This article examines the changing structure of human capital in U.S. metropolitan regions from 1980 to 2000. Data are drawn from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Intensive empirical investigation leads to three main conclusions. First, forms of human capital in the United States are becoming more oriented to labor tasks that call for cognitive-cultural skills. Second, cognitive-cultural skills are accumulating most intensively in large metropolitan areas. Third, physical or practical forms of human capital are increasingly being relegated to smaller metropolitan areas. That said, important residues of human capital, focused on physical or practical tasks, remain a durable element of the economies of large metropolitan areas. I offer a brief theoretical explanation of these results.

In this paper, we will show an example of using a Bayesian estimation method for a simultaneous demand and supply model for market-level data which was proposed by Yonetani et al. (2010). To show the example, we also use data from the U.S. automobile market. The method quantitatively investigates consumers’ preference in a differentiated product market. The method also has the following three features as the past research had (Berry, 1994; Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes, 1995 (henceforth, BLP, 1995); Sudhir, 2001; Petrin, 2002; Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes, 2004 (henceforth, BLP, 2004); Myojo, 2007; Romeo, 2007; Jiang et al., 2008; Musalem et al., 2009; Myojo and Kanazawa, 2010). First, the method does not require consumer-level purchase incidence data but market-level sales volume data. In some markets, researchers can access to the latter . . .

Conceptions of adulthood have changed dramatically in recent decades. Despite such changes, however, the notion that young people will eventually settle down and desist from delinquent behaviors is remarkably persistent. This article unites life course criminology with classic work on age norms and role behavior to contend that people who persist in delinquency will be less likely to view themselvesas adults and less likely to achieve the standard work andfamily markers of adulthood than others their age. Analysis of longitudinal survey data and intensive interview data supports this proposition, with both arrest and self-reported crime blocking the passage to adult status. The authors conclude that settling down or desisting from delinquency is an important part of the package ofrole behaviors that define adulthood in the contemporary United States.

This paper proposes a new approach to modeling heterogeneous human capital using the data from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The key feature of the model is that it conceives of an occupation as a bundle of tasks, departs from the Roy model in which occupations are treated as distinct categories. The proposed approach has advantages in that it can accommodate many occupations without computational burden and provides a clear interpretation as to how and why skills are differently rewarded across different occupations. The model is structurally estimated by the Kalman filter using the NLSY79.

In the context of certain dynamic models, it is possible to infer the elasticity of labor supply to the firm from the elasticity of the quit rate with respect to the wage. Using this property, we estimate the average labor supply elasticity to public school districts in Missouri. We leverage the plausibly exogenous variation in prenegotiated district salary schedules to instrument for actual salary. These estimates imply a labor supply elasticity of about 3.7, suggesting that school districts possess significant market power. The presence of monopsony power in this teacher labor market may be partially explained by its institutional features.

We discover and document errors in public use microdata samples ("PUMS files") of the 2000 Census, the 2003-2006 American Community Survey, and the 2004-2009 Current Population Survey. For women and men ages 65 and older, age- and sex-specific population estimates generated from the PUMS files differ by as much as 15% from counts in published data tables. Moreover, an analysis of labor force participation and marriage rates suggests the PUMS samples are not representative of the population at individual ages for those ages 65 and over. PUMS files substantially underestimate labor force participation of those near retirement ages and overestimate labor force participation rates of those at older ages. These problems were an unintentional by-product of the misapplication of a newer generation of disclosure avoidance procedures carried out on the data. The resulting errors in the public use data could significantly impact studies of people ages 65 and older, particularly analyses of variables that are expected to change by age.

About 30 percent of men born between 1940 and 1957 are veterans. Despite this, there are relatively few studies on military service in the existing economic literature. Of those that do exist, almost all are focused on earnings. This dissertation extends the existing literature by investigating non-monetary impacts of active duty service: job quality and disability. Also, I look at the effects of draft avoidance behavior on children born during the height of the Vietnam War draft. I begin the dissertation with an introduction in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 covers earnings and job quality of Vietnam Veterans. Chapter 3 investigates the long-term impact of Vietnam War military service on disability. The fourth chapter examines the effect of draft avoidance behaviors on the children born during the Vietnam War draft. I conclude the dissertation with Chapter 5 and summarize the findings. My results indicate that black veterans of the Vietnam War have higher earnings, better jobs, and are more likely to be disabled than their non-veteran counterparts. White Vietnam War veterans have no difference in earnings or job quality and while they are more likely to be disabled, the magnitude is small relative to that found for black veterans. The results in chapter 4 show there were negative effects on children caused by draft avoidance behavior. All the results show that blacks and whites were affected differently by the Vietnam War and the draft.

