Beginning in 1997, the price of concert tickets took off and ticket sales declined. From 1996 to 2003, for example, the average concert price increased by 82%, while the CPI increased by 17%. Explanations for price growth include (1) the possible crowding out of the secondary ticket market, (2) rising superstar effects, (3) Baumols and Bowen's disease, (4) increased concentraion of promoters, and (5) the erosion of complementarities between concerts and album sales because of file sharing and CD copying. The article tentatively concludes that the decline in complementarities is the main cause of the recent surge in concert prices.

In the absence of perfect annuity markets, individual consumers generally undertake precautionary saving to provide resources for their future consumption in the event that they live longer than expected. Kotlikoff, Shoven, and Spivak (in this issue) (hereafter KSS) have provided us with a well-conceived and well-executed study of the effects of various annuity arrangements on individual and aggregate saving in the presence of lifetime uncertainty. Each of these authors has had a long-standing interest in this area, and their current paper reflects their accumulated expertise. Their results indicate that a potentially sizable fraction of U.S. household wealth represents precautionary saving resulting from the absence of perfect annuity market.

Except in special cases, market work and household membership are jointly chosen. A Nash bargaining model of family behavior is used to specify stochastic structural relationships (two indirect utility functions and a market and a reservation wage function) that jointly determine work, consumption, and household membership. The maximum likelihood estimates of the implied trinomial probit model differ sharply from those obtained when either market work or household membership is taken as exogenous. This application to white male youths from the National Longitudinal Surveys shows the insurance function of families: parents insure their sons against poor market opportunities.

World War II veterans earn more than nonveterans in their cohort. We test whether the World War II veteran premium reflects nonrandom selection into the military of men with higher earnings potential. The estimation is based on the fact that from 1942 to 1947 priority for conscription was determined by date of birth. Information on individuals' dates of birth may therefore be used to construct instrumental variables for veteran status. Empirical results from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 censuses, along with two other microdata sets, support a conclusion that World War II veterans earn no more than comparable nonveterans and may well earn less.

This article examines the properties and prevalence of measurement error in longitudinal earnings data. The analysis compares matched Current Population Survey data to administrative Social Security payroll tax records. In contrast to typically assumed properties of measurement error, the results indicate that errors are serially correlated over two years and negatively correlated with true earnings (i.e., mean reverting). In a cross section, the ratio of the variance of the signal to the total variance is 0.82 for men and 0.92 for women. These ratios fall to 0.65 and 0.81 when the data are specified in first differences. Longitudinal earnings data may be more reliable than previously believed. Copyright 1991 by University of Chicago Press.

This article reports on household survey measurements of the “offshorability” of jobs, defined as the ability to perform the work from abroad. We develop multiple measures of offshorability, using both self-reporting and professional coders. All measures find that roughly 25% of US jobs are offshorable. Our three preferred measures agree between 70% and 80% of the time. Professional coders appear to provide the most accurate assessments. Empirically, more educated workers appear to hold somewhat more offshorable jobs, and offshorability does not have systematic effects on either wages or the probability of layoff.

This paper uses industry price-cost margin data to estimate the extent to which unions reduce profits. Estimates allowing for the endogeneity of union status are contrasted with estimates that assume union status is exogenous and not determined in part by either profitability or industry structure. Endogeneity is found to be an important consideration in estimating the union impact on profits: two-stage estimates are considerably larger than OLS estimates. The final section explores the total estimated redistribution from capital to labor in the manufacturing sector. An important conclusion is that unions raise prices less than was previously believed.

Authors often add covariates to a base model sequentially either to test a particular coefficient’s “robustness” or to account for the “effects” on this coefficient of adding covariates. This is problematic, due to sequence sensitivity when added covariates are intercorrelated. Using the omitted variables bias formula, I construct a conditional decomposition that accounts for various covariates’ role in moving base regressors’ coefficients. I also provide a consistent covariance formula. I illustrate this conditional decomposition with NLSY data in an application that exhibits sequence sensitivity. Related extensions include instrumental variables, the fact that my decomposition nests the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, and a Hausman test result.

Volunteer activity is work performed without monetary recompense. This article shows that volunteering is a sizeable economic activity in the United States, that volunteers have high skills and opportunity costs of time, that standard labor supply explanations of volunteering account for only a minor part of volunteer behavior, and that many volunteer only when requested to do so. This suggests that volunteering is a "conscience good or activity"-something that people feel morally obligated to do when asked, but which they would just as soon let someone else do.