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We estimate international technology spillovers to U.S. manufacturing firms via imports and foreign direct investment (FDI) between the years of 1987 and 1996. In contrast to earlier work, our results suggest that FDI leads to significant productivity gains for domestic firms. The size of FDI spillovers is economically important, accounting for about 14% of productivity growth in U.S. firms between 1987 and 1996. In addition, there is some evidence for imports-related spillovers, but it is weaker than for FDI. The paper also gives a detailed account of why our study leads to results different from those found in previous work. This analysis indicates that our results are likely to generalize to other countries and periods.

This paper presents a global model linking individual country vector error-correcting models in which the domestic variables are related to the country-specific variables as an approximate solution to a global common factor model. This global VAR is estimated for 26 countries, the euro area being treated as a single economy. This paper proposes two important extensions of previous research (see Pesaran, Schuermann and Weiner, 2004). First, it provides a theoretical framework where the GVAR is derived as an approximation to a global unobserved common factor model. Also using average pair-wise cross-section error correlations, the GVAR approach is shown to be quite effective in dealing with the common factor interdependencies and international comovements of business cycles. Second, in addition to generalised impulse response functions, we propose an identification scheme to derive structural impulse responses. We focus on identification of shocks to the US economy, particularly the monetary policy shocks, and consider the time profiles of their effects on the euro area. To this end we include the US model as the first country model and consider alternative orderings of the US variables. Further to the US monetary policy shock, we also consider oil price, US equity and US real output shocks.

Erziehungswissenschaftliche Revue (EWR) 4 (2005) 1, Rezension von: Hein Retter (Hrsg.): Reformpädagogik. Neue Zugänge - Befunde - Kontroversen. Bad Heilbrunn: Julius Klinkhardt 2004 (234 S.; ISBN 3-7815-1310-6; 25,00 EUR).

This paper investigates how local jurisdictions in a federal system influence each other in the adoption of policy innovations. We look at school districts in Michigan and their participation in a public school choice program launched in 1996. Districts' participation decisions are modelled as simultaneous discrete choice decisions using a spatial latent variable model. Strong effects are found saying that lagged adoptions of neighbors positively affect the current probability of participation. This finding is robust to various changes in specification. The results suggest that in federal systems the diffusion of policy innovations is stimulated by horizontal interactions between jurisdictions.

We formulate an empirical model of promotion with dynamic selfselection where the current promotion probability depends on the hierarchical level in the firm, individual human capital, unobserved (to the econometrician) individual specific attributes, time varying firm specific variables (firm size and profits) as well as endogenous past promotion histories. We examine the causal effect of previous promotion histories (as measured by realized speed of promotion) on future promotion outcomes. The model is fit on an 8 year panel of promotion histories of 30,000 American executives employed in more than 380 different firms. The stochastic process generating promotions is weakly correlated with standard human capital endowment variables (age, schooling and tenure). It may be viewed as a series of promotion probabilities which become smaller as an individual moves up in the hierarchy and is primarily explained by individual (or firm) specific factors other than measured human capital. We also find that, conditional on unobservables, the promotion probability is only mildly enhanced, on average, by the speed of promotion achieved in the past (a structural fast track effect). However, we find the existence of a relatively high cross-sectional dispersion in the effect of past promotion histories and we are able to provide an explanation for this relatively high dispersion. In general, the magnitude of the individual specific effect of achieved speed of promotion is inversely related to accumulated human capital (schooling and tenure). We believe that these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the signaling aspect of past promotions is stronger for those who are less educated and stronger for those who are relatively new in a firm. We also find that a negative correlation between current promotion and past speed of promotion cannot be ruled out for a portion of the population, and we are able to relate this finding to the “Peter Principle”., Dans ce papier, nous estimons un modèle dynamique de promotion où la notion d'effet causal (causal fast track) est différenciée de la notion non-causale (spurious fast track). La probabilité de promotion est fonction du niveau hiérarchique dans la firme, des attributs observables et non observables des individus, des attributs observables (et dynamiques) de la firme (tels que les profits et la taille), ainsi que de l'historique (endogène) des promotions passées mesuré par la rapidité moyenne de promotion. Le modèle est appliqué à un échantillon de 30 000 cadres du secteur privé américain, travaillant pour plus de 380 grandes firmes. Les résultats indiquent que le processus aléatoire générant les promotions dépend faiblement du niveau de capital humain, et très peu de la vitesse passée, mais beaucoup plus des facteurs non observables tels que la motivation. Les résultats montrent également qu'il y a une large dispersion dans l'effet de la vitesse de promotion sur les promotions futures. Bien que l'effet soit positif en moyenne, il est négatif pour une sous-population. De façon générale, l'effet de la vitesse passée décroît avec le niveau de capital humain et l'ancienneté dans la firme. L'effet négatif de la vitesse de promotion est compatible avec le "principe de Peter", souvent mentionné dans la littérature sur la dynamique des promotions.

