Knowledge that Transforms

Using the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, I examine how immigrants perform in activities likely to increase U.S. productivity, according to the type of visa on which they first entered the United States. Immigrants who entered on a student/trainee visa or a temporary work visa have a large advantage over natives in wages, patenting, and publishing. Much of the advantage is explained by immigrants' higher education and field of study. Immigrants who entered with legal permanent residence do not outperform natives for any of the outcomes considered. Immigrants are more likely to start companies than similar natives.

This article establishes the cyclical properties of a novel measure of worker reallocation: long-distance migration rates within the United States. Combining evidence from a number of data sets spanning the entire postwar era, we find that internal migration within the United States is procyclical. This result cannot be explained by cyclical variation in relative local economic conditions, suggesting that the net benefit of moving rises during booms. Migration is most procyclical for younger labor-force participants. Therefore, cyclical fluctuations in the net benefit of moving appear to be related to conditions in the labor market and the spatial reallocation of labor.

The importance of fair and equal treatment of workers is at the heart of the debate in organizational management. In this regard, we study how reward schemes and production technologies affect effort provision in teams. Our experimental results demonstrate that unequal rewards can potentially increase productivity by facilitating coordination and that the effect strongly interacts with the exact shape of the production function. Taken together, our data highlight the relevance of the production function for organization construction and suggest that equal treatment of equals is neither a necessary nor a sufficient prerequisite for eliciting high performance in teams.

In the context of certain dynamic models, it is possible to infer the elasticity of labor supply to the firm from the elasticity of the quit rate with respect to the wage. Using this property, we estimate the average labor supply elasticity to public school districts in Missouri. We leverage the plausibly exogenous variation in prenegotiated district salary schedules to instrument for actual salary. These estimates imply a labor supply elasticity of about 3.7, suggesting that school districts possess significant market power. The presence of monopsony power in this teacher labor market may be partially explained by its institutional features.

Life cycle employment of minority labor migrants who entered Norway in the early 1970s diverges from that of natives. Immigrant employment was nearly complete during early years but declined to 50% by the year 2000 (compared to 87% for a native comparison group). We find that immigrant employment is particularly sensitive to the business cycle and that economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s accelerated their labor market exit. We trace part of the decline to migrants being overrepresented in shrinking industries. But we also identify welfare disincentives that contribute to poor life cycle employment performance of immigrants with many dependent family members.

We examine the relationship between information technology (IT), productivity, and organization using a new panel data set of police departments that covers 1987–2003. When considered alone, increases in IT are not associated with reductions in crime rates, increases in clearance rates, or other productivity measures, and computing technology that increases reported crime actually generates the appearance of lower productivity. These results persist across various samples, specifications, and IT measures. IT investments are, however, linked to improved productivity when they are complemented with particular organizational and management practices, such as those associated with the Compstat program.

We estimate short‐run, medium‐run, and long‐run individual labor market effects of training programs for the unemployed by following program participation on a monthly basis over a 10‐year period. Since analyzing the effectiveness of training over such a long period is impossible with experimental data, we use an administrative database compiled for evaluating German training programs. Based on matching estimation adapted to address the various issues that arise in this particular context, we find a clear positive relation between the effectiveness of the programs and the unemployment rate over time.

Spousal education is correlated with earnings for two reasons: cross‐productivity between couples and assortative mating. This article empirically disentangles the two effects by using Chinese twins data. We have two innovations: using twins data to control for the unobserved mating effect in our estimations and estimating both current and wedding‐time earnings equations. We find that both crossproductivity and mating are important in explaining the current earnings. Although the mating effect exists for both husbands and wives, the cross‐productivity effect mainly runs from Chinese husbands to wives. Our findings shed light on the theories of human capital, marriage, and the family.

France’s 1998 implementation of the 35‐hour workweek has been one of the greatest regulatory shocks on labor markets. Few studies evaluate the impact of this regulation because of a lack of identification strategies. For historical reasons due to the way Alsace‐Moselle was returned to France in 1918, the implementation of France’s 35‐hour workweek was less stringent in that region than in the rest of the country, which is confirmed by double and triple differences. Yet it shows no significant difference in employment with the rest of France, which casts doubt on the effectiveness of this regulation.

This article exploits a quasi‐experimental setting to estimate the impact that a commonly used performance‐related pay scheme had on branch performance in a large distribution firm. The scheme, which is based on the Balanced Scorecard, was implemented in all branches in one division but not in another. Branches from the second division are used as a control group. Our results suggest that the Balanced Scorecard had some impact but that it varied with branch characteristics, and, in particular, branches with more experienced managers were better able to respond to the new incentives.