In 1975 Theodore W. Schultz suggested that the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create “disequilibria.” In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource...

We hypothesize that hog production can be characterized by complementarities between new technologies, worker skills, and farms size. Such production processes are consistent with Kremer's O-ring production theory in which a single mistake in any one of several complementary tasks in a firm's...

Many developing countries have tried to increase firm provision of training by providing subsidies funded by taxes proportional to the firm’s wage bill. These training funds, however,may backfire if the adverse effect of the tax on training incentives outweighs the positive effects of the...

This paper is motivated by the claim that promotion probabilities are lower for women than men. Using data from the 1984 and 1989 National Longitudinal Youth Surveys, this paper tests this claim and two related hypotheses concerning training and ability. ...

This study investigates worker shares of the returns to scale and returns to technology adoption on U.S. hog farms. The wage analysis controls for a matching process by which workers are linked to farms of different sizes and technology uses. Using four surveys of employees on hog farms...

By allowing agents to switch from entrepreneurship to wage work and vice versa over the life cycle, this study proposes a dynamic Jacks-of-All-Trades (JAT) model where entrepreneurs invest in highly varied skills to manage their business. We simultaneously endogenize human capital investment and...

The Slovenian transition represents a slow but steady liberalization of constraints on competition. Using a unique longitudinal data set on all manufacturing firms in Slovenia over the period 1994-2001, this study analyzes how firm efficiency changed in response to changing competitive...

Data from nine transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe are used to examine the role of computer adoption for returns to education. As in western economies, computers are adopted most heavily by young, educated, English-speaking workers with the best access to local telecommunications...

Using a unique sample of new Ph.D. economists in 1987 and 1997, we examine how job seekers and their employers alter their search strategies in strong versus weak markets. The 1987 academic market was strong while the 1997 market was much weaker. A multimarket theory of optimal search suggests...