for samples of smaller banks to large banks may be problematic especially in the current environment first large banks service a different mix of markets and customers than small banks suggesting that large and small banks probably face different cost structures second the process of deregulation may have rendered the results of prior studies moot since the data pertain to periods before significant deregulation since we

the impact of the great migration on mortality of african americans evidence from the deep south the great migration the massive migration of african americans out of the rural south to largely urban locations in the north midwest and west was a landmark event in u s our paper shows that this migration increased mortality of african americans born in the early twentieth century south this inference comes from an analysis that uses proximity of birthplace to railroad lines as an instrument for migration

economies of scale and economies of scope in multiproduct financial institutions further evidence from credit unions recently murray and white 1983 have analyzed economies of scale economies of production due to output expansion and economies of scope economies due to joint production of output for credit unions of british columbia by explicitly recognizing the multiproduct nature of the credit union unfortunately their analysis of scale and scope economies is limited in view of recent advances in the theory of the multiproduct firm for example in multiproduct firms there exist two economies of scale economies arising from overall production activity and economies arising from the production of a particular product or a product set estimates of scale economies obtained by murray and white hereafter mw are overall scale economies but no discussion of product specific scale economies is provided in their analysis further mw employ the cost complementarity concept as a measure of economies of scope however cost complementarity is a local not global test for the existence of economies of scope in addition it is necessary to distinguish overall scope economies from product specific scope economies this paper reexamines the issue of economies of scale and scope in credit unions extending the model developed by mw and providing some new empirical evidence section 1 extends the model developed by mw to reexamine the issue of scale and scope in multiproduct credit unions section 2 contains a description of empirical results section 3 completes the paper with a conclusion

an estimable dynamic general equilibrium model of work schooling and occupational choice this paper develops and estimates a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generations model of career decisions the model is fit to data on life cycle employment schooling and occupation decisions and on life cycle labor earnings within and between cohorts observed in the us between 1968 and 1993 based on the estimates of the model the impact of cohort size on skill prices and consequently on career decisions is assessed compared to a baseline case in which cohort size increased at a steady average rate and the fertility process was stationary it is found that the male baby bust generations born in the 1930s and 1940s faced higher skill prices by as much as 2 0 completed college at a higher rate by as much as 0 3 percentage points and worked more over the lifetime by as much as 0 1 years in contrast the males from the baby boom generations born in the 1950s and 1960s faced lower skill prices by as much as 1 5 completed college at a lower rate by as much as 1 0 percentage points and worked less over the lifetime by as much as 0 1 years the impact of cohort size is found to differ across gender due to the differential impact of fertility on the value of home production unlike males the female baby bust generations completed college at a lower rate by as much as 1 5 percentage points and worked less over the lifetime by as much as 0 5 years while the female baby boom generations completed college at a lower rate by as much as 1 5 percentage points and worked more over the lifetime by as much as 0 2 years a tuition subsidy experiment is also performed both in a general equilibrium setting in which skill prices are endogenous and in a partial equilibrium setting with fixed skill prices based on the estimated model a 1 increase in tuition is predicted to reduce college enrollment rates by 1 27 in partial equilibrium consistent with previous estimates and by 1 05 in the general equilibrium case thus for this policy experiment the partial equilibrium analysis of schooling choice would not differ significantly from the general equilibrium analysis

the strength of a weak agency enforcement of title vii of the 1964 civil rights act and the expansion of state capacity 1965 1971 this article analyzes the anomalous case of early title vii enforcement to challenge the standard political institutional pi account of state capacity title vii prohibited employment discrimination but the equal employment opportunity commission was granted scant enforcement resources yet the early eeoc aggressively enforced and developed title vii to solve the anomaly the authors integrate insights from the literatures on social movements and the sociology of law in the absence of conventional administrative resources apparently weak state agencies can expand their capacity through the legal strategy of broad statutory construction this strategy is more likely with the presence of social movement pressure from below the authors argue that state capacity is a moving target with state and societal actors building on legal as well as administrative resources to construct and transform capacity by reconceptualizing state capacity the authors contribute to nuanced explanations of state policy

are the effects of minimum wage increases always small new evidence from a case study of new york state the authors estimate the effect of the 2004 6 new york state nys minimum wage increase from 5 15 to 6 75 per hour on the employment rates of 16 to 29 year olds who do not have a high school diploma using data drawn from the 2004 and 2006 current population survey they employ difference in difference estimates to show that the nys minimum wage increase is associated with a 20 2 to 21 8 reduction in the employment of less skilled less educated workers with the largest effects on those aged 16 to 24 their estimates imply a median employment elasticity with respect to the minimum wage of around 0 7 large relative to previous researchers estimates the authors findings are robust to their choice of geographically proximate comparison states the use of a more highly skilled within state comparison group and a synthetic control design approach moreover their results provide plausible evidence that state minimum wage increases can have substantial adverse labor demand effects for low skilled i

