Matching the magnitude of frictional wage dispersion has been difficult for most frictional search models of the labor market; only 1/30-1/4 of the frictional wage dispersion observed in the data can be accounted for using realistic calibrations. In this paper, I develop a general equilibrium model with ex ante homogeneous workers but heterogeneous firm productivities that accounts much better for the magnitude of frictional wage dispersion. The key ingredient that makes this model different from wage posting models is the bargaining and the wage determination structure. When a firm meets an employed worker, the new firm and the incumbent firm engage in Bertrand competition in the worker's share of the match surplus; consequently the current wage of the worker depends not only on the firm's productivity, but also on the history of previous offers. I demonstrate that the latter generates about 3/4 of the frictional wage dispersion, and that standard wage posting models cannot achieve similar magnitudes of frictional wage dispersion with the calibration used in the paper. In contrast to the structural estimation literature, the parametrization of the model is very parsimonious. The model is calibrated to match the worker flows, the standard deviation of log productivity and the replacement ratio, and it delivers frictional wage dispersion that matches the data very closely. * I would like to thank Per Krusell for advising me in this work. Marc Melitz, Nobu Kiyotaki, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg and Christopher Sims also deserve special recognition. I am grateful for comments from Alisdair McKay, Mikael Carlsson, Felipe Schwartzman, ´ Adám Zawadowski, and the seminar participants at the Sveriges Riksbank and the Macro Seminar at Princeton University. I would like to thank the Sveriges Riksbank for financial and research support during the summer of 2008. The customary disclaimer applies.

Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 established a federally subsidized program that helped cities clear areas of existing buildings for redevelopment, rehabilitate deteriorating structures, complete comprehensive city plans, and establish and enforce building codes. The program ended in 1974, but not before financing over 2,000 urban renewal projects and generating great controversy. We use an instrumental variable strategy to measure the effects of urban renewal funding on several city-level labormarket and housing market outcomes. The preliminary results indicate that the program had positive and economically significant effects on a number of outcomes. We caution that the results do not imply that urban renewal, as implemented under Title I, was an equitable or optimal approach to dealing with central-city problems.

The rise in consumer interest in local foods has been accompanied by increased participation of state departments of agriculture in promoting these products. While numerous promotion campaigns have been supported by various states, efforts evaluating their effectiveness have been limited and the results variable. Furthermore, campaign effectiveness has been typically measured ex-post, long after campaign investment decisions have been made. Many of these investment decisions could have been more efficient if the information about the potential impact of the campaign and its components was taken into account. The issue of efficient fund allocation becomes particularly important in the environment of decreasing state and federal funding. In this environment it becomes increasingly important to have a framework that will allow to measure and discern the overall impact of a campaign and its various components on the local economy and various economic agents. The goal of this project was to provide such a framework.

A large literature in sociology concerns the implications of immigrants participation in ethnicenclaves for their economic and social well-being. In particular, the enclave thesis speculatesthat immigrants benefit from working in ethnic enclaves. Previous research concerning theeffects of enclave participation for immigrants economic outcomes has come to mixedconclusions as to whether enclave effects are positive or negative. In this paper, we seek toextend and improve upon previous work by formulating testable hypotheses based on the enclavethesis and testing them with data from the 2003 New Immigrant Survey, employing bothresidence-based and workplace-based measures of the ethnic enclave. We examine the economicoutcomes of immigrants working in ethnic enclaves as compared to those working in themainstream economy. Our research yields minimal support for the enclave thesis. Our resultsfurther indicate that for some immigrant groups, ethnic enclave participation actually has anegative effect on economic outcomes.

