{"title":"The Doughboys Network: Social Interactions and the Employment of World War I Veterans","authors":"Ron A. Laschever","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1205543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1205543","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how involuntarily-formed social networks affect individual labor market outcomes. Using a new dataset of WWI draftees linked to the 1930 census, I identify the effect of a military company's postwar employment on a veteran's employment. The marginal effect of an additional peer gaining employment, all else equal, increases a veteran's likelihood of employment by 0.8 percentage points. I develop a new framework which allows for decomposing the social effect into its two components, the endogenous (\"the effect of others' outcomes\"), and the contextual (\"the effect of others' characteristics\"). In this setting, I find the endogenous effect to be much stronger.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134537735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Low-Skill Employment and the Changing Economy of Rural America","authors":"R. Gibbs, Lorin D. Kusmin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.878342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.878342","url":null,"abstract":"This study reports trends in rural low-skill employment in the 1990s and their impact on the rural workforce. The share of rural jobs classified as low-skill fell by 2.2 percentage points between 1990 and 2000, twice the decline of the urban low-skill employment share, but much less than the decline of the 1980s. Employment shifts from low-skill to skilled occupations within industries, rather than changes in industry mix, explain virtually all of the decline in the rural low-skill employment share. The share decline was particularly large for rural Black women, many of whom moved out of low-skill blue-collar work into service occupations, while the share of rural Hispanics who held low-skill jobs increased.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127762866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Grade Inflation, Social Background, and Labour Market Matching","authors":"R. Schwager","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1268244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1268244","url":null,"abstract":"A model is presented where workers of differing abilities and from different social backgrounds are assigned to jobs based on grades received at school. It is examined how this matching is affected if good grades are granted to some low ability students. Such grade inflation is shown to reduce the aggregate wage of the lower class workers because employers use social origin as a signal for productivity if grades are less than fully informative. Moreover, the high-ability students from the higher class may benefit from grade inflation since this shields them from the competition on the part of able students from the lower classes.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126150635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schools Before Tools? The Role of Human Capital in a Market Economy","authors":"T. Breton","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1456455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1456455","url":null,"abstract":"This paper tests the hypothesis that in a market economy investment in physical capital follows investment in schooling. It presents empirical evidence that in periods since the 19th century when global financial capital was widely available, increases in each nation’s physical capital stock and in its average income/capita have been determined almost entirely by increases in the average schooling attainment of the population of working age. Since elementary schooling cannot be privately financed and is a prerequisite for more advanced schooling, each country’s commitment of public funding for mass schooling largely determined its economic growth over the 1910-2000 period.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133455386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Education, Innovation, and Long-Run Growth","authors":"Katsuhiko Hori, Katsunori Yamada","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1344066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1344066","url":null,"abstract":"This study augments a second-generation Schumpeterian growth model to employ human capital explicitly. We clarify the general-equilibrium interactions of subsidy policies to R&D and human capital accumulation in a unified framework. Despite a standard intuition that subsidizing these growth-enhancing activities is always mutually growth promoting, we find a symmetric effects for subsidieson R&D and those on education. Our theoretical result of asymmetric policy effects provides an important empirical caveat that empirical researchers may find false negative relationships between education subsidies and the output growth rate, if they merely rely on the standard human capital model.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"138 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134410792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Taste-Based Discrimination at the NYSE - Empirical Evidence from a Shock to Preferences after WWI","authors":"Petra Moser","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.930237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.930237","url":null,"abstract":"This paper identifies taste-based discrimination through a two-part empirical test. First, it constructs quantitative measures of revealed preferences, which establish that World War I created a persistent change in ethnic preferences that switched the status of German Americans from a mainstream ethnicity to an ethnic minority until the late 1920s. Second, the paper uses this shock to preferences to identify the effects of taste-based discrimination at the example of traders at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). A new data set of more than 5,000 applications for membership in the NYSE reveals that changes in ethnic preferences after the war more than doubled the probability that applicants with German-sounding names would be rejected.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124770994","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interprovincial Migration and Human Capital Formation in China","authors":"Yui Suzuki, Yukari Suzuki","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.969268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.969268","url":null,"abstract":"type=\"main\"> We examine how the rising interprovincial migration of individuals with diverse educational backgrounds affected human capital formation in China in the 1990s. We find that gross outflow migration of those with higher and lower levels of education, respectively, has human capital incentive and disincentive effects. Our estimates suggest that the incentive effect eclipses the disincentive effect in general; however, a surge of migration, particularly among less educated groups, implies more of a disincentive effect in China in the 1990s. We also find that changes in the relative labor supply resulting from net outflow migration mitigate a direct brain drain by both encouraging and discouraging school enrolments.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"403-408 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127905171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impact of Public Library Use on Reading, Television, and Academic Outcomes","authors":"Rachana Bhatt","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1384181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1384181","url":null,"abstract":"Do individuals engage in beneficial activities, like recreational reading, if the necessary materials are easily accessible and relatively inexpensive? I investigate this issue by estimating how much reading time increases as a result of public library use. To address the endogeneity of library use I use an IV approach where the instrument is a household's distance to their closest public library. Using data from the Current Population Survey, American Time Use Survey, and National Household Education Survey, I find that library use increases the amount of time an individual spends reading by approximately 27 min on an average day. Moreover, it increases the amount of time parents spend reading to/with young children by 14 min. This increase in reading is more than offset by a 59 min decrease in time spent watching television, and there is no significant change in time spent on other activities. For children in school, library use positively impacts homework completion rates. A simple cost-benefit exercise highlights the potential application of these results for local governments who fund these libraries.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117060018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Labor Market Pooling and Occupational Agglomeration","authors":"Todd Gabe, Jaison R. Abel","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1473365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1473365","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the micro-foundations of occupational agglomeration in U.S. metropolitan areas, with an emphasis on labor market pooling. Controlling for a wide range of occupational attributes, including proxies for the use of specialized machinery and for the importance of knowledge spillovers, we find that jobs characterized by a unique knowledge base exhibit higher levels of geographic concentration than do occupations with generic knowledge requirements. Further, by analyzing co-agglomeration patterns, we find that occupations with similar knowledge requirements tend to co-agglomerate. Both results provide new evidence on the importance of labor market pooling as a determinant of occupational agglomeration.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132595970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Must Conditional Cash Transfer Programs be Conditioned to be Effective? The Impact of Conditioning Transfers on School Enrollment in Mexico","authors":"A. de Brauw, J. Hoddinott","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1011901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1011901","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can have strong, positive effects on a range of welfare indicators for poor households in developing countries. However, there is little evidence about how important each component of these programs is towards achieving these outcomes. This paper tests the importance of conditionality on one specific outcome related to human capital formation, school enrollment, using data collected during the evaluation of Mexico's PROGRESA program. We exploit the fact that some beneficiaries who received transfers did not receive the forms needed to monitor the attendance of their children at school. We use a variety of techniques, including nearest neighbor matching and household fixed effects regressions, to show that the absence of these forms reduced the likelihood that children attended school with this effect most pronounced when children are transitioning to lower secondary school. We provide substantial evidence that these findings are not driven by unobservable characteristics of households or localities.","PeriodicalId":142467,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Human Capital","volume":"155 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132271450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}