The paper aims at assessing the costs and benefits of antitrust enforcement. The analysis starts with an investigation of why competition is typically worth protecting followed by a collection of empirical evidence which shows that competition actually needs protection by antitrust policy in...

This paper summarizes our recent work on the rate of return and cost-benefit ratio of an influential early childhood program.

This paper estimates the rate of return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, an early intervention program targeted toward disadvantaged African-American youth. Estimates of the rate of return to the Perry program are widely cited to support the claim of substantial economic benefits from...

We estimate a labor supply model with German data on engineering enrollments and starting salaries. In one model agents have backward looking expectations, in the other rational expectations on future wages. Only the model with backward looking expectations delivers significant coefficients with...

This paper studies career mobility of white male doctorates in natural sciences and engineering using the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (1973-2001). The paper focuses on two issues. First, it assesses the relevance of doctoral careers to sciences and engineering (S&E) in general, and research...

We document that since 1997, the rate of startup formation has precipitously declined for firms operated by U.S. PhD recipients in science and engineering. These are supposedly the source of some of our best new technological and business opportunities. We link this to an increasing burden of...

In the late 1980s privatization and down-sizing of nationalized steel mills and related firms in the metal industry have lead to large-scale redundancy plans. A special Steel Foundation was created as part of a social plan. This foundation acted like an independent training center, where...