I take advantage of an interesting policy experiment the 1980 U.S. conferral of MostFavored Nation (MFN) status to China to estimate the effect of increased imports from a lessdeveloped country on the U.S. manufacturing wage structure. Previous empirical studies findthat trade has little or no effect on wages in the U.S. However, they all rely on the basic versionof the factor proportions framework (Heckscher-Ohlin) and consequently only expect to findtrade-related changes across industries (e.g. Berman, Bound, and Griliches, 1994). In contrast, Iuse this policy experiment to provide evidence that trade raises the demand for skill and the skillpremium within U.S. manufacturing industries. My findings are consistent with Schott (2004),who reports that U.S. trade data supports factor proportions specialization within, as opposed toacross, industries.

NEOLIBERALISM'S TRIUMPH?

This paper analyses impacts of immigration on individual wages. The empirical analysis is based on the British Labour Force Survey from 1993 to 2005. In addition to mean regression methods, this paper applies a semi-parametric procedure to measure covariates at quantiles of the wage distribution. Results indicate the substitutability of immigrant workers depends on the combination of education and experience attained. Our main finding is university educated immigrants with the least experience expand wages of all UK-born workers. We also find positive wage impacts between workers with the same skill sets and these effects are stronger for immigrants than natives.

This dissertation uses data from the 2006 American Community Survey and Decennial Census 2000 to analyze trends and determinants of poverty among Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in the Southwestern United States. The chapters include: (1) an Introduction; (2) a Literature Review with sub-sections on many issues related to these populations; (3) a discussion of Data and Methods including a section on the Development of a Proxy Variable for Undocumented Status; (4) Results for Mexican Americans (Individual Level); (5) Results for Mexican Immigrants (Individual Level); (6) Multilevel Results; and (7) Conclusions and Future Research Directions. The introduction and literature review will provide a background and overview of the research, as well as the analysis of poverty at the individual and contextual level (i.e. the Super-PUMA level). Data and methods are then discussed relative to all the analyses to be undertaken in the dissertation. In addition, specific emphasis in this chapter will be placed on the methodology pertaining to the development of the undocumented proxy variable. In Chapter IV data are analyzed at the individual level through the use of logistic regression. Special attention is placed on variables pertaining to ethnicity, citizenship status, and years spent in the US, among others, in order to predict the likelihood of Mexican Americans being in extreme poverty, one hundred percent poverty, and low-income. The focus is then narrowed in Chapter V to Mexican immigrants with special attention given to the effect on poverty of undocumented status. In Chapter VI, independent variables at the contextual level are used to predict poverty in conjunction with those used at the individual level; these include the percentage of persons in poverty, concentration of Mexican immigrants, and the relative presence of various industries. The findings confirm that both individual level and contextual level predictors are key in the determination of poverty for Mexican Americans and immigrants. In the conclusion, discussion is given to the fact that many studies have focused on the individual level predictors of poverty; this research goes one step further in that it examines poverty not only with respect to individual predictors, but also group level variables.

Knowledge is quite limited about the extent and social correlates of marital fertility decline for the United States in the early part of the nineteenth century. Manuscripts from the New York State census of 1865 indicate a very slow decline in marital fertility during the initial decades of the nineteenth century and more rapid decline as the Civil War approached. Little evidence of fertility control within marriage is found for the very oldest women in the sample, but analysis of parity progression ratios indicates that some control had emerged by the midpoint of the nineteenth century. Fertility decline was most evident in the urban, more economically developed areas, but our data also indicate that the limited availability of agricultural land may have affected the transition. While a marital fertility transition occurred in nineteenth-century New York, many couples in various geographic areas and social strata continued to have quite high levels of fertility, indicating difficulties that were probably faced in controlling reproduction.