Using panel data on the Danish population, we estimated the revealed preferences of scientists and engineers for the places in which they choose to work. Our results indicate that these technical workers exhibit substantial sensitivity to differences in wages but that they have even stronger preferences for living close to family and friends. The magnitude of these preferences, moreover, suggests that the greater geographic mobility of scientists and engineers, relative to the population as a whole, stems from more pronounced variation across regions in the wages that they can expect. These results remain robust to estimation on a sample of individuals who must select new places of work for reasons unrelated to their preferencesthose who had been employed at establishments that discontinued operations.Keywords: Denmark; Location choice; Revealed preferencesJEL classification codes: J6; R2; R3

Using data from the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census from 2000 to 2007, we analyze the occupational distribution of Latino immigrants and their associated prestige ranking by degree status in comparison with U.S.-born Latinos. We find dramatic gaps in the occupational distribution and prestige rankings among Latinos with similar postsecondary attainment levels by citizenship status.

This paper constructs and estimates a structural dynamic model of occupational choice in which all occupations are characterized in a skill requirement space using data from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and the NLSY79. This skill requirement space approach has its merit in computational simplicity as well as ease of interpretation: it allows the model to include hundreds of occupations at the three-digit census classification level without a large number of parameters. Parameter estimates indicate that wages grow with the skill requirements of an occupation and that educated and experienced individuals are better rewarded in a cognitive and interpersonal skill demanding occupation. They also suggest that ignoring self-selection into occupations and individual heterogeneity may result in counter-intuitive and biased estimates of the returns to skill requirements.

This paper develops a model of comparative advantage in labor markets in which workers with heterogeneous skills choose the occupations that best use those skills. Application to immigration suggests that the occupational differences between U.S. natives and immigrants arise from human capital differences. This principle makes it possible to estimate the human capital endowments of immigrants along five dimensions, including cognitive ability and physical skills, which are difficult to measure directly. Counterfactual simulations describe the distributional implications of immigration for native wages.

We discover and document errors in public use microdata samples ("PUMS files") of the 2000 Census, the 2003-2006 American Community Survey, and the 2004-2009 Current Population Survey. For women and men ages 65 and older, age- and sex-specific population estimates generated from the PUMS files differ by as much as 15% from counts in published data tables. Moreover, an analysis of labor force participation and marriage rates suggest the PUMS samples are not representative of the population at individual ages for those ages 65 and over. PUMS files substantially underestimate labor force participation of those near retirement ages and overestimate labor force participation rates of those at older ages. These problems were an unintentional by-product of the misapplication of a newer generation of disclosure avoidance procedures carried out on the data. The resulting errors in the public use data could significantly impact studies of people ages 65 and older, particularly analyses of variables that are expected to change by age.

This paper tests the strength and persistence of cultural influences on entrepreneurship over the best part of a century. Comparison of marginal self-employment propensities of US immigrant groups in 1910 and 2000 suggests a number of stable customary stimuli, deduced from national origins. In accordance with the ‘cultural critique’, the English were persistently prone to less entrepreneurship than other US immigrant groups, once controls for entrepreneurship influences are included. The Dutch were consistently about averagely entrepreneurial, not as precocious as might be expected if the predominant Protestant religion encouraged entrepreneurship. Conversely Weber’s identification of nineteenth century Catholic culture as inimical to economic development is not born out in the twentieth century by the sustained entrepreneurship of Cubans and Italians in the United States. The strongest entrepreneurial cultures were exhibited by those originating from the Middle East, Greece and Turkey, though some historical interpretation is necessary to establish who these people were. The inference from these patterns is that entrepreneurial culture must be of minor significance for economic development compared with institutional influences.

This research aims to develop a valid and consistent measure for socioeconomic status at the household level using census microdata available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series- International (IPUMS-I), the world's largest census database. First, we use principal component analysis to compute a wealth index based on housing characteristics and asset ownership. The validation strategies include comparing our proposed index with the widely used Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) wealth indices and then verifying the predictive power of our index on education enrollment and attendance. Moreover, we attempt to identify general conditions necessary to produce an internally consistent asset index based on census microdata. Our results show a consistently positive effect of the wealth index on education outcomes across four census samples (Peru 1993, South Africa 1996, Brazil 2000, and Colombia 2005). Furthermore, graphical analysis of kernel distributions suggests our measure is comparable to that of the DHS. Finally, through a stepwise elimination procedure, we find evidence supporting the internal consistency of the census asset index. As an important practical implication of results, we are able to propose a methodology to determine which assets are more important in determining household socioeconomic status.

