The paper analytically evaluates alternative specifications of price-earnings regressions when prices lead earnings, i.e., reflect information about future earnings that is not reflected in the past time series of earnings. Because prices lead earnings, the specification using the earnings-level-deflated-by-price variable in a price-earnings regression is ‘better’, in terms of bias in the estimated earnings response coefficient and explanatory power, than specifications using earnings-change-deflated-by-price and earnings-deflated-by-lagged-earnings variables. An accurate proxy for unexpected earnings, however, outperforms the earnings-level- and earnings-change-deflated-by-price specifications.

This research examines whether analysts' earnings forecasts incorporate information in price changes. Even if the forecasts do not explicitly depend upon price changes,there should nevertheless be a positive association between analysts' forecast revisions and prior price changes. Moreover, if analysts incorporate only their private information in formulating a forecast and ignore price changes, then the likelihood that their estimate is less than (greater than) the realization increases following price increases (decreases). Empirical results are consistent with these conjectures and indicate that analysts' forecasts do not fully reflect the information in prior price changes.

Abstract We study how financial certifier competition influences loan contracting in the context of financial auditing. Exploiting the unexpected demise of Arthur Andersen that exogenously decreased auditor competition, we find a greater decrease in loan spread for borrowers in markets in which certifier competition declined more. Additional analyses suggest the result stems from enhanced audit quality and reduced credit risk. The effect of certifier competition is stronger for borrowers with weaker external monitoring and those generating significant revenue for their auditors. Our evidence highlights negative consequences of financial certifier competition. (JEL D43, G21, M42, M49)

I study how teachers’ assigned job tasks—the practices they are asked to use in the classroom—affect the returns to math skills in teacher productivity. The results demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between workers’ skills and job tasks. I examine a randomized trial of different approaches to teaching math, each codified in a set of day-to-day tasks. Teachers were tested to measure their math skills. Teacher productivity—measured by student test scores—is increasing in math skills when teachers use conventional “direct instruction”: explaining and modeling rules and procedures. The relationship is weaker, perhaps negative, for newer “student-led” methods.

Data are used from the 1984–2016 Displaced Workers Surveys (DWS) to investigate the incidence and consequences of job loss, 1981–2015. These data show a record high rate of job loss in the Great Recession, with serious employment consequences for job losers, including very low rates of re-employment and difficulty finding full-time employment. The average reduction in weekly earnings for job losers making a full-time–full-time transition are relatively small, with a substantial minority reporting earning more on their new job than on the lost job. Most of the cost of job loss comes from difficulty finding new full-time employment.

This research examines the determinants of the match between high school seniors and postsecondary institutions in the United States. I model college application decisions as a nonsequential search problem and specify a unified structural model of college application, admission, and matriculation decisions that are all functions of unobservable individual heterogeneity. The results indicate that black and Hispanic representation at all 4‐year colleges is predicted to decline modestly—by 2%—if race‐neutral college admissions policies are mandated nationwide. However, race‐neutral admissions are predicted to decrease minority representation at the most selective 4‐year institutions by 10%.

Military deployments and job assignments provide an opportunity to estimate the impact of parental absences and household relocations on children’s academic achievement. Combining U.S. Army personnel data with children’s standardized test scores from Texas, I find that parental absences adversely affect children’s test scores by a tenth of a standard deviation. Likewise, household relocations have modest negative effects on children’s test scores. Both parental absences and household relocations have the greatest detrimental effect on test scores of children with single parents, children with mothers in the army, children with lower‐ability parents, and younger children.

I examine the extent to which workers who lose jobs obtain work in alternative employment arrangements, including temporary work and independent contracting, and obtain voluntary or involuntary part‐time work. I find that job losers are significantly more likely than nonlosers to be in both temporary jobs (including on‐call work and contract work) and involuntarily part‐time jobs. I also find evidence that temporary and involuntary part‐time jobs are part of a transitional process subsequent to job loss leading to regular full‐time employment.

This article develops and tests a simple dynamic model of statistical discrimination. The model improves on earlier static models both by allowing ex ante uncertainty about worker productivity to be resolved as on-the-job performance is observed and by generating several testable empirical implications. These predictions are tested using a sample of young men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, producing mixed evidence for the model. The main empirical result is that no black-white wage gap exists at labor force entry but that one develops as experience accumulates, mainly because blacks reap smaller gains from job mobility.