In this paper we extend the nonparametric additive oracle regression estimator of Kim et al. (1999) by analyzing the gradients of the conditional mean function as these are of primary interest in applied economic research. We derive the asymptotic results for the gradients under both independence and weak-dependence assumptions. Finite sample performance is examined via Monte Carlo simulations. We further propose methods to allow for interactions as well as a partially linear model. We take this extended model, with recent U.S. Current Population Survey data, to analyze returns to schooling. Similar to previous research, we find that blacks and Hispanics have higher rates of return on average. However, for married males, while non-Hispanic whites have lower returns on average, they typically possess the highest returns in the sample. For females, we are able to show that Hispanics have uniformly higher returns over non-Hispanic whites for the full sample. When we restrict our analysis to females whose highest level of education is a high-school diploma, we find average, but no longer uniformly higher returns. However, these uniformly higher returns resurface for college graduates.

This paper quantifies the option value arising from sequential schooling decisions made in the presence of uncertainty and learning about academic ability. College attendance has option value since enrolled students have the option, but not obligation, to continue in school after learning their aptitude and tastes. I estimate that option value accounts for 14 percent of the total value of the opportunity to attend college for the average high school graduate and is greatest for moderate-aptitude students. Students' ability to make decisions sequentially in response to new information increases welfare and also makes educational outcomes less polarized by background.

Investigating immigrant residential patterns in 1880 offers a baseline for understanding residential assimilation trajectories in subsequent eras. This study uses 100% count information from the 1880 Census to estimate a multilevel model of ethnic isolation and exposure to native whites in 67 cities for individual Irish, German and British residents. At the individual level, the key predictors are drawn from assimilation theory: nativity, occupation, and marital status. The multilevel model makes it possible to control for these predictors and to study independent sources of variation in segregation across cities. There is considerable variation at the city level, especially due to differences in the relative sizes of groups. Other significant city-level predictors of peoples neighborhood composition include the share of group members who are foreign-born, the disparity in occupational standing between group members and native whites, and the degree of occupational segregation between them.

Education policies developed to initiate improvements to public school systems across Louisiana often result in a continuation or intensification of salient yet overlooked accessibility challenges. The public high school and its students have been particularly susceptible to these actions which have been sustained for decades within the state despite the increasing awareness of individual and community hardships connected to high school level inadequacies. Beyond isolated district studies or aggregate state reports, limited focus has been placed on student accessibility to public high schools or on responses of students and communities to processes which alter their access to area high schools.This study advances the role GIS in historical geography and education research by implementing the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method to link historical phenomena with contemporary accessibility conditions for social groups within the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area (BRMSA). This work implements the 2SFCA method and two derivatives to gauge the transitions of high school accessibility from 1990 to 2010 and challenge heuristic approaches which demote the influence of geography in policymaking which effects high school accessibility.A regression analysis revealed a moderately strong positive association between spatial accessibility determined the 2SFCA and school accountability scores established by the Louisiana Department of Education with 2010 data. Additionally, this examination found urban areas, particularly Baton Rouge, have experienced the lowest levels of spatial accessibility and correspondingly low accountability scores, which in most cases have only continued through time when compared to non-urban high schools. Together these analyses support the potential attraction of suburban high schools within the BRMSA. The conclusion of a series of common factor analyses implemented to complement accessibility measurements further support the attraction argument and the overall link between access, accountability, race, and geography as a potential offshoot of the White flight phenomenon was captured in the 2010 implementation

Micronutrient deficiencies plague the developing world. For example, the World Health Organization estimates that over a quarter of the world’s population suffer from iron deficiency, which leads to impaired cognitive development in children and reduced work capacity in adults (McLean et al. 2008). Renewed interest in combating micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries stems from the potentially large impact of health interventions on productivity and quality of life.1 For instance, the Copenhagen Consensus of 2008 lists iron and iodine fortification as the third most costeffective development intervention (Lomborg 2009). As of 2009, 63 countries had implemented flour fortification programs, but 72 percent of all flour produced remains unfortified (Horton, Mannar and Wesley 2008). Surprisingly few studies directly evaluate the effects of national-level fortification programs. Moreover, data limitations and . . .

