Knowledge that Transforms

In high school and college, men and women take significantly different courses. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the National Longitudinal Study class of 1972, we relate these differences in school content to sex differences in adult wages. Differences in field of highest degree account for a significant part of the male‐female wage gap among college graduates, but differences in coursework account for little of the equally large wage gap between men and women with less schooling. Among college graduates there is some evidence that the reward for taking male majors is larger for men.

Prior theoretical work predicts an underprovision of advance-notice contracts stemming from their enforcement costs. In the present model, it is rather the fundamental inability of workers to alienate their right to quit taken in conjunction with parameters central to job separation decisions that jointly determine the mix of notice and no-notice contracts observed in equilibrium. Not all equilibrium contracts are efficient, but there is no underprovision of notice. Mandating notice cannot improve on joint value and indeed may reduce it. Furthermore, although a mandate can be merely redistributive, there are cases in which it harms all parties.

Individuals involved in basic research, like other workers, respond to incentives. Funding agencies provide implicit incentives when they specify the rules by which awards are made. The following analysis is an exercise in understanding incentives at an applied level. Specific rules are examined. What is the effect of rewarding past effort? What happens when a few large awards are replaced by many small awards? How does the timing of an award affect effort? How does an agency choose which topics to fund? Socially optimal rules are derived.

This article "discusses aggregate-level interactions between Jewish immigration and economic growth both in the Jewish sector of Mandatory Palestine and in Israel". The reciprocal effects of population and economic growth are discussed in two sections on population as an engine of growth and was the size of the population dependent on the economy. The author concludes that "causality between population and [gross national] product runs both ways.... For the whole period 1922-1982, it is very clear that immigration pushed the rate of increase of capital stock. For the period from 1954 on, immigration responded to the growth rate of per capita income or consumption."

We model a mechanism that makes delegation of authority from a firm to a collective of workers profitable. Power is exchanged for loyalty. The model is tested using a matched panel of French workers and firms. For these firms, we know at two dates (1986 and 1992) whether a firm‐level agreement has been signed. Furthermore, at these two dates and for each firm, a representative sample of the employees provides information on the individuals. We show both theoretically and empirically that the voluntary signature of such an agreement induces lower employee turnover given the structure of wages.

This article analyzes the efficiency of the rank‐order contract for a finite number of risk‐neutral agents under both moral hazard and adverse selection. The first‐best outcome is shown to be supported by a set of rank‐order contracts which penalize a small fraction of agents but do so heavily. The article also shows how these rank‐order contracts compare with those giving a large prize to few agents. Finally, the article provides an informal argument for why firms do not follow a penalty‐giving rank‐order contract in their promotion policies as often as the theory predicts.