Brendan O’Flaherty

Specific Training Sometimes Cuts Wages and Always Cuts Turnover

Turnover falls with tenure, but wages do not always rise (and sometimes fall) with tenure. We reconcile these findings by revisiting an old issue: how gains from firm‐specific training are split between workers and firms. The division is determined by a stationary distribution of outside offers. The lower the wage a firm pays to a specifically trained worker, the more profit it makes but the more likely the employee is to leave. The optimal time paths of wages and turnover show that, if marginal product is increasing, wages need not be increasing but it always implies a falling turnover rate.

Chapter 23 – Urban Crime

We survey the literature on index crime, paying particular attention to spatial issues. We note the contrasting descriptive traditions of Lombroso (characteristics matter) and Beccaria (incentives matter), and the contrasting policy traditions of incapacitation (predict who will offend and keep them from doing it) and deterrence (uncover who offended and punish them). The economics of crime has several points of contact with the economics of space, since the commission of an index crime requires proximity between offenders and victims (or their property). We explore these linkages, as well as a range of other issues: the effects of certainty and severity of punishment on crime; the role of stereotypes in interactions between offenders, victims, and law enforcement officers; and racial disparities in victimization, offending, and incarceration. The economics of crime has made tremendous progress, but enormous variation across both time and space remains poorly understood, and many nontraditional explanations often neglected by economists need to be explored more systematically.

Using Private Information to Predict Homelessness Entries: Evidence and Prospects

Abstract Do people at risk of homelessness have private information—information that social service agencies cannot credibly obtain—that helps predict whether they will become homeless? This article asserts that the answer to this question is yes: homeless people and people at risk of homelessness know important things about their future. Data from Journeys Home (JH), a pathbreaking longitudinal study of people experiencing homelessness and people at risk of homelessness in Australia, are used in this article. In many cases, the private information that participants have predicts entries better than the public information that agencies can obtain. Ways in which this private information can be used to improve service delivery are suggested.

Rental Housing Assistance for the 21st Century

Current rental housing assistance programs are not designed to provide a safety net for people whose lives are volatile, nor are they designed to encourage low-income people to live in good locations. These deficiencies can be corrected. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should establish a program of rental insurance - like mortgage insurance, but for renters. Low-income housing assistance formulas should be revised to reward good neighborhood features, and punish bad.