This report examines inequality in hourly labor earnings for a set of nearly 300 U.S. metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2006. On the whole, the data indicate that the dramatic rise in inequality seen in the United States between 1980 and 2000 continued through 2006. Some of the primary findings can be summarized as follows: 1. Overall inequality in the United States as a whole continued to expand. Between 2000 and 2006, the ratio of the 90th percentile of the distribution of hourly earnings to the 10th percentile increased from 5.2 to 5.7. 2. Workers with high levels of education saw their wages rise faster than workers with less formal schooling. In 2000, individuals with a bachelor’s degree were paid approximately 50 percent more, on average, than a high school graduate, whereas workers with a master’s, doctoral or professional degree were paid 69 percent more. By 2006, these premia had risen to, respectively, 54 percent and 78 percent. 3. The widening of the earnings scale also was driven by increasing differences in the labor incomes of workers with similar observable characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race, education). Widening “residual” inequality accounted for as much as half of the rise in the overall degree of dispersion in the wage distribution between 2000 and 2006. 4. Among four metropolitan areas within the Eighth Federal Reserve District—Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis and St. Louis—all experienced rising inequality during this period. While the increases in Little Rock, Memphis and St. Louis mimicked that of the nation as a whole, Louisville’s increase was somewhat smaller because . . .

We study the steady state of an overlapping generations economy where singles search for spouses. In our model economy men and women live for many years and they differ in their fecundity, in their earnings, and in their survival probabilities. These three features are age-dependent and deterministic. Singles meet at random. They propose when the expected value of their current match exceeds that of remaining single. If both partners propose, the meeting ends up in a marriage. Marriages last until death does them apart, widows and widowers never remarry, and people make no other economic decisions whatsoever. In our model economy people marry because they value companionship, bearing children, and sharing their income with their spouses. The matching function depends on the single sex-ratios which are endogenous. Our model economy has only two free parameters: the search friction and the utility share of bearing children. We choose their values to match the median ages of first-time brides and grooms. We show that modeling the marriage decision in this simple way is sufficient to account for the age distributions of ever and never married men and women, for the probabilities of marrying a younger bride and a younger groom, and for the age distributions of first births observed in the United States in the year 2000. The previous literature on this topic claims that marriage is a waiting game in which women are choosier than men, and old and rich pretenders outbid the young and poor ones in their competition for fecund women. In this article we tell a different story. We show that their shorter biological clocks make women uniformly less choosy than men of the same age. This turns marriage into a rushing game in which women are willing to marry older men because delaying marriage is too costly for women. Our theory predicts that most of the gender age difference at first marriage will persist even if the gender wage-gap disappears. It also predicts that the advances in the reproductive technologies will play a large role in reducing the age difference at first marriage.

During the economic boom of the 1940s, earnings inequality between skilled and unskilled workers narrowed substantially. I first document the rate of wage compression varied by age. Demand factors played crucial roles in the age-differential compression of the wage structure, while institutional factors played little role. The increase in demand in manufacturing during WWII is associated with higher earnings of middle-skilled workers among the young, and the post-war construction boom boosted demand for workers in low-skilled occupations of all ages. Key to variations in compression by age is the differences in substitutability between workers of different ages by skill groups. Among low-skilled workers, young and old workers are highly substitutable, and a high demand for young workers leads to an increase in demand for older workers. For high-skilled workers, however, the substitutability between workers of different ages is low and an increase in demand for young workers does not necessarily translate into high demand for older workers. The paper shows that even an extremely large aggregate shock transmits through the labor market via cohort effects because of imperfect substitutability of workers of different ages.

Household financial market participation affects asset prices and household welfare. Yet, our understanding of this decision is limited. Using an instrumental variables strategy and dataset new to this literature, we provide the first precise, causal estimates of the effects of education on financial market participation. We find a large effect, even controlling for income. Examining mechanisms, we demonstrate that cognitive ability increases participation; however, and in contrast to previous research, financial literacy education does not affect decisions. We conclude by discussing how education may affect decision-making through: personality, borrowing behavior, discount rates, risk-aversion, and the influence of employers and neighbors.

Do households move for jobs or fun, and where do they go when they move? We address these questions using the 19702000 US Census. Based on a panel of quality of life and business environment measures, households prefer MSAs in warm coastal areas and non-metropolitan locations, while firms prefer large, growing cities. In addition, cities with improving business environments acquire increasing shares of workers, especially workers with high levels of human capital; cities with improving consumer amenities become relatively more populated by retirees.Further analysis of individual level migration decisions indicates that regardless of marital status, young, highly educated households tend to move towards places with higher quality business environments. This tendency is especially pronounced among highly educated couples who are more subject to job market co-location problems. In contrast, regardless of education, couples near retirement tend to move away from places with favorable business environments and towards places with highly valued consumer amenities. These patterns help explain why areas unattractive to both households and business have struggled, as with upstate New York, while the sun-belt and other regions are thriving.