This paper investigates the method of matching regarding two crucial implementation choices, the distance measure and the type of algorithm. We implement optimal full matching - a fully efficient algorithm - and present a framework for statistical inference. The implementation uses data from the NLSY79 to study the effect of college education on earnings. We find that decisions regarding the matching algorithm depend on the structure of the data: In the case of strong selection into treatment and treatment effect heterogeneity a full matching seems preferable. If heterogeneity is weak, pair matching suffices.

In this paper we develop a new way of modelling time variation in term premia. This is based on the stochastic discount factor model of asset pricing with observable macroeconomic factors. The joint distribution of excess holding period US bond returns of different maturity and the fundamental macroeconomic factors is modelled using multivariate GARCH with conditional covariances in the mean to capture the term premia. We show how by testing the assumption of no arbitrage we can derive a specification test of our model. We estimate the contribution made to the term premia at different maturities by real and nominal macroeconomic sources of risk. From the estimated term premia we recover the term structure of interest rates and examine how it varies through time. Finally, we examine whether the large number of reported failures of the rational expectations hypothesis of the term structure can be attributed to an omitted time-varying term premium.

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic volatility on non-financial firms' cash holding behavior. Using an augmented cash buffer-stock model, we demonstrate that an increase in macroeconomic volatility will cause the cross-sectional distribution of firms' cash-to-asset ratios to narrow. We test this prediction on a panel of non-financial firms drawn from the annual COMPUSTAT database covering the period 1957 - 2000, and find that as macroeconomic uncertainty increases, firms behave more homogeneously. Our results are shown to be robust to the inclusion of the levels of several macroeconomic factors.

We use a range of simple models and 22 years of real-time data vintages for the U.S. to assess the difficulties of estimating the equilibrium real interest rate in real time. Model specifications differ according to whether the time-varying equilibrium real rate is linked to trend growth, and whether potential output and growth are defined by the CBO?s estimates or treated as unobserved variables. Our results reveal a high degree of specification uncertainty, an important one-sided filtering problem, and considerable imprecision due to data uncertainty. Also, the link between trend growth and the equilibrium real rate is shown to be quite weak. Overall, we conclude that statistical estimates of the equilibrium real rate will be difficult to use reliably in practical policy applications.

The very low interest rates and inflation rates of recent years has generated renewed interest in alternative policies that would not leave central banks trapped by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Amongst this debate, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the possibility of commodity purchases by the central bank, however. Commodity-based stabilization policy was widely advocated during the deflationary environment prior to World War II and has been put into practice in China and, to a more limited scale, in the United States in the form of the government's silver purchase programs and the more recent utilization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This paper reviews these experiences and considers whether there is any useful scope for commodity-based stabilization today.

An important finding in the rapidly growing literature on self-employment is that the probability of self-employment is substantially higher among the children of business owners than among the children of non-business owners. Using data from the confidential and restrictedaccess Characteristics of Business Owners (CBO) Survey, we provide some suggestive evidence on the causes of intergenerational links in business ownership and the related issue of how having a family business background affects small business outcomes. Estimates from the CBO indicate that more than half of all business owners had a self-employed family member prior to starting their business. Conditional on having a self-employed family member, less than 50 percent of small business owners worked in that family member's business suggesting that it is unlikely that intergenerational links in self-employment are solely due to the acquisition of general and specific business capital and that instead similarities across family members in entrepreneurial preferences may explain part of the relationship. In contrast, estimates from regression models conditioning on business ownership indicate that having a self-employed family member plays only a minor role in determining small business outcomes, whereas the business human capital acquired from prior work experience in a family member's business appears to be very important for business success. Estimates from the CBO also indicate that only 1.6 percent of all small businesses are inherited suggesting that the role of business inheritances in determining intergenerational links in self-employment is limited at best.

