Knowledge that Transforms

Three states recently introduced universal prekindergarten programs offering free preschool to all age‐eligible children; policy makers in many other states are promoting similar programs. Using restricted‐access data from the Census, together with birthday‐based eligibility cutoffs, I employ a regression discontinuity framework to estimate the effects of universal pre‐K availability on overall preschool enrollment and maternal labor supply. Universal pre‐K availability increases statewide preschool enrollment by about 14% but has little effect on the labor supply of most women.

Recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models. We use an exogenous change in wages at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. We estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short‐run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non‐VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages.

Disentangling peer effects from other confounding effects is difficult,and separately identifying endogenous and contextual effects is impossible for the linear-in-means model. This study confronts these problems by using spatial autoregressive models with group fixed effects. The nonlinearity introduced by the variations in the peer measurements provides information to identify both endogenous and contextual effects,thus resolving the "reflection problem." The group fixed effects term captures the confounding effects of the common variables.Applying the model to data sets from the National Longitudinal Studyof Adolescent Health, I find strong evidence for both endogenous and contextual effects in student academic achievement. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. Allrights reserved.

This article presents evidence on the child-quantity/child-quality trade-off using quasi-experimental variation due to twin births and preferences for a mixed sibling sex composition, as well as ethnic differences in the effects of these variables. Our sample includes groups with very high fertility. An innovation in our econometric approach is the juxtaposition of results from multiple instrumental variables strategies, capturing the effects of fertility over different ranges for different sorts of people. To increase precision, we develop an estimator that combines different instrument sets across partially overlapping parity-specific subsamples. Our results are remarkably consistent in showing no evidence of a quantity-quality trade-off.

This article studies how portable skills accumulated in the labor market are. Using rich data on tasks performed in occupations, we propose the concept of task‐specific human capital to measure empirically the transferability of skills across occupations. Our results on occupational mobility and wages show that labor market skills are more portable than previously considered. We find that individuals move to occupations with similar task requirements and that the distance of moves declines with experience. We also show that task‐specific human capital is an important source of individual wage growth, accounting for up to 52% of overall wage growth.

This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on U.S. technology formation. We use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and patenting by inventors with Indian and Chinese names in cities and firms dependent upon the program relative to their peers. Most specifications find limited effects for native SE employment or patenting. We are able to rule out displacement effects, and small crowding-in effects may exist. Total SE employment and invention increases with higher admissions primarily through direct contributions of immigrants.

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book. An Index of Authors of New Books appearing in the Annotated Listings will appear at the end of the General Index in the December issue.

Editor's Note Our policy is to annotate all English-language books on economics and related subjects that are sent to us. A very small number of foreign-language books are called to our attention and annotated by our consulting editors or others. Our staff does not monitor and order books published; therefore, if an annotation of a book does not appear six months after the publication date, please write to us or the publisher concerning the book. An Index of Authors of New Books appearing in the Annotated Listings will appear at the end of the General Index in the December issue.

Front matter includes Table of Contents.