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This paper studies the effects of unions on the structure of wages using an estimation technique that accounts for misclassification errors in reported union status and potential correlations between union status and unobserved productivity. The model is estimated separately for five skill groups using a panel data set formed from the U.S. Current Population Survey. The results suggest that unions raise wages more for workers with lower levels of observed skills. Union workers are positively selected from the population of workers with lower levels of observed skill and negatively selected from the population with higher observed skills. Copyright 1996 by The Econometric Society.

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In the Self Sufficiency Project (SSP) welfare demonstration, members of a randomly assigned treatment group could receive a subsidy for full-time work. The subsidy was available for 3 years, but only to people who began working full time within 12 months of random assignment. A simple optimizing model suggests that the eligibility rules created an “establishment” incentive to find a job and leave welfare within a year of random assignment, and an “entitlement” incentive to choose work over welfare once eligibility was established. Building on this insight, we develop an econometric model of welfare participation that allows us to separate the two effects and estimate the impact of the earnings subsidy on welfare entry and exit rates among those who achieved eligibility. The combination of the two incentives explains the time profile of the experimental impacts, which peaked 15 months after random assignment and faded relatively quickly. Our findings suggest that about half of the peak impact of SSP was attributable to the establishment incentive. Despite the extra work effort generated by SSP, the program had no lasting impact on wages and little or no long-run effect on welfare participation.

This paper presents an empirical analysis of changes in individual earnings and hours ov&r time. Using longitudinal data from three panel surveys, we catalogue the main features of the covariance structure of changes in earnings and hours. We then present an interpretation of these features in terms of both a life-cycle labor supply model and a fixed-wage labor contract nDdel. Our major findings are: (1) there is a remarkable similarity in the covariance structure of earnings and hours changes across the three surveys; and (2) apart from simple measurement error, the major component of variance in earnings and hours affects earnings and hours equi-proportionately.

We study the selection of Fellows of the Econometric Society, using a new data set of publications and citations for over 40,000 actively publishing economists since the early 1900s. Conditional on achievement, we document a large negative gap in the probability that women were selected as Fellows in the 1933–1979 period. This gap became positive (though not statistically significant) from 1980 to 2010, and in the past decade has become large and highly significant, with over a 100% increase in the probability of selection for female authors relative to males with similar publications and citations. The positive boost affects highly qualified female candidates (in the top 10% of authors) with no effect for the bottom 90%. Using nomination data for the past 30 years, we find a key proximate role for the Society's Nominating Committee in this shift. Since 2012, the Committee has had an explicit mandate to nominate highly qualified women, and its nominees enjoy above‐average election success (controlling for achievement). Looking beyond gender, we document similar shifts in the premium for geographic diversity: in the mid‐2000s, both the Fellows and the Nominating Committee became significantly more likely to nominate and elect candidates from outside the United States. Finally, we examine gender gaps in several other major awards for U.S. economists. We show that the gaps in the probability of selection of new fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences closely parallel those of the Econometric Society, with historically negative penalties for women turning to positive premiums in recent years.

ORDER TO PROVE PROPOSITION 1, we first present and prove the following lemmas.