This paper estimates the structural parameters of a job search model with hyperbolic discounting and endogenous search effort. It estimates quantitatively the degree of hyperbolic discounting, and assesses its implications for the impact of various policy interventions aimed at reducing unemployment. The model is estimated using data on unemployment spells and accepted wages from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The likelihood function explicitly incorporates all the restrictions implied by the optimal dynamic programming solution to the model. Both observed and unobserved heterogeneity are accounted for. The results point to a substantial degree of hyperbolic discounting, especially for low and medium wage workers. The structural estimates are also used to evaluate alternative policy interventions for the unemployed. Estimates based on a model with exponential discounting may lead to biased inference on the economic impact of policies.

This paper develops a scalar or quantitative measure of the ?distance? between English and a myriad of other (non-native American) languages. This measure is based on the difficulty Americans have learning other languages. The linguistic distance measure is then used in an analysis of the determinants of English language proficiency among adult immigrants in the United States and Canada. It is shown that, when other determinants of English language proficiency are the same, the greater the measure of linguistic distance, the poorer is the respondent?s English language proficiency. This measure can be used in research, evaluation and practitioner analyses, and for diagnostic purposes regarding linguistic minorities in English-speaking countries. The methodology can also be applied to develop linguistic distance measures for other languages.

There is now considerable evidence that business cycle variation in output and employment in the U.S. di¤ers in expansions and contractions. We present nonparametric evidence that asymmetries are strongest in durable goods manufacturing. In a Markov switching framework, we find two leading indicators, consumer expectations and the term spread, act as important driving forces behind asymmetry. Cross sectional analysis, using firm level data, shows that plant and equipment expenditures, raw materials inventory holdings, and bankruptcy score increase the likelihood ratio index for asymmetry by more than 65%.

In this paper, we exploit an exogenous change in the passing standard required to obtain a General Educational Development (GED) credential to identify the impact of the GED on the quarterly earnings of male dropouts, utilizing the Texas Schools Micro Data Panel (TSMP). These unique data contain demographic and GED test score information from the Texas Education Agency linked to pre- and post-test taking Unemployment Insurance quarterly wage records from the Texas Workforce Commission. Comparing Texas dropouts who acquired a GED before the passing standard was raised in 1997 to dropouts with the same test scores who failed the GED exams after the passing standard hike, we find no evidence of a positive ?GED effect? on earnings. The finding of no significant difference in pre-test taking earnings between the treatment and control group support the validity of the natural experiment. Our results are robust to a number of specifications and sub-samples of our general sample population of 16-40 year old males.

In my asymmetric-information model of layoffs, high-productivity workers are more likely to be recalled to their former employer and may choose to remain unemployed rather than to accept a low-wage job. In this case, unemployment can serve as a signal of productivity, and duration of unemployment may be positively related to post-laid-off wages even among workers who are not recalled. In contrast, because workers whose plant closed cannot be recalled, longer unemployment for them should not have a positive signaling benefit. Analysis of the data from the January 1988-2000 Displaced Workers Supplements to the Current Population Survey reveals that the wage/unemployment duration relation differs between laid-off workers and workers displaced through plant closings in the predicted way, and finds evidence consistent with asymmetric information in the U.S. labor market.

Alternative work arrangements (AWAs), such as contracting, consulting, and temporary work, have been criticized as providing only atypical, even precarious, employment. Yet they may also allow workers to locate suitable job matches. Exploiting data from all four Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangement Supplements to the Current Population Survey, we investigate the initial job-finding strategies pursued by the unemployed. Within the narrow window offered by the data, we find that unemployed workers who become reemployed are more likely to find work in AWAs than in regular, open-ended employment. When we evaluate the use of AWAs against unemployment, there is also evidence that the jobless are entering AWAs as pathways out of their initial labor market state.

This paper uses U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000 to provide evidence on the labor market characteristics of European-born workers living in the US. It is found that there is a positive wage premium associated with these workers, and that the highly skilled are overrepresented compared with the source country, more so when one moves up the skill ladder.

