A growing proportion of the U.S. workforce will have been raised in disadvantaged environments that are associated with relatively high proportions of individuals with diminished cognitive and social skills. A cross-disciplinary examination of research in economics, developmental psychology, and...

The recent experimental evaluation of the U.S. Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) program found negative effects of training on the earnings of disadvantaged male youth and no effect on the earnings of disadvantaged female youth. These findings provided justification for Congress to cut the...

Bureaucratic performance standards are featured in many proposals to increase efficiency in government. These standards reward bureaucrats on the basis of measured outcomes. The performance standards system created under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) of 1982 is often cited as a...

The rate at which racial gaps in pre-collegiate academic achievement can plausibly be expected to erode is a matter of great interest and much uncertainty. In her opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Supreme Court Justice O'Connor took a firm stand: "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of...

This paper studies the test-retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method. The sample consists of 229 women who were interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005. The correlation of net affect (i.e.,...

This paper assesses the contribution of federal antidiscrimination policy to the dramatic improvement of black economic status in manufacturing that occurred in South Carolina in the mid 1960's. Using a unique data source on wages and employment by race and sex in South Carolina we evaluate...

This study examines the extent and influence of occupational licensing in the U.S. using a specially designed national labor force survey. Specifically, we provide new ways of measuring occupational licensing and consider what types of regulatory requirements and what level of government...

This paper examines the effect of technological change and other factors on the relative demand for workers with different education levels and on the recent growth of U.S. educational wage differentials. A simple supply-demand framework is used to interpret changes in the relative quantities,...

This study provides the first nation-wide analysis of the labor market implications of occupational licensing for the U.S. labor market, using data from a specially designed Gallup survey. We find that in 2006, 29 percent of the workforce was required to hold an occupational license from a...

In 1988, the wage distribution in East Germany was much more compressed than in West Germany or the U.S. Since the collapse of Communism and unification with West Germany, however, the wage structure in eastern Germany has changed considerably. In particular, wage variation has increased, the...