The Internet represents a large shock to information flows and the nature of market transactions. This paper focuses on how this shock translates into changes in job search. It is likely that the Internet has both reduced search costs, and altered relativities, such as the returns to different types of search, and the ease with which one can search outside the local labor market. I find that in states that adopted the Internet rapidly, the unemployed have expanded their search activities and reallocated their effort across types of job search. The employed also appear to be searching more (or more successfully), with job-to-job flows increasing. Moreover, the Internet has changed the scope of job searches, as information now flows more freely across regional economies, stimulating greater migration across states. While it can be difficult to disentangle whether changes in state labor markets reflect Internet usage or drive Internet adoption, I find a useful instrument that isolates the causal mechanism: the Internet has diffused in much the same way as past innovations, and hence average state ownership rates of household appliances in 1960 describe Internet adoption patterns over the past decade. Disaggregating my main results, I find that the Internet has had the largest effects on the search behavior and mobility of the young and those with at least some college. Estimates on placebos, such as low-skill workers, show little effect.

The Minnesota Population Center (MPC) is creating an integrated version of the March US Current Population Survey (CPS) covering the years 1962-2002. The CPS is one of the few comprehensive data sources available for researching social and economic trends between decennial censuses. The survey also includes useful information--such as employment patterns and participation in social welfare programs--that is not available in the census. The new database will be compatible with the decennial census data available in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). For variables found in both sources, the integrated CPS will use IPUMS codes, and the documentation and data access system for the CPS data will be based on IPUMS principles and infrastructure.

This paper analyzes skyrocketing housing costs in Sonoma County, California in relation to household incomes and job market trends, highlighting the enormous burden on low-and middle-income households imposed by the current housing crisis. The report recommends a set of "best practice" land use and fiscal policies and innovative housing progams to increase housing affordability in the area.

The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality investigated racial differences in social and economic status in four of the nation's largest metropolises in the 1990s. This study sought to answer questions about why African Americans remain disadvantaged on almost all economic indicators thirty years after the civil rights revolution altered not only the nation's laws but its values about the legitimacy of racial discrimination. Another important aim of this study was to describe the racial and economic change now occurring in major ports of entry as many Latinos and Asians migrate to the United States. This chapter provides an overview of the Multi-City Study sites, focusing on the social, economic, and demographic differences that distinguish the racial groups.

This paper argues that long-run trends in geographic segregation are inconsistent with models where residential choice depends solely on local public goods (the Tiebout hypothesis). We develop an extension of the Tiebout model that predicts as mobility costs fall, the heterogeneity across communities of individual public good preferences and of public good provision must (weakly) increase. Given the secular decline in mobility costs, these predictions can be evaluated using historical data. We find decreasing heterogeneity in policies and proxies for preferences across (i) a sample of US municipalities (1870-1990); (ii) all Boston-area municipalities (1870-1990); and (iii) all US counties (1850-1990).

Many national statistical offices (NSOs) disseminate microdata in three ways: public use microdata files on CDROM or on-line, research centers or licensed sites, and remote access to restricted microdata. This paper covers a sampling of systems in NSOs that permit monitored remote access to restricted microdata. The sample includes six foreign systems and three systems in the United States (US). Section 1 of the paper covers foreign systems in the following order: Luxembourg Income Study, Statistics Canada, Statistics Denmark, Statistics Netherlands, Australian Bureau of Statistics, and Statistics Sweden. Section 2 covers US systems in federal agencies in the following order: National Center for Health Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics and Census Bureau. The type of methodology employed in each of the systems is reviewed for each country because the methodology influences the kinds of access and results given to users. The usage of each system and the kinds of research that have benefited from their use are reviewed for each country, in so far as such information is available. A few research programs in the US bearing on remote access to restricted microdata are also briefly reviewed in Section 3 because they are examples of the kinds of research that contribute to practical applications in the public sector. Appendices 1A and 1B have a summary of methodology and usage of US systems and Appendices 2A and 2B have a summary of methodology and usage of foreign systems.

Public Information Technology: Policy and Management Issues constitutes a survey of many of the most important dimensions of managing information technology in the public sector. Written by noted academics and public administration practitioners, this book addresses general policy and administrative issues in this arena as well as the information technology skills needed by public managers.

A variety of early experiences shape individuals in ways that are later rewarded or punished in the labor market. This paper asks whether early labor market conditions have persistent effects on adult outcomes and whether the impact differs with education. I show that negative shocks to early labor market conditions depress adult wages but that the impact is much reduced for college graduates. Early labor market conditions are quantified using an index of the average unemployment rate in an individual's birth state during the years he likely entered the labor market. A one standard deviation increase in average early labor market unemployment leads to a wage decline of 4-5 percent for workers ages 24-30. Years of education mitigate this effect slightly, but college graduates are more insulated than other education groups, experiencing less than half the average wage loss. Evidence from cohorts observed over time suggests that the losses are permanent for non-college graduates. College graduates generally make up any losses by their mid-thirties, but the rate of convergence differs across cohorts. I argue that college graduates are insulated from negative early labor market shocks, because they are significantly more likely than non college graduates to move out of their home state if high unemployment rates prevailed there at the time of labor market entry. Aggregate labor supply responses of the two education groups support this. I conclude that college graduates move to better labor markets to start their careers when unemployment in the home state is abnormally high, eliminating wage differentials between college graduates who enter better and worse local labor markets.

English language ability is correlated with a worker's wages, and limited English proficient (LEP) workers who improve their communications abilities by acquiring better English skills are shown to have greater economic mobility. These notes, from a presentation in Denver, provide an overview of recent research on the economics of language and looks at the potential implications for LEP workers.

Beginning in the late 1970s, social history was criticized for its tendency to privilege "normal" behavior, its overdependence on static structures, and on categorizing individuals in preset groups. In replacing social history as the dominant new prospective on the past, cultural historians tried to address some of the serious questions raised about the methods of social historians while they adopted the new subjects that social historians had brought into the field. In their revised strategies, cultural historians brought back into awareness issues relating to the contingent, the personal, and the eccentric. At the same time, in swinging away from the vigorous research methods and forms of disciplined inquiry that had become the hallmarks of social historians, cultural historians frequently fell into a variety of problems that have now become quite visible in the field. By urging that the close alliance between cultural and social history be refreshed, Paula Fass suggests ways in which contemporary cultural historians can strengthen their research and writing by learning from the methods and strategies of social history.

In this article we estimate the long-run aggregate elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled workers. This is an important parameter as it allows us to compute the skill biased technological progress (SBTP) from the evolution of relative wages. However, it is hard to estimate because skill supply is endogenous. We tackle the task by using instruments proposed by the labor literature as sources of exogenous variation of schooling achievements across U.S. States. They are the state laws on Compulsory Schooling Attendance and on Child Labor. We then calculate SBTP and, using growth accounting, we calculate Hicks neutral technological progress (HNTP) for U.S. states in each decade between 1950 and 1990.