This study examines gender differences in the earnings of young adults in the 1980s and 1990s. We determine changes in the gender gap over time in the middle, the tails, and the variability of the earnings distribution. We employ data from two longitudinal, nationally probability samples of high school seniors: the National Longitudinal Study of high school seniors in 1972, and the High School and Beyond Study in 1980 (and the 5th and 4th followup studies respectively). We compute the average differences using effect size estimates expressed in standard deviation units. Differences in the tails and the variability are computed using number and variance ratios respectively. Adjusting for employment selection our findings reveal that once education, occupation, and marital status are taken into account gender differences in earnings (in the middle, the tails, and the variance of the earnings distribution) are eliminated. We observe similar results in gender differences for Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics.

This paper examines differences in educational achievement between immigrants and natives in ten countries with a high population of immigrant pupils: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. The first step of the analysis shows how far countries differ regarding immigrants? educational disadvantage. In a second step, the paper compares immigrants? characteristics across countries focusing predominantly on socioeconomic status, language proficiency, immigrants? time spent in the host country and patterns of school segregation. Using a regression framework the last step of the analysis investigates how far these determinants of educational achievement can explain immigrants? educational disadvantage in the countries examined. The paper evaluates whether results found are robust across different sources of achievement data: the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Programme of International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

It is widely acknowledged that earnings subsidies promote employment by increasing rewards to labor market activity. This paper asks whether subsidies also affect job duration and wage growth. We provide an analytical framework that identifies causal links between earnings subsidies, job turnover, and wage growth. This framework highlights the importance of the form of the subsidy on the decision about the type of job to accept and, hence, its potential effect on within-job wage growth. The subsidy is predicted to increase job turnover and to affect between-job wage growth by affecting reservation wages. We use this framework to analyze the effects of the Canadian Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP). Consistent with the theory, we find that experimentals have shorter job duration and experience faster within-job and between-job wage growth than experimentals who continued to be eligible only for Income Assistance.

The elasticity of substitution between capital and labor features prominently in several areas of economic research. However, a consensus estimate remains elusive. We develop an estimation strategy that filters panel data in an original way and avoids several pitfalls - difficult-to-specify dynamics, transitory time-series variation, and positively sloped supply schedules - inherent in investment equations that can bias the estimated elasticity. Results are based on an extensive panel containing 1,860 manufacturing and non-manufacturing firms. Our model generates a precisely estimated elasticity of approximately 0.40. The method developed here may prove useful in estimating other structural parameters from panel datasets.

This paper reviews the recent evidence on U.S. immigration, focusing on two key questions: (1) Does immigration reduce the labor market opportunities of less-skilled natives? (2) Have immigrants who arrived after the 1965 Immigration Reform Act successfully assimilated? Looking across major cities, differential immigrant inflows are strongly correlated with the relative supply of high school dropouts. Nevertheless, data from the 2000 Census shows that relative wages of native dropouts are uncorrelated with the relative supply of less-educated workers, as they were in earlier years. At the aggregate level, the wage gap between dropouts and high school graduates has remained nearly constant since 1980, despite supply pressure from immigration and the rise of other education-related wage gaps. Overall, evidence that immigrants have harmed the opportunities of less educated natives is scant. On the question of assimilation, the success of the U.S.-born children of immigrants is a key yardstick. By this metric, post-1965 immigrants are doing reasonably well: second generation sons and daughters have higher education and wages than the children of natives. Even children of the least educated immigrant origin groups have closed most of the education gap with the children of natives.

To investigate the external validity of Ultimatum and Dictator game behavior we conduct experiments in field settings with naturally occurring variation in "social framing." Our participants are students at Middlebury College, non-traditional students at Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC), and employees at a Kansas City distribution center. Ultimatum game offers are ordered: KCKCC > employee > Middlebury. In the Dictator game employees are more generous than students in either location. This indicates that workers behaved distinctly from both student groups because their allocations do not decrease between games, an effect we attribute to the social framing of the workplace.