This dissertation examines low-income college attendance and financial aid. The first chapter is an overview of the field and reviews relevant literature. The second chapter examines the growing income gradient in education. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, I observe an income gradient in academic achievement in 8th grade, and demonstrate that it grows over the course of the studentsí education. This paper sheds light on this phenomenon by examining five critical steps on the way to a degree (middle school achievement, academic preparation in high school, applying to college, enrolling in a four-year college, and graduating) and the junctions between them. For each junction, I decompose the overall income difference in the probability of success and find poor students are disadvantaged in three ways: they start off behind; when they successfully complete a step, they are less likely to proceed to the next step; and missing a step hurts their future chances more than it hurts those of higher-income students. I find the last factor explains a surprisingly large amount of the income gradient. Wealthy students do, in fact, falter on their way to college but they are more likely to graduate from college anyway. Another key result is, conditional on being academically prepared and applying to college, students across the income distribution enroll in four-year colleges at essentially the same rate. Thus, while income plays a large role in college enrollment, it is due almost entirely to differences in academic qualifications and application behavior. This suggests policies attempting to increase low-income college enrollment should focus earlier. The third chapter examines early commitment financial aid programs, a relatively new category of financial aid that typically enrolls low-income students while still in middle school, guaranteeing them financial assistance for college in exchange for fulfilling certain requirements. By removing uncertainty about college affordability for young students, these programs aim to increase high school preparation and ultimately college attendance. In this chapter, I examine the impact of Indiana's Twenty-first Century Scholars Program, the first public state-wide early commitment program, on high school retention, college enrollment, and Pell Grant receipt. Using a unique dataset with information from the State Student Assistance Commission of Indiana and the U.S. Department of Educationís Office of Postsecondary Education, I find positive effects of the early commitment program on all three outcomes. A 10 percentage point increase in program enrollment can be expected to increase high school retention by 2.1 to 2.7 percentage points and Pell Grant receipt by 0.9 to 3.0 percentage points. I find that the program also increased fouryear college enrollment by 2.2 to 2.4 percentage points. The results suggest that most 2 scholarships are awarded to students who would not have attended college in the absence of the program. Moreover, the program's effects on college enrollment are considerably larger than the expected effects of grant aid alone. These results suggest that the incentive structure of early commitment programs can increase educational attainment among lower-income students.

This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on wage inequality and education policy. Essay 1 considers growth in the variance of wages. Prior work has documented that the college premium plays a major role in explaining wage variance growth. This essay examines the extent to which this role can be attributed to an increase in the dispersion of occupation-specific returns to post-secondary education. Using the variance components approach and CPS data between 1979-1981 and 2003-2005, the essay shows that the variation in the college premium across occupations has increased over time, and this variation expansion explains about five percent of the growth in wage variance across the two periods. By dividing the sample workforce into professional and nonprofessional groups, the results suggest that the increased variation in the return to post-secondary education particularly caused the wage gap between the professional and non-professional workers to increase.Essay 2 applies quantile regression methodology to the study of the determinants of the wage distribution among natives and immigrants in the U.S., using PUMS from 1990 and 2000, and ACS from 2006. Among other findings, the immigrant/native wage gap is concentrated at the lower end to the median of the wage distribution, and the primary source of the wage gap is the relative lack of labor market skills among immigrants. A cross-time comparison shows that the recent immigrant/native wage gap after controlling for skill variables first decreased from 1990 to 2000 and then expanded from 2000 to 2006. The growth is concentrated at the two ends of the wage distribution, and the reason for growth is that the recent immigrants in 2006 are younger and thus have less market experience than their counterparts of 1990. Essay 3 is coauthored with Dr. Blankenau. We analyze the impact of changes in college admission standards on the skilled labor distribution, skilled firm distribution, and the match of skilled labor with skilled firms. We propose a model of schooling with heterogeneous labor and firms, in which firms decisions in creating skilled jobs are conditioned on the supply of skilled labor. The model shows that lowering standards without providing incentives to acquire skills does not necessarily motivate accumulation of human capital or expansion of skilled industry. Lower standards tend to create a mismatch of educated labor with unskilled positions. In some specifications, lower standards can lower firms willingness to create skilled positions, leaving more skilled workers underemployed.

Cities, economic development, and the role of place-based polices: Lessons for Ap-palachia. University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series, DP2009-12. Retrieved [Date] from Abstract This paper surveys economic research on the association between economic development and urban areas, links this summary to some important trends in economic outcomes in Appalachia in recent decades, highlights areas in need of future research on the role of urban areas as engines of economic development in Appalachia, and discusses what types of place-based policies might be effective to promote economic growth and development in the Appalachian region.

Occupations with a greater share of females pay less than, those with a lower share, controlling for education, and skill. This association is explained by two dominant views: devaluation and queuing. The former views the pay offered in an, occupation to affect its female proportion, due to employers' preference for men- a gendered labor queue. The latter argues that the proportion of females in an occupation affects pay, owing to devaluation of work done by women. Only a few past studies used longitudinal data, which is needed to test the theories. We use fixed-effects models, thus controlling for stable characteristics of occupations, and U.S. Census data from 1950 through 2000. We find substantial evidence for the devaluation view, but only scant evidence for the queuing view.