This paper estimates the effects of the G.I. Bill on homeownership of veterans returning from WWII. The estimation strategy focuses on between-cohort differences in military service. I take advantage of the sharp decline in service among men who were born between 1927 and 1929. In particular, when the Selective Service Act prohibited voluntary enlistment in the last months of WWII, the cohorts of men born between January 1927 and March 31, 1929 were most severely affected. As the war progressed, birth date chronology became the primary determinant of the probability of military service, and those who were born after the second quarter of 1929 were no longer eligible to serve in WWII. I use birth quarter cohort dummies as an instrument for veteran status to eliminate selection bias. I find that the G.I. Bill had a significant impact on increasing homeownership of veterans compared to otherwise similar non-veterans among whites, while its effects on African Americans were negligible. The G.I. Bill, thus, contributed to widening the racial gap in homeownership in the post-war period. However, the advantage in homeownership that white veterans enjoyed vis--vis non-veterans in 1960 disappeared by 1980 when the cohorts in question have turned 50, while black veterans improved their homeownership status compared to nonveterans tremendously. VA home loan guarantees relax liquidity constraints of veterans; the beneficial effects of the G.I. Bill seem to allow potential homeowners to purchase a home at an early stage in life. For African-American veterans, however, VA home loan guarantees enabled them to become homeowners, which would otherwise have been difficult. JEL Classification Codes: R21, N32 Keywords: G.I. Bill, homeownership, home value, regression discontinuity design

통계자료가 적시적지에 활용될 수 있도록 그 수요에 올바르게 대응 하여 제공하는 것은 정확한 통계를 생산해 내는 것만큼이나 중요한 일이 다. 통계자료는 일반적으로 원시자료(Raw data), 마이크로데이터(Microdata), 그리고 매크로데이터(Macrodata)로 구분된다. 통계청 MDSS(Microdata Service System)의 용어 정의에 따르면, 원시자료(Raw data)는 입력 첫 단 계의 자료로서 입력오류나 조사오류 등이 걸러지기 이전 단계의 자료를 말하며, 마이크로데이터(Microdata)는 오류를 수정한 자료로서 통계표 작성 등 데이터 가공의 바탕이 되는 자료를 의미한다. 또한 매크로데이 터(Macrodata)는 마이크로데이터를 임의의 기준에 따라 집계한 자료를 지칭하는데, 집계의 정도에 따라 세분된 자료부터 통합된 자료까지 다 양하게 제공된다.

The concept of food security has received significant public attention in recent years. Nearly 11% ofall U.S. households manifest some level of food insecurity, with low-income minority householdsshouldering a disproportionately large share. One of the primary causes of food insecurity in lowincomeareas is inaccessibility to full service supermarkets. This study examines whether (or the extentto which) there are economic reasons for the lack of supermarkets in distressed urban areas, such aslocation-dependent expense differences between urban and suburban locations. We also explore howvarious financing strategies help to mitigate those expense differences. Finally, we assess some of theimpacts of supermarket development in urban and other underserved places.Findings suggest that 1) the addition of a supermarket in an underserved area offers residents a bettervariety of healthy food and enhances consumer choice; 2) urban supermarket employees tend to residein distressed areas within close proximity to their store; 3) these employees obtain jobs with a positivewage trajectory and at wage levels comparable to their industry peers; 4) supermarket customers residein close proximity to the stores at which they shop; 5) supermarkets may serve as retail employmentanchors, although this finding remains ambiguous; and 6) supermarkets reduce leakage of food retailexpenditures, resulting in a net increase in employment for the local communities. We believe thesefindings substantiate the role that the CDFIs can play in this sector, and that our analysis offers lessonsto be learned about various approaches to financing supermarket development.

Social capital has attracted increasing attention in recent years. We use county-level and individual survey data to study how Wal-Mart affects social capital. Estimates usingseveral proxies for social capitalsuch as club membership, religious activity, time with friends, and other measuresdo not support the thesis that Wal-Mart destroys communities by reducing social capital. We measure exposure toWal-Mart two ways:Wal-Marts per 10,000 residents and Wal-Marts per 10,000 residents aggregated over the years since 1979 to capture a more cumulative Wal-Mart Effect.We find that the coefficients onWal-Marts presence are statistically insignificant in most specifications.

