Jeffrey S. Zax

MOVING TO THE SUBURBS -- DO RELOCATING COMPANIES LEAVE THEIR BLACK EMPLOYEES BEHIND?.

This article examines the responses of black and white workers to their employers relocation from downtown Detroit to suburban Dearborn. Estimates of move and quit probabilities demonstrate that white employees whose commutes lengthened because of the relocation were more likely to move, but no more likely to quit, than white employees whose commute shortened. Black employees whose commutes lengthened were more likely to both move and quit in the wake of the relocation. In effect, the restrictions on black residential choice imposed by segregation forced approximately 11.3% of black workers to quit in the wake of the relocation.

IQ, Academic Performance, Environment, and Earnings

This paper explores the effects of peers, friends, family, IQ, and academic performance, observed in the last year of high school, on earnings at ages 35 and 53. All significantly affect earnings at both ages. The effects of IQ are much smaller than asserted in, for example, The Bell Curve, and badly overstated in the absence of controls for family, wider context, or academic performance. Aspirations appear to be very important. Socialization and role models may be as well, but not ability spillovers. Feasible increases in academic performance and education can compensate for the effects of many cognitive and contextual deficits.

COMMUTES, QUITS, AND MOVES

Abstract This paper analyzes the effects of commuting distance on quit and move propensities. In metropolitan areas with conventional wage and housing price gradients, most workers ordinarily move in order to lengthen commutes and quit in order to shorten them. However, quits and moves by workers whose residential choices are constrained by segregation should be relatively insensitive to commutes. Descriptive statistics and simultaneous probit estimates of move and quit propensities for white and black employees of a single firm confirm these predictions. They demonstrate that long commutes encourage white quits and discourage white moves. Commute increases of one standard deviation would increase white quit propensities and reduce white move propensities by approximately 10%. In contrast, commutes by black employees have no significant effects on their quit and move propensities.

COMPENSATION FOR COMMUTES IN LABOR AND HOUSING MARKETS

Abstract This paper estimates the effects of commuting time and housing characteristics on earnings of white male, white female, and black female employees of a single company. Within all three groups, earnings increase directly with commuting time. However, these increases are significantly smaller for employees commuting from census tracts with housing characteristics indicative of lower prices for housing services. Earnings premia for commuting time, net of the interactions between commuting time and housing characteristics are positive for almost all white males. However, they are negative for many white females and most black females. If locational constraints imposed by primary workers or residential segregation restrict the residential mobility of female employees, the employer may have monopsony power. That power may enable the employer to capture the housing market benefits of longer commutes for females.

Initiatives and government expenditures

This paper demonstrates that provisions for initiatives have important effects on government spending. Provisions for initiatives encourage legislatures to approve any proposal which might attract substantial popular support. If these proposals are more likely to advocate increases than reductions in expenditures, the presence of initiative provisions will increase total expenditures. Direct government expenditures per capita are significantly higher in both states and municipalities which permit initiatives.

The rewards to running. Prize structure and performance in professional road racing.

This article explicitly compares the incentive and sorting theories of tournament performance in road races. Regressions omitting controls for runner ability suggest that runners record faster times the greater the loss they would suffer from finishing below their prerace ranking. However, the relationship between prize money at risk and finishing time weakens or vanishes with these controls. These results strongly suggest that races with large prizes record faster times because they attract faster runners, not because they encourage all runners to run faster.

Race and commutes

Abstract This paper analyzes the effects of segregation on commute distances for a sample of workers employed at a single company. With a CBD workplace, both black and white commutes increase with income. Both black and white workers increase their commutes if they move. However, commutes for all blacks are less than those for similar whites. Furthermore, black commutes increase much less quickly with income. Lastly, moves by black workers increase commutes by much less. With a suburban workplace, high-income whites and whites who move choose longer commutes from more distant suburbs. All blacks reverse commute from the ghetto. High-income blacks and those who move commute from the ghetto boundary.

Incidence and Substitution in Enterprise Zone Programs: The Case of Colorado

Among 53,334 urban Colorado establishments, geographic information systems (GIS) techniques identify those that are and are not in enterprise zones (EZs). EZs have no effect on payroll per worker. Therefore, subsidy incidence is not on labor. Urban EZs do not increase employment per establishment, implying that subsidies induce net substitution effects for capital that counteract scale effects on labor. Rural EZs increase employment in the smallest of 13,278 establishments, implying that capital is less substitutable for labor with rural production functions and subsidy mixes. Employment effects differ across EZs. Equilibrium incidence of subsidies is probably on immobile factors such as commercial real estate.

Right-to-Work Laws, Free Riders, and Unionization in the Local Public Sector

Empirical models of local government unionization reveal substantial reductions in union membership due to right-to-work laws. Free riders, rather than underlying antiunion sentiments, are probably responsible because the unionization models include better measures of sentiments than right-to-work laws. Furthermore, these laws reduce the probability that bargaining unions form by more than they reduce the probability that nonbargaining associations form in three of five local government functions. These results also confirm the importance of free riders because union security clauses that prohibit free riders in states without right-to-work laws exist only in collective-bargaining contracts.

Bargaining Laws and Unionization in the Local Public Sector

This paper analyzes the effects of bargaining law characteristics on rates of unionization in over 10,000 local government departments, representing five different government services, that were without bargaining units in 1977. Duty-to-bargain laws significantly increased the probability of bargaining union formation between 1977 and 1982. The results of the analysis reject the hypotheses that this effect reflects only underlying union strength, the release of pent-up demand for unionization, or the transformation of nonbargaining unions into bargaining unions. The changes in unionization attributable to duty-to-bargain laws are so large that they account for nearly all of the differences in average unionization rates between states with and without these laws.