minimum wage impacts on youth employment transitions 1993 1999 abstract the longitudinal nature of the master file of the survey of labour and income dynamics slid for the period 1993 9 enables comparing transitions from employment to non employment for individuals affected by minimum wage changes with appropriate comparison groups not affected by minimum wages this is based on the large number 24 of minimum wage changes that have occurred across the different provincial jurisdictions in canada over the 1990s the results indicate that the minimum wage increases have increased the transition from employment to non employment of employed low wage youths who are at risk of being affected by a minimum wage increase by around 6 percentage points ranging from 4 to 8 percentage points these disemployment effects in turn imply minimum wage elasticities of about 0 4 ranging from 0 3 to 0 5

intersectoral labor mobility and the growth of the service sector one of the most striking changes in the u s economy over the past 50 years has been the growth in the service sector between 1950 and 2000 service sector employment grew from 57 to 75 percent of total employment however over this time the real hourly wage in the service sector grew only slightly faster than in the goods sector in this paper we assess whether or not the essential constancy of the relative wage implies that individuals face small costs of switching sectors and we quantify the relative importance of labor supply and demand factors in the growth of the service sector we specify and estimate a two sector labor market equilibrium model that allows us to address these empirical issues in a unified framework our estimates imply that there are large mobility costs output in both sectors would have been double their current levels if these mobility costs had been zero in addition we find that demand side factors that is technological change and movements in product and capital prices were responsible for the growth of the service sector

understanding black white wage differentials 1960 1990 understanding black white wage differentials 1960 1990 author s james j heckman thomas m lyons petra e todd source the american economic review vol 90 no 2 papers and proceedings of the one hundred twelfth annual meeting of the american economic association may 2000 pp 344 349 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 117248 accessed 16 08 2008 00 56

black white differences in wealth and asset composition using data from the 1976 and 1978 national longitudinal surveys of young men and young women this study examines racial differences in the magnitude and composition of wealth and the reasons for them on average young black families hold 18 percent of the wealth of young white families and hold their wealth in proportionately different forms even after controlling for racial differences in income and other demographic factors as much as three quarters of the wealth gap remains unexplained we speculate on the causes for this concluding that racial differences in intergenerational transfers and to a lesser extent barriers to the accumulation of business and home equity most likely play a role

the impact of minimum wages on labour market transitions we investigate dierences in labour market transition rates in high versus low minimum wage regimes using canadian data spanning 1979 to 2008 the data include consistent questions on job tenure and reason for job separation for the whole period over the same time frame there were over 140 minimum wage changes in canada we nd that higher minimum wages are associated with lower hiring rates but also with lower job separation rates importantly the reduced separation rates are due mainly to reductions in layos occur in the rst 6 months of a job and are present for unskilled workers of all ages our estimates imply that a 10 increase in the minimum wage generates a 3 9 reduction in the layo rate we present a search and matching model that ts with these patterns and test its implications overall our results imply

lobbying for minimum wages using a common agency lobbying framework this paper illustrates how the minimum wage set reflects the interaction between economic and political factors and under what circumstances will the policymaker be induced through lobbying to change the minimum wage specifically when the labor demand elasticity is large lobbying is successful in inducing the policymaker to set the minimum wage in accordance with her political ideology however the paper also shows the conditions under which lobbying will reverse the ideological preference and induce a business friendly government to increase the minimum wage empirical analysis on a panel data for ten canadian provinces gives considerable support for theoretical predictions the real minimum wage decreases in skill adjusted union density and political ideology while larger labor demand elasticity reinforces the influence of political ideology in the presence of lobbying jel j38 d72 d78

time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis time series minimum wage studies a meta analysis author s david card and alan b krueger reviewed work s source the american economic review vol 85 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundredth and seventh annual meeting of the american economic association washington dc january 6 8 1995 may 1995 pp 238 243 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2117925 accessed 04 11 2011 15 46

homogeneity restrictions on the translog cost model a note benston hanweck and humphrey bhh 1 first applied the translog cost model to empirical analyses of depository institutions cost characteristics subsequent studies by benston berger hanweck and humphrey bbhh 2 murray and white 7 gilligan and smirlock 4 and gilligan smirlock and marshall gsm 5 have employed this type of flexible form cost function as a regularity condition the translog cost model should be linearly homogenous in all input prices that is given the following translog cost function