This paper examines the earnings and education levels of individuals in financial industry from1962 to 2008 and as a whole. I have further divided the financial industry into two categories:value-adding and rent-seeking according to their job functions. IMPUS-CPS data is employed toconduct both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Results have shown that financial industry,particularly the rent-seeking sector is better paid and better educated. In addition, the valueaddingsector has limited effect on improving the productivity of the entire economy while therent-seeking sector is largely depending on the value-adding sector. The conclusion is that therent-seeking sector is overpaid and should be taxed accordingly. The value-adding sector needsfurther study on the weights of its two opposite impacts.

Today, an increasing number of people regularly switch from ethnicityto ethnicity in normal discourse, in an attempt to maximize theireconomic and political interests. This paper focuses specifically onethnic flexibility among Latina/os in New York City. Drawing onethnographic, linguistic, and social network data we explore howLatina/os in NYC negotiate between multiple ethnic identities ineveryday contexts. Through language and dialect switches, accents,and even calculated silence the Latinos in our research negotiatedNYCs multi-level system of categorization. We hope to show that noone-to-one relationship exists between subjective feelings of ethnicbelongingness and the use of ethnic markers. Ethnic markers,particularly language-related ones, are manipulated in a number ofcreative ways by members and non-members alike, pushing the limitsof what constitutes ethnic group membership and challenging notionsof ethnic authenticity.

Background: Many studies have found that earlier drinking initiation predicts higher risk of later alcohol and substance use problems, but the causal relationship between age of initiation and later risk of substance use disorder remains unknown. Method: We use a "natural experiment" study design to compare the 12-month prevalence of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, alcohol and substance use disorders among adult subjects exposed to different minimum legal drinking age laws minimum legal drinking age in the 1970s and 1980s. The sample pools 33,869 respondents born in the United States 1948 to 1970, drawn from 2 nationally representative cross-sectional surveys: the 1991 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiological Survey (NLAES) and the 2001 National Epidemiological Study of Alcohol and Related Conditions. Analyses control for state and birth year fixed effects, age at assessment, alcohol taxes, and other demographic and social background factors. Results: Adults who had been legally allowed to purchase alcohol before age 21 were more likely to meet criteria for an alcohol use disorder [odds ratio (OR) 1.31, 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) 1.15 to 1.46, p < 0.0001] or another drug use disorder (OR 1.70, 95% CI 1.19 to 2.44, p = 0.003) within the past-year, even among subjects in their 40s and 50s. There were no significant differences in effect estimates by respondent gender, black or Hispanic ethnicity, age, birth cohort, or self-reported age of initiation of regular drinking; furthermore, the effect estimates were little changed by inclusion of age of initiation as a potential mediating variable in the multiple regression models. Conclusion: Exposure to a lower minimum legal purchase age was associated with a significantly higher risk of a past-year alcohol or other substance use disorder, even among respondents in their 40s or 50s. However, this association does not seem to be explained by age of initiation of drinking, per se. Instead, it seems plausible that frequency or intensity of drinking in late adolescence may have long-term effects on adult substance use patterns.

Executive Summary: In this report we examine the quality of the jobs in the United States gaming industry in order toassess the potential impact of establishing up to three destination casinos in the Commonwealthof Massachusetts. We focus our analysis on workers without a college education since nearlyninety percent of gaming workers have less than a college degree. In addition, we analyzeenabling legislation in five states that have legalized gaming and compare them to the legislationproposed in Massachusetts in 2007.

This dissertation focuses on the living arrangements of multi-generational households among ten biggest immigrant groups in the United States. Specifically, it examines whether the husbands or the wifes older parents were more likely to be present. Coresidence patterns were taken as a proxy that reflected relative decision-making power in the family. A number of factors hypothesized to be associated with the outcome were examined to explore the effect of immigration on gender role ideology and gender relations in the post-1965 immigrant family. More than 102,000 multi-generational households from the 2000 U.S. Census were included in the analyses. Results suggested that while there were positive signs for womens increasing status and relative decision-making power, the influence of original sending culture where immigrants have come from proved to be strong and persistent. Those from more patriarchal sending cultures, represented by India, Korea, and China, were more likely to have the husbands parents co-residing; while those from less patriarchal sending cultures, represented by Jamaica, Cuba, and El Salvador, were more likely to have the wifes parents present in the household. These findings illustrate the complex nature of gender relations in the immigrant family whereby the effect of assimilation is found in some domains, while the influence of sending culture is enduring or even reinforced in other domains. Results of this research contribute to the better understanding of the diversity of changes in gender relations that accompany immigration.