The future of the United States is critically tied to the success of the education of children in Texas. While accounting for only 15.7 percent of growth in the total population in the United States between 2000 and 2010, Texas accounted for an equivalent of 53.2 percent of the growth in the early childhood and school age population (ages 0-12)1 alone [an increase of 732,166 children or a 17.2 percent change between 2000 and 2010 (see Table 1)]. This growth is more than the combined growth in the early childhood and school age populations for Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida [ranked second through fourth in growth for this age group (see Table 2)]. By 2010, 9.3 percent of the early childhood and school age population in the United States resided in Texas. Only California had more children in this age group (at 12.3 percent of the U.S. population ages 0 through 12). In the 2000 to 2010 decade, Texas added more people, including those in the early childhood and school ages, than any other state (4.3 million people and 732,166 children) and experienced the fifth largest percentage growth in the total and early childhood and school age population of any state in the nation [a change of 20.6 and 17.2 percent, respectively (see Tables 2 and 3)]...

Acquisition systems of property taxation can lead individuals who just bought a home to pay five times more property taxes than neighbors who own comparable homes (Nordlinger v. Hahn). These large inequities seem to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled such inequities constitutional, because they serve the legitimate state interest of encouraging neighborhood preservation. In this paper we examine whether acquisition systems of property taxation increase neighborhood specific social capital investments; specifically, whether they increase the likelihood that parents put their elementary school children in public school and carpool. We find no evidence in support of this hypothesis. On the contrary, we find that households that benefit from lower taxes are less likely to send their children to public elementary schools and to carpool.

The aim of this paper is to explore the gender wage gap trends in European labor markets taking a comparative perspective across various countries: Austria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK. Using the Occupational Information Network data and the harmonized data for the years 1995-2009 from the European Community Household Panel and European Union Statistics on Income and LivingConditions, we determine the evolution of relative "brain" and "brawn" skill intensity of jobs held by women and men. Then, given the occupational allocation of males and females, we estimate the returns to "brains" and "brawns" in each year and analyze the trends in returns to those skills. Our results suggest that, despite the increasing over-representation of women in brain skill intensive occupations, returns to "brain" versus "brawn" skills did not change in favor of "brains" between 1995 and 2009 in European labor markets. Our decomposition analysis reveals that the change in worker composition is the major factor that explains the narrowing gender wage gap between 1995 and 2009 in the European labor markets.

This article examines household organization and living arrangements in Early America using a unique population enumeration collected in 1776 in the British North American colony of Maryland. Confounding expectations, Early American populations did not demonstrate key demographic or economic pre-conditions of the ‘northwest European’ model. High sex ratios in New England, the Chesapeake, and New Spain led to extremely low ages at marriage. Likewise, evidence of ‘life-cycle’ service in British North America was almost non-existent as dependence on indentured servitude and chattel slavery translated into diminished economic opportunities for single adult males. Despite the differences, British North American populations still adhered to the rule of ‘neolocality’ when it came to household organization. Inheritance practices in British North America seem to have reinforced the practice of neolocality for older sons and the simultaneous formation of both simple and extended households. Parental bequest pattern...

Recent empirical research indicates, in contrast to standard trade theory, that trade and foreign competition negatively impact some locations by worsening labor market outcomes such as unemployment. I extend and confirm this work using unique data on the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs since 1983. I find that locations that face more foreign competition have higher job destruction rates, lower job creation rates, and thereby higher unemployment rates. I introduce a simple trade model with unemployment and segmented local labor markets facing different degrees of foreign competition. Import competition has a correlated effect on job destruction and job creation because the most vulnerable locations to foreign competition have lower productivity. Despite large reductions in employment rate in the worse hit local labor markets and in contrast to an exogenous increase in foreign productivity, an unexpected trade liberalization yields aggregate welfare gains in the model calibrated to the U.S.

