Recent literature finds that women earn significantly lower returns to professional degrees. Does this render these degrees poor investments for women? We compare physicians to physician assistants, a similar profession with lower wages and training costs, mitigating some selection issues. The...

We examine retail and wholesale prices for a large supermarket chain over seven and one-half years. We find that prices fall on average during seasonal demand peaks for a product, largely due to changes in retail margins. Retail margins for specific goods fall during peak demand periods for that...

We examine retail and wholesale prices for a large supermarket chain over seven and one-half years. We find that prices fall on average during seasonal demand peaks for a product, largely due to changes in retail margins. Retail margins for specific goods fall during peak demand periods for that...

The creation of online consumer communities to provide product reviews and advice has been touted as an important, albeit somewhat expensive component of Internet retail strategies. In this paper, we characterize reviewer behavior at two popular Internet sites and examine the effect of consumer...

Many Internet retailers must raise margins in the future if they are to survive. This raises the important issues of whether they will be able to raise margins as well as how valuation estimates made today should evaluate projected changes to margins in the future. In this paper, we describe...

We develop a simple methodology to estimate the returns to education despite heterogeneous labor/leisure preferences. The labor supply behavior of doctors and physician assistants is consistent with people choosing between the two careers based on differing tastes for leisure.

We utilize a new micro data set of prices of funeral goods and services at individual funeral homes, plus data from the Economic Census, to examine the effects of state regulations that restrict entry into the funeral goods market. In particular, some states have regulations that allow only...