I describe and explore the coresidence of adult children with their parents. Coresidence is a common phenomenon among American families. Yet our understanding of this phenomenon is often fraught with misunderstanding and stereotyping. Most of these stereotypes regard the adult children in coresident relationships as immature, unemployed, and lazy. Guided by the life course perspective and previous research, I use a contemporary, large, nationally representative sample of coresiding children to explore coresidency. I find the occurrence of coresidence and the characteristics of coresiders to vary across age cohorts for both adult child and parent. Marital status, race and ethnicity, foreign birth, educational attainment, disability, employment and income, as well as household living conditions are also explored in relation to adult children and their parents

Age based school entry laws force parents and educators to consider an important trade-off: Though students who are the youngest in their school cohort typically have poorer academic performance, on average, they have slightly higher educational attainment. In this paper we document that for a large cohort of California and Texas natives the school entry laws increased educational attainment of students who enter school early, but also lowered their academic performance while in school. However, we find no evidence that the age at which children enter school effects job market outcomes, such as wages or the probability of employment. This suggests that the net effect on adult labor market outcomes of the increased educational attainment and poorer academic performance is close to zero.

I use an instrumental-variables identification strategy and historical data from the United States to estimate the long-term economic impact of in utero and postnatal exposure to malaria. My research design matches adults in the 1960 Decennial Census to the malaria death rate in their respective state and year of birth. To address potential omitted variables bias and measurement-error bias, I use variation in "malaria-ideal" temperaturesto instrument for malaria exposure. My estimates indicate that in utero and postnatal exposure to malaria led to considerably lower levels of educational attainment and higher rates of poverty later in life.

Increasing numbers of children born to cohabiting parents underscores the need for continued consideration of the place of cohabitation in the kinship system. We use data from the American Time Use Survey (2003 – 2007) to examine how the presence of children affects the time married and cohabiting individuals ages 25 to 59 (N=30,981) spend with non-residential family members. We find that the presence of children moderates the relationship between marital status and spending time with non-residential family members. Cohabiters with children are more likely than those married with children to interact with non-residential family members. The results demonstrate greater similarities of married and cohabiting couples with children than without children and underscore the complexity of relationships with non-residential family members.

The Tiebout-Hamilton model focuses on benefit taxation in homogeneous communities. It is well known that local heterogeneity implies the likelihood of local redistribution. Yet there are no studies of the extent of such transfers. This paper provides evidence that local redistribution in property-tax based suburban schools is substantial (amounting to $2.3 billion for Chicago suburban districts). Most of those transfers flow not from high to low income households, but rather from households with no children in local school systems to households with children in those systems. We show that capitalization offsets little if any of these education contributions.

Los movimientos de la población de Sudamérica hacia fuera de la Región han aumentado desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX, pero durante la última década no solamente aceleran su ritmo de crecimiento sino que se acentúan al menos dos rasgos a destacar. Aunque el país de destino dominante continúa siendo Estados Unidos, emergen otros alternativos, como España, otros países europeos y Japón en el caso de Brasil y del Perú. La segunda característica, compartida por la mayoría de los países, es la creciente diversificación social del universo de migrantes. En este contexto, la presente investigación pretende acercarse a varios interrogantes sobre los cambios más recientes en las tendencias y características de la emigración sudamericana a Estados Unidos y a España. Con un enfoque comparativo, se procura corroborar si efectivamente se está consolidando un nuevo sistema migratorio hacia España y en qué medida comparten este patrón todos los países de América del Sur; si este proceso va acompañado con una creciente feminización y cuáles son las diferencias en el perfil sociodemográfico y migratorio de acuerdo al origen y al destino. Finalmente, se particulariza en el caso de los argentinos, tanto para aproximarse a interrogantes sobre si hay cierta selectividad social asociada con el destino, como para comparar sus posibilidades de acceso y modalidades de inserción en los respectivos mercados de trabajo. La información más reciente indica que durante los primeros años del milenio se fue consolidando un nuevo sistema migratorio sur-norte, desde Sudamérica hacia Europa, fundamentalmente a España; que existe una cierta selectividad reflejada en el nivel de educación asociada con el destino elegido, y que la antigüedad migratoria juega un papel importante para favorecer la incorporación al mundo del trabajo y modalidades de inserción más diversificadas y acordes con la educación de los migrantes.