Throughout its history, Mississippi has seen a small, steady stream of immigrants, and those identities--sometimes submerged, sometimes hidden--have helped shape the state in important ways. Amid renewed interest in identity, the Mississippi Humanities Council has commissioned a companion volume to its earlier book that studied ethnicity in the state from the period 1500-1900. This new book, Ethnic Heritage in Mississippi: The Twentieth Century, offers stories of immigrants overcoming obstacles, immigrants newly arrived, and long-settled groups witnessing a revitalized claim to membership. The book examines twentieth-century immigration trends, explores the reemergence of ethnic identity, and undertakes case studies of current ethnic groups. Some of the groups featured in the volume include Chinese, Latino, Lebanese, Jewish, Filipino, South Asian, and Vietnamese communities. The book also examines Biloxi as a city that has long attracted a diverse population and takes a look at the growth in identity affiliation among people of European descent. The book is funded in part by a "We the People" grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This bachelor thesis deals with current immigration to the United States and examines how is the government as well as the society dealing with diversity caused by multicultural environment. Firstly, historical development of immigration to the U.S. is briefly described, followed by examination of certain aspects of both legal and illegal immigration background such as U.S. policy towards immigrants, integration, education level and family background. At the end, current controversial immigration laws are discussed.

This dissertation consists of two essays.The first essay analyzes the labor market effects of import competition in the U.S. Recent empirical research indicates, in contrast to standard trade theory, that trade and foreign competition negatively impact some locations by worsening labor market outcomes such as unemployment. I extend and con rm this work using unique data on the U.S. Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs since 1983. I find that locations that face more foreign competition have higher job destruction rates, lowerjob creation rates, and thereby higher unemployment rates. I introduce a simple trade model with unemployment and segmented local labor markets facing different degrees of foreign competition. Import competition has a correlated effect on job destruction and job creation because the most vulnerable locations to foreign competition have lower productivity. Despite large reductions in employment rate in the worse hit local labor markets and in contrast to an exogenous increase in foreign productivity, an unexpected trade liberalization yields aggregate welfare gains in the model calibrated to the U.S. In the second essay, Sewon Hur and I study the foreign reserves accumulation of emerging economies. Emerging economies, unlike advanced economies, have accumulated large foreign reserve holdings. We argue that this policy is an optimal response to an increase in foreign debt rollover risk. In our model, reserves play a crucial role in reducing debt rollover crises ("sudden stops"), akin to the role of bank reserves in preventing bank runs. An unexpected increase in rollover risk leads to a global rise in sudden stops, prompting emerging economies to update their priors about the risk they face. We show that a global increase in the rollover risk faced by emerging economies explains the outburst of sudden stops in the late 1990s, the subsequent increase in foreign reserves holdings, and the salient resilience of these countries to sudden stops ever since.

Researchers continue to question fathers' willingness to report their biological children in surveys and the ability of surveys to adequately represent fathers. To address these concerns, this study evaluates the quality of men's fertility data in the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) and in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Comparing fertility rates in each survey with population rates based on data from Vital Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, we document how the incomplete reporting of births in different surveys varies according to men's characteristics, including their age, race, marital status, and birth cohort. In addition, we use Monte Carlo simulations based on the NSFG data to demonstrate how birth underreporting biases associations between early parenthood and its antecedents. We find that in the NSFG, roughly four out of five early births were reported; but in the NLSY79 and NLSY97, almost nine-tenths of early births were reported. In all three surveys, incomplete reporting was especially pronounced for nonmarital births. Our results suggest that the quality of male fertility data is strongly linked to survey design and that it has implications for models of early male fertility.

