Knowledge that Transforms

We examine the impact of relative wages on labor supply in a laboratory experiment. We test the hypothesis that, ceteris paribus, making a given wage high (low) relative to other wage levels will lead to an increase (decrease) in labor supply. We find that labor supply does respond significantly to relative pay, and in the expected direction. However, when a strong enough reason for the relative low pay is given, this difference disappears.

Using data from a randomized experiment, we find that having a female teacher lowers the math test scores of female primary school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Moreover, we do not find any effect of having a female teacher on male students’ test scores (math or reading) or female students’ reading test scores, which seems to rule out explanations pertaining to the unobserved quality differences between male and female teachers. Finally, this negative effect seems to persist only for female students who were assigned to a female teacher with a limited math background.

We analyze location choices of foreign-born science and engineering students receiving PhDs from US universities. Foreign students who stay in the United States are positively selected on observables. They tend to stay in the United States during periods of strong US economic growth and during periods of weak home country economic growth. Foreign students from higher-income countries and from recently democratized countries tend not to remain in the United States. Education and innovation may therefore be part of a virtuous cycle by which education enhances a country’s prospects for innovation and innovation makes the country more attractive for scientists and engineers.

This paper uses eleven years of administrative data from North Carolina public high schools to examine the extent to which the allocation of teachers within and across public high schools is contributing to inequality in student test score performance. The existence of nearly 3,500 teacher transfers allows separate identifica-tion of each teacher’s quality from other school-level factors. I find that teaching quality is fairly equitably distributed both within and across high schools: students among the bottom (top) decile of a student back-ground index are taught by teachers who are, on average, at the 41st (57th) percentile of the value-added distribution. I have greatly benefited from the input of Joseph Altonji, as well as Fabian Lange, Melissa Tartari, Costas Meghir, Lisa Kahn, Amanda Kowalski, and several anonymous referees. I also thank Mark Klee, Matthew Johnson, Priyanka

In a stochastic Becker marriage model (Choo and Siow), supermodularity of the match output function implies stochastic positive assortative matching (PAM): the equilibrium marriage matching distribution has all positive local log odds ratios or is totally positive of order 2 (TP2). The Choo-Siow model rationalizes the practice of studying PAM independent of population vectors and marriage rates and conditional on other spousal characteristics. Using white married couples in their 30s from the 2000 US Census, spousal educational matching generally obeyed TP2. Between 1970 and 2000, there was no general increase in PAM. There was increased homogamy in spousal education matching.

Many believe that classroom interactions play an important role in students’ academic achievement, but there is little evidence on peer effects within subclassroom groups. We exploit random seat assignment in a Chinese middle school to estimate how the gender of neighboring students affects a student’s academic achievement. We find that being surrounded by five females rather than five males increases a female’s test scores by 0.2–0.3 standard deviations but has no significant effects on a male’s test scores. These results suggest a low-cost way to potentially improve performance within the world’s largest school system.

This paper examines how high-skilled immigrants contribute to knowledge diffusion using a rich data set of Russian scientists and US citations to Soviet-era publications. Analysis of a panel of US cities and scientific fields shows that citations to Soviet-era work increased significantly with the arrival of immigrants. A difference-in-differences analysis with matched paper pairs also shows that after Russian scientists moved to the United States, citations to their Soviet-era papers increased relative to control papers. Both strategies reveal scientific field–specific effects. Ideas in high-impact papers and papers previously accessible to US scientists were the most likely to “spill over” to natives.

College graduates do not always pursue careers related to their major. Science majors working in jobs unrelated to their field of study earn approximately 30% lower wages than those working in related jobs. We develop a structural model of major choice and labor market outcomes that allows for skill uncertainty and differential accumulation of human capital across major. Our findings confirm that the average return to obtaining a science degree and working in a related job remains close to 30%. We also find that individuals are uncertain about their future productivity at the time of the college major decision.

This paper documents that the dynamics of occupational segregation are highly nonlinear and exhibit tipping patterns. Occupations experience discontinuous declines in net male employment growth at tipping points ranging from 25% to 45% (from 13% to 30%) female in white-collar (blue-collar) occupations from 1940 to 1990. These patterns appear consistent with a Schelling (1971) social interaction model where tipping results from male preferences toward the fraction female in their occupation. Supporting the model’s predictions, evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that tipping points are lower in regions where males hold more sexist attitudes toward the appropriate role of women.

We study the impact of skilled immigrants on the employment structures of US firms using matched employer-employee data. Unlike most previous work, we use the firm as the lens of analysis to account for greater heterogeneity and the fact that many skilled immigrant admissions are driven by firms themselves (e.g., the H-1B visa). OLS and IV specifications show rising overall employment of skilled workers with increased skilled immigrant employment by the firm. Employment expansion is greater for young natives than for their older counterparts. The departure rates for older workers relative to younger workers appear highest for those in STEM occupations.