Governments do not have perfect information regarding the priorities and the needs of different groups in the economy. This lack of knowledge opens the door for different groups to lobby the government in order to receive the government?s support. We set up a model of hierarchical contests and...

We show that U.S. manufacturing wages during the Great Depression were importantly determined by forces on firms' intensive margins. Short-run changes in work intensity and the longer-term goal of restoring full potential productivity combined to influence real wage growth. By contrast, the...

We compare how U.S. and Danish gender wage gaps have developed between 1983 and 1995 using U.S. PSID and Danish Longitudinal Sample data. Using a new decomposition method, we show that changes in returns to observable skills and ranking effects outweigh women?s gains due to qualifications and...

The United States has a teenage birth rate that is high relative to that of other developed countries, and falling more slowly. Children of teenagers may experience difficult childhoods and hence be more likely to commit crimes subsequently. I assess to what extent lagged teen birth rates can...

The theory proposed below is that entrepreneurs are jacks-of-all-trades who may not excel in any one skill, but are competent in many. A coherent model of the choice to become an entrepreneur is presented. The primary implication is that individuals with balanced skills are more likely than...

Rising wage inequality in the U.S. and Britain (especially in the 1980s) and rising continental European unemployment (with rather stable wage inequality) have led to a popular view in the economics profession that these two phenomena are related to negative relative demand shocks against the...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of employment and child care payment decisions of single mothers in the early post-welfare reform environment, using data from the National Survey of America?s Families (NSAF). I develop and estimate a model that examines the effects of the price of...

We estimate a dynamic programming model of schooling decisions in which the degree of risk aversion can be inferred from schooling decisions. In our model, individuals are heterogeneous with respect to school and market abilities but homogeneous with respect to the degree of risk aversion. We...

We estimate a finite mixture dynamic programming model of schooling decisions in which the log wage regression function is set in a random coefficient framework. The model allows for absolute and comparative advantages in the labor market and assumes that the population is composed of 8 unknown...

We estimate a structural dynamic programming model of schooling decisions with unobserved heterogeneity in school ability and market ability on a sample taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Both the instantaneous utility of attending school and the wage regression...