In this paper, we investigate the consequences of the rise in educational attainment on the US generational accounts. We build on the 1995 accounts of Gokhale et al. (1999) and disaggregate them per schooling level. We show that low skill newborns are characterized by a negative generational account (-15.4% of their lifetime labor income) whilst medium and high skill newborns have positive accounts (26.8 and 32.3% of their lifetime labor income). Compared to Gokhale et al., our baseline forecast is more optimistic. Nevertheless, the rise in educational attainment is not strong enough to restore the generational balance. The current fiscal policy generates a long run deficit. Balancing the budget requires increasing taxes (by about 1.2%) or reducing transfers (by about 2.7%). These results are robust to growth and discounting assumptions, to the treatment of education spending. They are sensitive to assumptions about the schooling level of future generations.

This paper argues that skill formation is a life-cycle process and develops the implications of this insight for Scottish social policy. Families are major producers of skills, and a successful policy needs to promote effective families and to supplement failing ones. We present evidence that early disadvantages produce severe later disadvantages that are hard to remedy. We also show that cognitive ability is not the only determinant of education, labor market outcomes and pathological behavior like crime. Abilities differ in their malleability over the life-cycle, with noncognitive skills being more malleable at later ages. This has important implications for the design of policy. The gaps in skills and abilities open up early, and schooling merely widens them. Additional university tuition subsidies or improvements in school quality are not warranted by Scottish evidence. Company-sponsored job training yields a higher return for the most able and so this form of investment will exacerbate the gaps it is intended to close. For the same reason, public job training is not likely to help adult workers whose skills are rendered obsolete by skill-biased technological change. Targeted early interventions, however, have proven to be very effective in compensating for the effect of neglect.

We analyze the dynamics of worker mobility in the United States over the 1968-1993 period at various levels of occupational and industry aggregation. We find a substantial overall increase in occupational and industry mobility over the period and document the levels and time trends in mobility for various age-education subgroups of the population. To control for measurement error in occupation and industry coding, we develop a method that utilizes the newly released, by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Retrospective Occupation-Industry Supplemental Data Files. We emphasize the importance of the findings for understanding a number of issues in macro and labor economics, including changes in wage inequality, productivity, life-cycle earnings profiles, job stability and job security.

Using panel data taken from the NLSY, I perform the joint estimation of i) a reduced-form dynamic model of the transition from one grade level to the next with observed and unobserved heterogeneity, and ii) a flexible version of the celebrated Mincerian wage regression with skill heterogeneity, non-linearity in schooling, non-separability between the effects of schooling and experience and heteroskedasticity (after conditioning on unobserved skills). The model rejects all simplifying assumptions common in the empirical literature. In particular, the log wage regression is highly convex, even after conditioning on unobserved and observed skills. Skill heterogeneity is also found to be over-estimated when non-linearity is ignored. After conditioning on skill heterogeneity, schooling has a causal effect on wage growth. I find that estimates obtained in a standard framework (assuming separability) may underestimate the returns to schooling upon labor market entrance by as much as 15%. Finally, I find that the variance of the stochastic wage shock decreases with accumulated experience but is more or less independent of schooling.

Traditional models of consumer choice assume consumers are aware of all products for sale. This assumption is questionable, especially when applied to markets characterized by a high degree of change, such as the personal computer (PC) industry. I present an empirical discrete-choice model of limited information on the part of consumers, where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase. Multi-product firms choose prices and advertising in each medium to maximize their profits. I apply the model to the US PC market, in which advertising expenditures are over $2 billion annually. The estimation technique incorporates macro and micro data from three sources. Estimated median industry markups are 19% over production costs. The high industry markups are explained in part by the fact that consumers know only some of the products for sale. Indeed estimates from traditional consumer choice models predict median markups of onefourth this magnitude. I find that product-specific demand curves are biased towards being too elastic under traditional models of consumer choice. The estimates suggest that PC firms use advertising media to target high-income households, that there are returns to scope in group advertising, and that word-of-mouth or experience plays a role in informing consumers. The top firms engage in higher than average advertising and earn higher than average markups.

For small high-tech firms international orientation is regarded as crucial for growth and long-term survival. Even newly founded technology based firms (NTBFs) are often internationally active shortly after their inception ("born globals"). However, in order to create jobs and have a sustainable influence on (macro)economic development, continuous growth of NTBFs is needed and research must focus on the continuous role of internationalisation. Based on longitudinal data, this paper examines empirically the long-term internationalisation behaviour of German and British technology-oriented firms founded between 1987 and 1996. Applying logit models, I am able to identify firm-specific success factors that influence the probability of entry into and exit from the international market. The results show, for instance, that firms can overcome high entry costs by acquiring firm-specific assets. Similarly, firm-specific resources prevent high-tech companies from exiting the international market. The strategic role of investment in R&D is stressed in particular by the data.

