Frank McIntyre

The Relationship between Women's Education and Marriage Outcomes

Using 2000 Census data, we describe the relationship between women’s education and marriage outcomes. Women’s education is strongly related to husbands income and marital status. This relationship is highly nonlinear and varies across the distribution of husbands earnings. Roughly half of the correlation between women’s education and consumption operates through the marriage market. Using 1980 Census data and the quarter of birth instruments proposed by Angrist and Krueger, we find that womens education may have a positive causal effect on husbands earnings, though not on probability of marriage.

The Economic Value of a Law Degree

We investigate the economic value of a law degree and find that for most law school graduates, the present value of a law degree typically exceeds its cost by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The median and 25th-percentile earnings premiums justify enrollment. We track lifetime earnings of a large sample of law degree holders. Previous studies focused on starting salaries, generic professional degree holders, or the subset of law degree holders who practice law. We incorporate unemployment and disability risk and measure earnings premiums separately for men and for women. After controlling for observable ability sorting, we find that a law degree is associated with median increases of 73 percent in earnings and 60 percent in hourly wages. The mean annual earnings premium is approximately

The Effect of Macroeconomic Turbulence on Real Wage Levels and the Wage Structure: Brazil, 1981–1999*

57,200 in 2013 dollars. Values in recent years are within historical norms. The mean pretax lifetime value of a law degree is approximately

Lawyers Steer Clients Toward Lucrative Filings: Evidence from Consumer Bankruptcies

1 million.

Timing Law School

How does a turbulent macroeconomic environment affect real wage levels and the wage structure? A method for addressing this question is offered and then applied to data for Brazil between 1981 and 1999. Cohorts of workers are followed over time to determine whether movements in median wages are associated with age or with calendar year events. Changes in the wage structure-by gender, by schooling, and by formal-informal sector-are investigated. Profound macroeconomic impacts on real wage levels are clearly identified but effects on the wage structure are far less.

Value of a Law Degree by College Major

Consumers often rely on lawyers to make complicated legal decisions, though in many cases the lawyers financial interests are at odds with those of the client. We consider this general problem in the context of consumers filing for bankruptcy. Lawyers advise debtors on whether to file the cheaper Chapter 7 filing or the more expensive Chapter 13 filing. Bankruptcy courts that allow lawyers to charge more for Chapter 13 bankruptcy see a significantly larger fraction of Chapter 13 filings (elasticity of 0.3). This is true controlling for a host of demographic controls at the zip code level, as well as with state fixed effects and district policy controls. Our estimates suggest that 5.4% of cross-district variation in relative Chapter 13 rates could be eliminated by harmonizing relative fees.

Does Higher Transitory Income of Parents Permanently Increase the Income of Their Children

We investigate whether economic conditions at labor market entry predict long-term differences in law graduate earnings. We find that unemployment levels at graduation continue to predict law earnings premiums within 4 years after graduation for earners at the high end and middle of the distribution. However, the relation fades as law graduates gain experience and the difference in lifetime earnings is moderate. This suggests that earnings figures from After the JD II and III -- which track law graduates who passed the bar exam in 2000 -- are likely generalizable to other law cohorts because these studies are outside the window when graduation conditions predict differences in subsequent earnings.Outcomes data available prior to matriculation do not predict unemployment or starting salaries at graduation. Earnings premiums are not predicted by BLS projected job openings. While changes in cohort size predict changes in the percent of law graduates practicing law, we find little evidence that changes in cohort size predict changes in earnings. This suggests that law graduates who switch to other occupations when law cohort sizes increase are not hurt financially by larger cohorts. For medium to high earning graduates, successfully timing law school predicts a higher value of a law degree ex-post, but simulations show that no strategy for ex-ante timing is readily available.This article has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.A powerpoint presentation of an earlier version of this article is available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2612634.

Which explanations for gender differences in competition are consistent with a simple theoretical model

We estimate the increase in earnings from a law degree relative to a bachelor’s degree for graduates who majored in different fields in college. Students with humanities and social sciences majors comprise approximately 47 percent of law degree holders compared to 23 percent of terminal bachelor’s. Law degree earnings premiums are highest for humanities and social sciences majors and lowest for STEM majors. On the other hand, among those with law degrees, overall earnings are highest for STEM and Business Majors. This effect is fairly small at the low end of the earnings distribution, but quite large at the top end. The median annual law degree earnings premium ranges from approximately

Gender Differences in Competition: A Game Theoretic Assessment

29,000 for STEM majors to

Is the Intergenerational Income Elasticity a Sufficient Statistic for Fairness

45,000 for humanities majors.