Julie L. Hotchkiss

A Closer Look at the Employment Impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This paper replicates recent findings that employment among disabled people has declined since the ADA. A closer look indicates that this decline results from a drop in the labor force participation rate among those classified as disabled. Further analysis indicates that this labor force participation rate decline, however, was not the result of disabled individuals fleeing the labor market, but, rather, more likely a result of the reclassification of nondisabled, nonparticipants, as disabled. The unconditional employment probability among disabled people (taking selection into the labor market into account) has not declined, and may have actually improved for certain disability classifications.

Freshman Learning Communities, College Performance, and Retention

This paper applies a standard treatment effects model to determine that participation in Freshman Learning Communities (FLCs) improves academic performance and retention. Not controlling for individual self-selection into FLC participation leads one to incorrectly conclude that the impact is the same across race and gender groups. Accurately assessing the impact of any educational program is essential in determining what resources institutions should devote to it.

Do Husbands and Wives Pool Their Resources?: Further Evidence

This paper replicates results of an article showing that families with children increased expenditures on women’s clothing (relative to men’s) after implementation of a policy that shifted a child subsidy “payment” from the father to the mother. These results were interpreted as evidence that families do not pool their income but allocate consumption based on income source. However, the current paper also finds an increase in relative spending on women’s clothing among childless couples, a sample the policy change did not impact. Alternative explanations are explored for observing these patterns, but none can rule out either bargaining or income pooling.

The Upside Potential of Hiring Risky Workers: Evidence from the Baseball Industry

Making use of performance data for baseball players, this article provides empirical evidence in support of Lazear’s (1998) theoretical predictions that (1) risky workers will earn a premium for their upside potential, (2) this risk premium will be higher the longer a worker’s work life, and (3) firms must enjoy some comparative advantage in the labor market to be willing to pay a premium to risky workers. The validity of Lazear’s predictions carries implications for wage differentials between young and old workers and between men and women.

Female Labor Force Intermittency and Current Earnings: A Switching Regression Model with Unknown Sample Selection

Using the Health and Retirement Survey from the USA, this paper finds a 16% selectivity-corrected wage penalty among women who engage in intermittent labour market activity. This penalty is experienced at a low level of intermittent activity, but appears to not play an important role in a womans decision to undertake such activity. In addition, employer preferences appear to play a larger role than human capital atrophy in the determination of the wage penalty.

FEMALE LABOR SUPPLY WITH A DISCONTINUOUS, NONCONVEX BUDGET CONSTRAINT: INCORPORATION OF A PART-TIME/FULL-TIME WAGE DIFFERENTIAL

This paper incorporates the well-documented part-time/full-time wage differential into an empirical labor supply model with both a heterogeneity- and a random-error term and estimates that model for women in the United States. Incorporation of the part-time/full-time wage differential results in a unique discontinuous, nonconvex budget set, and the consideration of estimation procedures previously unconfronted in the nonlinear budget constraint literature. The full structural representation of the budget constraint is shown to fit better than the alternative models estimated, and to yield a predicted hours distribution representative of actual hours.

The Role of Labor Market Intermittency in Explaining Gender Wage Differentials

Using the Health and Retirement Survey and standard wage decomposition techniques, this paper finds that the difference in intermittent labor force participation between men and women accounts for 47 percent of the contribution to the wage gap of differences in observed characteristics. Not controlling for intermittent behavior results in too much importance being placed on gender differences in job characteristics.

Discrimination in the payment of full-time wage premiums

This study investigates how many hours must be worked per week in order for workers in different race and gender groups to receive a high-hours (full-time) wage premium. An analysis of 1989 Current Population Survey data shows that across occupations, both white and black men received a full-time wage premium for working at least 33 hours per week, whereas white women had to work at least 37 hours and black women at least 39 hours to receive the premium. Controlling for occupation changes the threshold for black women to 33 hours, but does not change the results for the other groups. The authors find that the observed differences account for, at most, two percentage points of the wage differentials across race and gender.

What's Up with the Decline in Female Labor Force Participation?

This paper determines that the weaker positive pull of education into the labor market and weaker labor market conditions are the observed factors that contributed the most to the decline in the labor force participation rate (LFPR) between 2000 and 2004 among women ages 25–54. As is typical, however, unobserved factors contributed more than any single or combination of observed factors. Furthermore, if the unemployment rate rebounded to its level in 2000, the LFPR would still be 1.4 percentage points lower than it was in 2000.

At What Level of Labor-Market Intermittency Are Women Penalized?

A common explanation offered for the observed wage differential between men and women is that women are less attached to the labor market; they exhibit a greater degree of labor-market intermittency than do men. There are several theories that explain this link between intermittency and lower wages, including differences in human-capital attainment, atrophy of skills during absences, and preferences of employers (see e.g., Solomon W. Polachek and W. Stanley Siebert, 1993; Joyce P. Jacobsen and Laurence M. Levin, 1995; James W. Albrecht et al., 2000). The goal of this paper is to explore in greater depth the role past labormarket intermittency plays in the determination of a woman’s current wage and at what level of intermittent activity women can expect to have that activity affect her wage. Previous methods employed to measure the penalty associated with intermittent activity have either classified workers as intermittent if they have at least one spell of absence from the labor market (Jacobsen and Levin, 1995) or have relied on the percentage of time out of the labor force to classify intermittent workers (Elaine J. Sorenson, 1993). However, if employers perceive intermittent behavior as a signal, then both the frequency of intermittent spells and the duration of the spells should be taken into account. We contribute to this literature by creating an intermittency index that captures both of these factors. We also statistically determine at what level of intermittency a woman will incur a penalty for absence from the labor force. This index is used to determine the magnitude of the penalty associated with intermittent participation in the labor force. The analysis is limited to women as intermittent behavior is more prevalent for women and to avoid potential confounding factors associated with gender discrimination.