This paper examines the economic foundations of some recently proposed criteria for evaluating the benefits of social programs. These criteria are appropriate for comparing a class of revenue-constant policies. They replace foundational principles of social opportunity costs with accounting...

This paper formulates and tests the hypothesis that the categories unemployed and out of the labor force are behaviorally distinct labor force states. Our empirical results indicate that they are. In the empirically relevant range the exit rate from unemployment to employment exceeds the exit...

This paper surveys new methods for estimatifg labor supply functions. A unified framework of analysis is presented. All recent models of labor supply are special cases of a general index function model developed for the analysis o dummy endogenous variables

This paper presents new econometric methods for the empirical analysis of individual labor market histories. The techniques developed here extend previous work on continuous time models in four ways: (1) A structural economic interpretation of these models is presented. (2) Time varying...

This paper takes a first step toward developing econometric models for the structural analysis of labor force dynamics. Our analysis is presented in continuous time, although most of the points raised here can be applied to discrete time models. We show that in previous attempts to estimate...

In recent years, the study of labor supply has occupied the attention of a large number of economists. With the growth in interest in the topic and with the inevitable diversity of economic models and statistical methods proposed by new entrants in the field, the literature has developed its own...

This paper surveys recent evidence on the impact of government programs on the measured labor market status of black Americans. In this paper, we argue that previous studies neglect the impact of recent government policy on the supply side of the labor market, and that the supply side effects of...

In this paper, we discuss statistical problems that arise in studying sequences of quantal responses (e.g., labor force participation) in panel data on heterogeneous populations (i.e., populations in which there is unobserved variation in response probabilities). Assuming that response...

Since 1941, six Executive Orders have been issued forbidding Federal government contractors from discriminating against minority workers. In principle, all prospective contractors are required to demonstrate compliance with the law before a contract is let. The potential penalties are severe:...

In the past few years, there has been substantial progress in the application of the economic theory of household decision making to human fertility behavior. Theoretical emphasis has been given to the effects of the costs of parental tine and money resources devoted to rearing children on the...