This paper critically reviews and synthesizes research on the role of religion on various aspects of the economic and demographic behavior of individuals and families in the United States, including the choice of marital partner, union formation and dissolution, fertility, female time allocation, education, wages, and wealth. Using a theoretical framework based on Gary Becker?s contributions to the economics of the family, religious affiliation is seen to affect these outcomes because it has an impact on the costs and benefits of many interrelated decisions that people make over the life cycle. In addition, for behaviors that pertain to married couple households, affiliation matters because it is a complementary trait within the context of marriage. Religiosity, another dimension of religion, also affects economic and demographic outcomes, partly because it accentuates differences by religious affiliation, partly because of the generally beneficial effects that religious involvement has on health and well-being.

This paper investigates the transmission of US macroeconomic shocks to Germany by employing a large-dimensional structural dynamic factor model. This framework allows us to investigate many transmission channels simultaneously, including 'new' channels like stock markets, foreign direct investment, bank lending and the confidence channel. We find that US shocks affect the US and Germany largely symmetrically. Trade and monetary policy reactions to strong price effects seem to be most relevant; financial markets may have become more important over time. The speed of transmission does not seem to have increased. Negative domestic influences apparently more than compensated positive US influences in the German economy between 1995 and 2000, but the US recession in 2001 seemed mainly responsible for the German slump.

Owners of private companies are often highly underdiversified which exposes them to idiosyncratic risk. We investigate the consequences of underdiversification at the company level. Information on US companies and their owners is obtained from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Survey of Small Business Finances. Underdiversification, measured as the share of the owner's net worth invested in the company, has a significant positive relationship with profitability, measured as the return on equity. We identify two causes for this underdiversification effect: higher required returns and higher effort. The results have important consequences for investment decisions at private companies.

This paper presents and compares several time-series models for returns of broadbased stock indices. These models nest a nonlinear asymmetric GARCH (NGARCH) model as a special case. Some of these models are empirically motivated ad-hoc specifications others are derived from a representative investor economy with HARA-utility and some are behavioral, i.e. are based on recent findings in behavioral finance. To compare these models we use the inflation adjusted MSCI total return indices of 5 large economies, USA, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan. The empirical results show that although the pure NGARCH model performs well, the estimation for the German stock index could be significantly improved by an extension which follows from the representative investor model with HARA-utility.

The cyclicality of real wages has important implications for the validity of competing business cycle theories. However, the empirical evidence on the aggregate level is inconclusive. Using a threshold vector autoregressive model for the US and Germany to condition the relationship between real wages and business fluctuations on the phase of the cycle, it is demonstrated that the inconclusive evidence is not only caused by measurement problems, estimation method and composition bias as discussed in the literature. In addition, one should also consider whether the economy is in an upswing or a downswing. In general, the evidence for countercyclical wages is stronger in Germany than for the US, but taken together there is no clear systematic pattern.

It is argued that parents provide help with housing downpayments in order to encourage the production of grandchildren, and that such a subsidization emanates from the ?demonstration effect:? a child?s propensity to furnish parents with attention and care can be conditioned by parental example. Parents who desire such transfers in the future have an incentive to make transfers to their own parents in order to instill appropriate preferences in their children. This generates a derived demand for grandchildren since potential grandparents will be treated better by their adult children if the latter have their own children to whom to demonstrate the appropriate behavior. Empirical work indicates behavior consistent with subsidization of the production of grandchildren and the demonstration effect. Es wird argumentiert, dass Eltern Unterstützung bei der Anzahlung einer Wohnung gewähren, um die Erzeugung von Enkelkindern zu fördern, und dass solch eine Subventionierung aus dem ?Demonstrationseffekt? hervorgeht: Die Neigung eines Kindes, die Eltern mit Aufmerksamkeit und Fürsorge zu versehen, kann durch das elterliche Beispiel konditioniert werden. Eltern, die solche Transferleistungen in der Zukunft wünschen, besitzen einen Anreiz, Transferleistungen an ihre eigenen Eltern zu erbringen, um damit ihren Kindern die entsprechenden Verhaltensweisen beizubringen. Dies erzeugt eine abgeleitete Nachfrage nach Enkelkindern, da potentielle Großeltern von ihren erwachsenen Kindern besser behandelt werden, wenn letztere ihre eigenen Kinder haben, denen sie das entsprechende Verhalten vorführen. Empirische Untersuchungen deuten auf ein Verhalten hin, dass im Einklang mit der Subventionierung der Erzeugung von Enkelkindern und dem Demonstrationseffekt steht.

