This paper examines effects of the legal rules for property division at divorce on investment in human capital during marriage. We show that current rules generally lead to suboptimal levels of investment and spousal support or to inequitable distribution of the returns from such investment, or both. We propose a new rule that performs better than the existing rules on both efficiency and equity criteria and that requires no more information than the existing rules.

It is well known that women earn less than men. The causes of the wage gap, however, are not well understood. Each of the three major economic explanations of the wage gap-human capital, pure discrimination, and crowding-suffers from serious shortcomings. The human capital explanation is simply not supported by the data: sex differences in experience, training, and work history can account for only about one-third of the wage differences between men and women. (See Corcoran and G. J. Duncan, 1984, and references cited therein.) Pure discrimination (especially to the tune of about 25 percent of male wages) is just not sustainable in a competitive market (Kenneth Arrow, 1972a,b). And although women are very much crowded into a relatively few occupations (Barbara Bergmann, 1974), this fact does not carry with it an explanation of how and why it comes to be true. Socialization and discrimination are the two explanations of the unexplained portion of the wage gap that are most often identified (see, for example, D. J. Treiman and H. I. Hartmann, 1981), but the discussion usually stops there. Our purpose in this paper is to begin to look explicitly at how socialization might work in a model of the labor market, how socialization and discrimination might interact, and how one might test empirically for labor market effects of socialization.

This paper explores the implications for the pattern of international trade of differences among regions within countries--what we call "lumpiness." If factors of production are sufficiently unevenly distributed across regions, then the pattern of trade of the country as a whole may depart from what it would have been had factors been evenly distributed. Thus lumpiness in the geographical distribution of factors can be a determinant of trade. We show in particular that if other determinants of trade are absent, then a country will tend to export the good that intensively uses its lumpier (i.e., more unevenly distributed) factor.

This article uses very detailed information on graduates of the University of Michigan Law School to examine male-female pay differences in that population. Men and women in this population have virtually identical human capital on graduation from law school, allowing us to examine carefully the different impact of children and work history on men's and women's careers and earnings. Taking time from work in order to care for children reduces wages significantly, but a rich set of controls, including childcare, work history, school performance, and job setting measures, still leave one-fourth to one-third of the earnings gap unexplained.

This paper explores the implications for the pattern of international trade of differences among regions within countries--what we call "lumpiness." If factors of production are sufficiently unevenly distributed across regions, then the pattern of trade of the country as a whole may depart from what it would have been had factors been evenly distributed. Thus lumpiness in the geographical distribution of factors can be a determinant of trade. We show in particular that if other determinants of trade are absent, then a country will tend to export the good that intensively uses its lumpier (i.e., more unevenly distributed) factor.

Historically, Michigan has relied more heavily than most other states on local taxes and property taxes as sources of education finance. In the 1990-1991 school year, Michigan was third among states in the share of school spending financed locally (65.2 percent).1 Over the past two decades there have been more than ten propertytax-cut initiatives placed on statewide ballots. In the summer of 1993 the legislature passed a bill that abolished, with no source of revenue replacement specified, all use of local property taxes (at the time, over $6 billion) for school operating expenditures. In late December, both houses passed, and the governor signed, a financing bill that contained two options for voters to choose from, either of which would have replaced approximately all of the lost revenue. Here are the main provisions of the new system, as passed by the voters in March, 1994: (i) a combination of an increased state sales tax, a statewide property tax on all property, a (nearly) required local property tax on nonhomestead property,2 a sharp increase in the tobacco tax, and a real-estate transfer tax; (ii) a system of state foundation grants to school districts that would, when fully implemented, put a floor under spending of $5,000 per pupil in 1994-1995, while preserving nominal differences in spending per pupil among districts that currently spend $5,000 per pupil or more; (iii) strengthened requirements for an academic core curriculum, pupil performance standards, and minimum numbers of school days; (iv) provisions for authorizing charter schools, schools of choice that would be subject to the statewide curriculum and testing requirements but would not have to use certified teachers. (A Michigan court ruled these schools unconstitutional, but the legislature has since rewritten the law to meet the court's objections.) Thus, the new law switched Michigan from a modified powerequalization system to a modified foundation system.