This book grows out of the realization that a convergence of economic, demographic, and political forces in the early twenty-first century requires a fundamental reexamination of the financing of American higher education. The authors identify and address basic issues and trends that cut across the sectors of higher education, focusing on such questions as how much higher education the country needs for individual opportunity and economic viability in the future; how responsibility for paying for it is currently allocated; and how higher education finance should be addressed in the future. A major statement by four leading figures within the field, this is an indispensable book at a time of heightened national concern about the future of higher education. American higher education : twenty-first century context -- How much higher education does the nation need? -- Finance and policy : a historical perspective -- Finance and policy : a contemporary perspective -- State higher education policy -- Educational capacity in American higher education -- Financing higher education in an era of global challenge : an agenda for the nation -- College completion goals by organization -- State college completion goals.

The purpose of this study was to explore sectoral and geographic migration of the pharmacist workforce and to examine the occupational and non-occupational factors associated with this mobility. This study employed quantitative analysis of unique datasets to estimate the magnitude of pharmacist workforce migration, describe its temporal patterns and investigate the role of occupational and non-occupational factors as motivators for this phenomenon. Job history data from the 2000 and 2009 National Pharmacist Workforce Survey was used to investigate sectoral and geographic migration of pharmacists between 1980 and 2009 in the first section of the study while the 5% public use sample of the 2000 Census of the Population was employed to investigate geographic migration of pharmacists between 1995 and 2000 in the second section. The magnitude and temporal patterns of sectoral and geographic migration of pharmacists between 1980 and 2009 were described using non-parametric descriptive statistics while the motivators of sectoral and geographic migration of pharmacists during this period were investigated using survival analysis. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association between the odds of interstate migration and several occupational and non-occupational variables between 1995 and 2000. Out-migration of licensed pharmacists from large chain sector appeared to be greater than out-migration from independent/small chain and institutional sectors. When pharmacists migrate, they were more likely to move from their state of employment to another state within the same census region. Sectoral and geographic migration rates tended to be greater for female pharmacists compared to male pharmacists. Overall, absolute change across census regions between 1995 and 2000 advantage the south and the west regions. For pharmacists, the strongest factors related to migration were non-occupational variables such as age, having dependents and level of educational attainment. The occupational variables that were significant motivators of migration from one state to another included number of new pharmacy graduates and the change in the pharmacist per population ratio at the state level. The study concluded that state level pharmacy labor market conditions impact migration decisions and are thus a viable focus of policy interventions.

Does switching the composition of jobs between low-paying and high-paying industries have important effects on wages in other sectors? In this paper, we build on search and bargaining theory to clarify a key general equilibrium channel through which changes in industrial composition could have substantial effects on wages in all sectors. In this class of models, wage determination takes the form of a social interaction problem and we illustrate how the implied sectoral linkages can be empirically explored using U.S. Census data. We find that sector-level wages interact as implied by the model and that the predicted general equilibrium effects are present and substantial. We interpret our results as highlighting the relevance of search and bargaining theory for understanding the determination of wages, and we argue that the results provide support for the view that industrial composition is important for understanding wage outcomes.

Numerous studies in social science exploit the fact that contemporary fi rst names can often signify the race of an individual. We extend this analysis in two important ways. First, we show that distinctively racialized names existed long before the Civil Rights Era. Using census returns, we document the existence of historical naming patterns for African American males in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that are similar to naming distinctions today but which use di fferent fi rst names in the naming conventions. Furthermore, the names we identify as being distinctively African American are found to be distinctively African American names in an independent data source. Second, we estimate the long-term consequences ofdistinctively racialized names. Using over two million death certifi cates from North Carolina from 1910 to 1975, we fi nd signifi cant intraracial di fferences in mortality for those who had distinctively African American names. Having an African American name is correlated withincreased longevity| an African American name added nearly one year of life relative to other African American males, on average. In elasticity terms, a distinctive African American name increased the lifespan by more than 12 percent. When we include naming conventions that extend to middle names the mortality diff erential increases. The result is robust to controlling for the general pattern of mortality over time, racial diff erences in the mortality pattern, and for both county of death and birth. We describe future research to be conducted with this data,including the eff ects of racialized names on marriage, occupation and migration.