A large fraction of the variation in wage levels and wage growth rates among individuals remains unexplained. Economists argue that ?unobserved? heterogeneity is among the more likely reasons for this unexplained variation in wages. The source of individual heterogeneity is typically attributed to data limitations and the unobservability of certain productivity related factors. In this paper we present a theory of career choice and derive a discriminating test between two inherently unobservable sources of heterogeneity – learning ability and workers? inter-temporal preferences (discounting) – both of which can clearly account for the variation in wage levels and wage growth rates. We apply this test to the large observed differences in wages and wage growth rates between smokers and non-smokers. The empirical evidence suggests that smoking is a proxy for individual discount rates.

This paper presents a new method to correct for measurement error in wage data and applies this method to address an old question. How much downward wage flexibility is there in the U.S? We apply standard methods developed by Bai and Perron (1998b) to identify structural breaks in time series data. Applying these methods to wage histories allows us to identify when each person experienced a change in nominal wages. The length of the period of constant nominal wages is left unrestricted and is allowed to differ across individuals, as is the size and direction of the nominal wage change. We apply these methods to data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The evidence we provide indicates that the probability of a cut in nominal wages is substantially overstated in data that is not corrected for measurement error.

Das vorliegende Arbeitspapier möchte einen Beitrag leisten, das Investitions- und Finanzierungsverhalten multinationaler Unternehmen auszuleuchten. Hierzu werden auf der Grundlage der Surveys of Current Business, die vom Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) erhoben werden, sowie anhand von Zahlungsbilanzdaten einige stilisierte Fakten dargestellt, wobei der Fokus auf den wechselseitigen Beziehungen zwischen EU15 und USA liegt. Hierzu werden im Abschnitt B die zugrundeliegenden Konzepte der Statistik erläutert. Der Abschnitt C stellt einige Besonderheiten beim Investitions- und Finanzierungsverhalten anhand deskriptiver Statistiken heraus. Abschnitt D schließt den Beitrag mit einem kurzen Ausblick ab.

We study the labor supply dynamics of elderly couples by means of a structural collective model. The model allows for general externalities with respect to spouses? leisure. Preferences and the intrahousehold bargaining process are identified by using panel data with couples and individuals who turned into widow(er)hood in the covered period. The model does not only look at the extensive margin (working versus being retired), but also at the intensive margin (how many hours are worked) and the claiming decision for social security benefits. We apply the model to American households coming from the first five waves of the Health and Retirement Study. We also provide model simulations for two widely discussed reform proposals; more specifically the abolition of the earnings test and the elimination of the spouse benefit. The model simulations reveal only small changes in labor supply of elderly couples.

Exposure to minimum wages at young ages may lead to longer-run effects. Among the possible adverse longer-run effects are decreased labor market experience and accumulation of tenure, lower current labor supply because of lower wages, and diminished training and skill acquisition. Beneficial longer-run effects could arise if minimum wages increase skill acquisition, or if short-term wage increases are long-lasting. We estimate the longer-run effects of minimum wages by using information on the minimum wage history that workers have faced since potentially entering the labor market. The evidence indicates that even as individuals reach their late 20?s, they earn less and perhaps work less the longer they were exposed to a higher minimum wage, especially as a teenager. The adverse longerrun effects of facing high minimum wages as a teenager are stronger for blacks. From a policy perspective, these longer-run effects of minimum wages are likely more significant than the contemporaneous effects of minimum wages on youths that are the focus of most research and policy debate.

