Knowledge that Transforms

The steady-state effect on inequality of linear redistributive schemes based on the taxation of earnings, inheritances, or some combination of the two is examined. Dynasties that exhibit asexual reproduction and altruism are modeled. Earnings ability, which may be correlated across generations, is exogenous and drawn from a stationary distribution. Taxing inheritances increases inequality by reducing the intergenerational averaging of "luck." In an example, paying out the tax revenue in uniform transfers typically does not reverse this result. Taxing lifetime wealth or income adds a lump-sum tax on earnings, making redistribution more successful. However, this success is sensitive to the relative size of mean earnings and inheritances.

This paper examines the amount of precautionary savings and wealth inequality arising from life-span uncertainty by comparing saving behavior under perfect insurance arrangements with that arising under imperfect arrangements, namely, when longevity risk can be pooled only with members of one's own family. The central findings of the paper are that (1) perfecting insurance arrangements can sharply lower savings in both intergenerationally altruistic and life-cycle economies and that (2) in altruistic economies perfecting annuity insurance can greatly influence inequality; indeed, in the long run in our model, switching from imperfect family insurance to perfect insurance can mean the difference between absolute inequality and absolute equality.

The stock of U.S. physicians at any point in time is modeled as a weighted average of the supply that a perfect cartel would produce and that would prevail under perfect competition. Estimation of a system of stock and income equations over the post-World War II period shows that, after holding constant demand and marginal cost conditions and accounting for gradual adjustment to changes in equilibrium, the weighting parameter has moved toward the competitive extreme since 1965. This rise in the degree of competition is estimated to have increased physician stock by 6%-20% and concomitantly decreased medical incomes by 19%-45%.

With data from the Employment Opportunities Pilot Programs (EOPP) Employers' Survey, this paper uses a continuous-time hazard model to analyze male and female job-quitting behavior. The EOPP sample is composed of recently hired workers with, at most, 2.5 years of tenure with the firm. Within this early stage of tenure, it is found that the probability of quitting declines with tenure for males and increases with tenure for females. This result leads to the conclusion that the job-matching process operates differently for females than it does for males.

This paper integrates the labor and assets markets equilibria to determine and evaluate the wage differentials generated for cyclical and noncyclical risks of unemployment. The relative wage differential is a linear function of unemployment risk measured by the covariance of an index of employment with the rate of change in aggregate output. Seniority and the hoarding of skilled labor are characteristics of minimum cost contracts because employees with more human capital prefer safer jobs. Empirical results suggest that a 14%-41% wage differential can be explained by interindustry differences in unemployment risks.

Among fraternal pairs from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we model the effects of measured and unmeasured family background factors, mental ability, and schooling on occupational status and earnings. The models are estimated from incomplete data with corrections for measurement error, and they permit direct comparisons of within- and between-family regressions. We find no evidence that the effects of family background lead to a bias in the effect of mental ability on schooling or in the effects of schooling on occupational status or earnings. Family background does have large independent effects on ability, schooling, and, to a lesser degree, socioeconomic attainment.

There are jobs for which firms employ older workers but tend not to hire new older workers. This may be attributable in part to implicit contracts that discourage worker shirking and malfeasance by shifting compensation to the end of the contract. Such "delayed payment" contracts can introduce a form of fixed costs into the employment relationship. Much as with hiring and training costs, these fixed costs lead firms to hire primarily young (long-term) workers. While firms employ older workers-workers who are serving out the last years of their contract-they tend not to hire them. This paper presents empirical evidence that is consistent with this argument.

This paper analyzes trends in the skills of immigrants to the US in the post-World War II period. Changes in the supply, demand, and institutional factors determining immigration are analyzed for their implications for immigrant skills. During the past 4 decades immigration has shifted from being predominantly European and Canadian in origin to being predominantly Asian and Latin American, and there have been changes in the criteria for rationing immigration visas. Immigrant skills can be analyzed within the context of a model of the supply of immigrants and the US demand for immigrants. Of the Asian immigrants subject to numerical limitation, the proportion who were occupational preference principals declined from 18.2% in 1970, to 11.9% in 1975, to 8.1% in 1981. A growing stock of the foreign-born population who are illegal aliens may lower immigrant quality; for low-skilled workers in neighboring low-income countries the economic incentives for illegal migration are very large. Immigrants from the UK have the highest annual earnings, with Canadian, other European, South Asian, East Asian, and other American immigrants having successively lower earnings. The Mexicans and the Vietnamese have the lowest earnings. Over the period 1950 to 1980, US immigration changed from primarily drawing immigrants from countries whose nationals have high relative earnings in the US primarily drawing immigrants from countries whose nationals do less well. Recent immigrants are less favorably selected on the basis of their level of schooling. The analysis of the relative earnings of immigrants during the 1970s using 3 data files shows there has been little change for white immigrants, an ambiguous pattern for Mexican immgrants, perhaps a small decline for Cuban immigrants, and a small rise for Asian immigrants. Overall, without returning to rationing by country of origin, public policy could raise immigrant skill levels by changing the balance between kinship and the individual's skills in the rationing of visas.

"This paper uses combinations of full brothers, half brothers, and fathers and sons to measure the effect of common family background on a household's income and wealth. While the data are drawn from a nineteenth-century [U.S.] population, the intraclass correlation for income ranges from .13 to .18, which is similar to that found in modern samples. Intraclass correlations for wealth are significantly higher (.18-.35) than are those for income. Intraclass correlations of half brothers compared to those for full brothers suggest that fathers play a dominant role in the transmission of the common family effect. When unobserved background is decomposed into individual and family effects, the individual effect dominates the family effect for income, while the family effect dominates the individual effect for wealth." A comment by Sherwin Rosen is included (pp. 80-2).

Whereas previous analyses of criminal deterrence have focused on the effect of criminal enforcement on crime rates, this study analyzes the existence of compensating differentials for criminal pursuits. By analyzing the risk-rewards trade-off, this approach represents a more comprehensive test of the criminal deterrence hypothesis. The sample consisted of black inner-city youths who reported their crime participation, crime income, and self-assessed risks from crime. The risk premiums for the three principal adverse outcomes (arrest, conviction, and prison) constituted between one-half and two-thirds of all crime income on the average, providing strong support for the criminal deterrence hypothesis.