This dissertation consists of two essays studying macroeconomics questions about labor markets. The research in this document is separated into chapters that study distinct features of aggregate labor market outcomes.The first essay documents the change in behavior of fertility rate at business cycle frequencies in the United States between the 1970s and 1990s and shows how the cyclical and secular properties of fertility can be used to distinguish among several proposed theories that account for the rise in labor force participation of married mothers. The model, in which households make fertility, female labor force participation and asset accumulation decisions, is estimated using data for the 1960s and 1970s. The model shows how fertility and womens labor participation decisions are related and replicates countercyclical fertility. The changes in the determinants of female labor supply are introduced into themodel and the implications for female labor force participation and properties of fertility are analyzed.The second essay (co-authored with Marcus Hagedorn and Iourii Manovskii) studies the relation between taxes and the unemployment rate using the Mortensen and Pissarides search and matching equilibrium theory of unemployment. The proposed quantitative model with ex-ante worker skill heterogeneity and two technology shocks is consistent with a strong response of labor market variables to cyclical fluctuations in productivity and a relatively weak response to changes in tax rates. The model also matches the properties of group-specific labor market variables. The key to achieve these results is endogenous response of aggregate and group-specific productivities.

We discover and document errors in public use microdata samples ("PUMS files") of the 2000 Census, the 2003-2006 American Community Survey, and the 2004-2009 Current Population Survey. For women and men ages 65 and older, age- and sex-specific population estimates generated from the PUMS files differ by as much as 15% from counts in published data tables. Moreover, an analysis of labor force participation and marriage rates suggests the PUMS samples are not representative of the population at individual ages for those ages 65 and over. PUMS files substantially underestimate labor force participation of those near retirement ages and overestimate labor force participation rates of those at older ages. These problems were an unintentional by-product of the misapplication of a newer generation of disclosure avoidance procedures carried out on the data. The resulting errors in the public use data could significantly impact studies of people ages 65 and older, particularly analyses of variables that are expected to change by age.

My dissertation consists of two independent empirical microeconomics studies in development economics. Though studying di§erent interventions, they share the same methodology, which estimates the impact of a nationwide policy by contrasting trends over time between areas that are likely to have beneÖted di§erently from the policy. In the Örst essay, I estimate the economic beneÖts of the introduction of iodized salt in the United States in 1924. Using data from the decennial censuses of the United States and exploiting geographic variation in iodine deÖciency before 1924, as proxied by the prevalence of goiter, I Önd that the introduction of iodized salt led to improvements in schooling among boys and greater income gains among men. No impact is found for females. Many of the estimated beneÖts are attributable to postnatal exposure to iodized salt, further demonstrating the importance of iodine supplements, which had previously been shown only in utero. The estimated . . .

The age of parents at the birth of their children may have profound implications for the subsequent lifecourse of parents, the functioning of the family, and for child health and well-being. Using historicalcensus data from the Integrated Public Use Micro Series, this research explore three dimensions ofparental age: chronological age (Martin et al. 2009), social age (Mare and Tzeng 1989; Eliason et al.2009), and relationship age (Bachu 1999) from the early 1900s until 2008. Little is known about longtermhistorical shifts in these dimensions of age, and to our knowledge, there has been no systematicinvestigation of their interdependence. This research addresses the transformation of family life byinvestigating historical change in three dimensions of parental age and the ways in which thedimensions are woven together.

Racial diversity and macroeconomic productivity across US states and cities, Regional Studies. Racial diversity in the USA continues to rise. Past analyses have argued that diversity can have both positive and negative consequences. The overall macroeconomic effects of diversity within the USA require further examination. This paper exploits variation across US regions from 1980 to 2000 to determine whether racial heterogeneity creates gains or losses for states and cities. Fixed-effects analysis indicates that diversity enhances the productivity of cities. Evidence at the state level is more ambiguous, as significant results only appear in random-effects specifications.

Much of the literature on economic stress focuses on outcomes. This study assessed the antecedents that precede employee perceptions of economic strain. A multilevel framework of economic antecedents was proposed. The framework included objective indicators of the macroeconomic context as well as individual-level objective and subjective economic antecedents. It was hypothesized that antecedents within each of these categories of economic stress can fall into one of two dimensions: employment- or finance-related. Indicators of the macroeconomic context were gathered from the American Community Survey (ACS). Over 2,000 union employees of a large U.S. Midwestern retail chain provided individual employee-level economic information and economic stress perceptions. A confirmatory factor analysis examined the fit of the hypothesized framework of economic antecedents. Distinct employment- and finance-related factors were found at both the macroeconomic and individual level. The individual-level economic antecedent factors were found to be predictive of individual economic stress perceptions. Individual employment-related factor, finance-related factor, and subjective ratings of job insecurity were related to all three dimensions of economic stress: financial strain, income inadequacy for wants, and income inadequacy for needs. No relationship between the macroeconomic factors and economic stress perceptions was found. Implications of the findings and . . .