Four decades ago, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan made the argument that the black family "was not strong enough to create those extended clans that elsewhere were most helpful for businessmen and professionals." Using data from the confidential and restricted access Characteristics of Business Owners Survey, we investigate this hypothesis by examining whether racial differences in family business backgrounds can explain why black-owned businesses lag substantially behind white-owned businesses in sales, profits, employment size and survival probabilities? Estimates from the CBO indicate that black business owners have a relatively disadvantaged family business background compared with white business owners. Black business owners are much less likely than white business owners to have had a self-employed family member owner prior to starting their business and are less likely to have worked in that family member's business. We do not, however, find sizeable racial differences in inheritances of business. Using a nonlinear decomposition technique, we find that the relatively low probability of having a self-employed family member prior to business startup among blacks does not generally contribute to racial differences in small business outcomes. Instead, the lack of prior work experience in a family business among black business owners, perhaps by limiting their acquisition of general and specific business human capital, negatively affects black business outcomes. We also find that limited opportunities for acquiring specific business human capital through work experience in businesses providing similar goods and services contribute to worse business outcomes among blacks. We compare these estimates to contributions from racial differences in owner's education, startup capital, geographical location and other factors.

Many workers reveal a preference for a gradual reduction in work hours as they approach retirement (?phased retirement?), rather than a sudden change from full-time work to full-time retirement. Pension regulations may impede phased retirement without a switch of employers by prohibiting access to pension assets. This study uses Health and Retirement Survey data to investigate the extent to which a gradual reduction in work hours is made difficult by pensions, particularly defined benefit plans. The study also explores other possible impediments to phased retirement.

This paper is concerned with the location of immigrants in the United States, as reported in the 1990 Census. Where they settle has implications for the economic, social and political impact of immigrants. Immigrants are highly geographically concentrated. Compared to the native born they are more likely to live in the central parts of Metropolitan Areas in ?gateway (major international airport) cities? in six states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois). The shift away from the east coast metropolitan areas to California reflects the change in the origins of immigrants from Europe/Canada to Asia, Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Differences by linguistic origin and period of arrival are also considered.

The market for hospital registered nurses (RNs) is often offered as an example of ?classic? monopsony, while a ?new? monopsony literature emphasizes firm labor supply being upwardsloping for reasons other than market structure. Using data from several sources, we explore the relationship between wages and measures of classic and new monopsony. Micro wage data for 1993-2002 provide little evidence of classic monopsonistic outcomes in the long run, the relative wages of RNs in 240 U.S. labor markets being largely uncorrelated with market size or employer concentration. A short-run relationship is found, with RN wages declining in markets with increased hospital system concentration. Measures of new monopsony use data on mobility to proxy inverse supply elasticities. No relationship is found between these measure and nursing wages, but evidence supporting new monopsony is found for women elsewhere in the labor market. RNs display greater inter-employer mobility than do women (or men) in general. Two conclusions follow. First, evidence of upward sloping labor supply need not imply monopsonistic outcomes. Second, nursing should not be held up as a prototypical example of monopsony.

This paper analyzes how enforcement along the U.S.-Mexican border has affected the market for migrant smugglers. Using a unique dataset that links border crossing histories from illegal Mexican migrants to aggregate enforcement and punishment statistics, we find that the effect of enforcement on smuggling prices is small. Though enforcement has more than tripled over the past fifteen years, smuggling prices have increased by at most 30 percent. Unlike estimates from illegal drugs, the demand for border smugglers is however price elastic. We also show that illegal migrants have switched from heavily patrolled areas to more remote and dangerous crossing routes. These avoidance costs are in fact three times the direct costs of enforcement on smuggling prices.

Most labor scarce overseas countries moved decisively to restrict their immigration during the first third of the 20th century. This autarchic retreat from unrestricted and even publiclysubsidized immigration in the first global century before World War I to the quotas and bans introduced afterwards was the result of a combination of factors: public hostility towards new immigrants of lower quality, public assessment of the impact of those immigrants on a deteriorating labor market, political participation of those impacted, and, as a triggering mechanism, the sudden shocks to the labor market delivered by the 1890s depression, the Great War, postwar adjustment and the great depression. The paper documents the secular drift from very positive to much more negative immigrant selection which took place in the first global century after 1820 and in the second global century after 1950, and seeks explanations for it. It then explores the political economy of immigrant restriction in the past and seeks historical lessons for the present.