This paper tries to understand the underlying causes of the rapid increase in obesity rates over recent decades. In particular, we propose a dynamic general equilibrium model to derive the quantitative implications of a decline in the relative (monetary and time) cost of food prepared away from home on the caloric intake of the average American adult over the last forty years. Two channels that lower this relative cost are considered. First, productivity improvements in the production of food prepared away from home. We and that this channel is qualitatively consistent with expenditure trends in food items, but falls short of accounting for the magnitude of the observed changes. We then consider actual declines in income taxes and in the gender wage gap, which increase the cost of preparing food at home from scratch. Our model accounts for three quarters of the observed changes in calorie consumption, and is consistent with trends in aggregate food expenditures, time use, and key macroeconomic variables. Our results indicate that changes in the relative cost of food prepared away from home play an important role in our understanding of the increased weight of the American population during the last 40 years.

The present research analyses the social visualization tool Sense.us, a commercial interactive Web application in which U.S. Census data are visualized. Sense.us was developed as a tool for social data exploration and interaction, in which it would be worthwhile to pay attention to the sociocultural values that have driven the collection and categorization of the underlying U.S. Census datasets. It is argued that closer attention to value driven U.S. Census statistics would greatly enhance the social appeal of Sense.us, and would be a logical next step in the development of online social visualization tools. In order to allow for explicit sociocultural values of statistics in online visualizations, three strategies are offered: proactive annotation; more attention to visual aesthetics; and, a tighter integration of user profiles and represented data.

Between 1942 and 1946, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans in the western part of the United States were evacuated and relocated by the War Relocation Authority. I estimate the effects of this experience on weekly earnings of Japanese-American men in the states of California, Oregon and Washington using the micro-data from the 1940 and 1950 U.S. Censuses. Empirical results demonstrate that the forced withdrawal from the labor market had considerable adverse impacts on earnings of prime-age Japanese men. The loss of earnings was magnified as during this decade other minority groups made tremendous advances in narrowing the wage gap with whites. Between 1940 and 1950, the average weekly earnings for those with 12 years of education grew by 24 percent for Japanese Americans, whereas blacks and other Asians enjoyed increases of 50 percent and 57 percent, respectively. Estimation results also indicate that the effects of the internment were different depending on the individual's education level. For example, the return on skills, measured by extra earnings for an additional year of experience, deteriorated considerably for Japanese Americans with higher education, while there were no noticeable differences among racial/ethnic groups with less than a high school education. Difference-in-differences estimation results indicate that the fall in earnings of Japanese Americans was largely due to changes in industry and occupation choices rather than depreciation of human capital within the same industry or occupation. JEL Classification Codes: J15, J31, N32, N42

This thesis examines the relationship between migration and economic development in Mexico. Chapter 1 examines the effects shocks to destination labor markets on economic development at home and the welfare of those left behind. Higher demand for labor in destination countries advances development by increasing remittance flows, but it may have adverse effects on non-migrants if their skills complement migrants' skills. Using an empirical strategy that exploits stickiness in migrants' preferred U.S. destinations, I find that all members of Mexican communities benefit from improved labor market conditions and business opportunities when high U.S. demand induces migrants to leave. This effect seems to be driven by higher demand for locally-produced goods and services more than relaxed credit constraints. Chapter 2 investigates the effects of manufacturing sector development at home on the migration choices of young Mexican men. Development at home decreases the net benefit to outmigrtion but may help to relax credit constraints and finance upfront migration costs. If the latter effect is strong, growth in the manufacturing sector can actually increase outmigration rates. Using an instrumental variables strategy based on local industrial composition, however, I find that local industrial development substantially curbs migration to the United States even in the poorest areas. Indeed, these estimates imply that the slowdown in manufacturing growth between the late 1990's and the early 2000's induced an additional 4.5% of young Mexican men to leave the country. Chapter 3 extends the theoretical study of optimal relational contracts and ownership structures to a general equilibrium model with random matching, focusing particularly on the role played by the relative sizes of the two sides of the market (market structure). Along with my coauthors, I find that market structure can affect the sustainability of efficient relational contracts; in the most interesting case, relational contracts become harder to sustain as the two sides of market become unbalanced. Since migration has direct effects on market structure, this chapter highlights a novel channel through which it can influence economic efficiency in source and destination countries. Acknowledgments I would like to thanks my advisors, Abhijit Banerjee and David Aut