Randall K. Filer

Male-female wage differences: The importance of compensating differentials

This study investigates the extent to which differences in average earnings between men and women may be the result of sorting by the sexes into jobs with different average levels of disagreeable and agreeable working conditions. An analysis of data from the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey shows that, on average, men and women hold jobs with substantially different working conditions and that these differences are of a pattern suggesting the need to pay higher wages to attract employees to the jobs held by men. Estimation of wage equations shows that these differences in working conditions contribute significantly to the ability to explain average earnings for each sex.

SEXUAL DIFFERENCES IN EARNINGS: THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITIES AND TASTES*

Individual personalities and tastes are incorporated into male and female earnings equations and their effects on discrimination are analyzed. Results indicate that the omission of tastes and personalities from previous studies may have led to an overestimation of the extent of discrimination against women without college schooling. In addition, the problem of discrimination appears to be substantially less for women with college degrees than for those who stopped their education after high school. Ultimately, however, there remain large components of the differential in earnings between men and women that have not been explained. And thy estimation shall be of the male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old, even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary. And if it be female, then thy estimation shall be thirty shekels. Leviticus 27:3-4 King James Version

The Role of Personality and Tastes in Determining Occupational Structure

Using a unique data set containing explicit measures of both personality and tastes, this study applies logit techniques to predict which of five broadly defined occupational groups an individual will enter. The addition of personality and taste factors to a conventional set of variables—gender, race, education, experience, and fathers socioeconomic status—significantly increases the predictive accuracy of estimating equations. Also, the results are generally consistent with a well-functioning labor market that sorts workers into jobs satisfying their individual preferences. A specific finding is that gender differences in occupational structure are strongly linked to differences between mens and womens personalities and tastes.

The "Starving Artist"--Myth or Reality? Earnings of Artists in the United States

With data from the 1980 census, earnings of artists are investigated. It is found that, contrary to widely held beliefs, artists do not appear to earn less than other workers of similar training and personal characteristics. Artists in 1980 are significantly younger than the general work force, probably because of the rapid growth of the artistic professions in recent years.

Education and wages in the Czech and Slovak Republics during transition

Abstract An employer-based sample of over 400,000 Czech and 125,000 Slovak men is used to estimate the benefits of education in 1995–1997. By 1997, education of all types had become substantially more highly rewarded in both countries than it was either under communism or in the early years of the transition. Educations value began increasing earlier and reached a higher level in the Czech Republic than in Slovakia. Increases in the value of education were especially pronounced for types of education ideologically disfavored by communism.

Data Watch: Research Data from Transition Economies

Ten years into the transition from communism in the countries of the former Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe, a cursory search of the EconLit database turns up hundreds of empirical studies published in refereed journals that deal with various issues in transition economies. Even so, we suspect that many economists are prevented from making full use of the possibilities offered by the transition by the difficulties of obtaining and interpreting data from the region. The purpose of this brief essay is to indicate some possible sources for data that can be used for economic analysis, as well as some cautions regarding the use of these data.

The relationship between economic factors and equity markets in Central Europe

This paper investigates the possibility that newly-emerging equity markets in Central Europe exhibit semi-strong form efficiency such that no relationship exists between lagged values of changes in economic variables and changes in equity prices. We find that while there are connections between the real economy and equity market returns in Poland and Hungary, these links occur with lags, suggesting the possibility of profitable trading strategies based on public information and rejecting semi-strong efficiency. For the Czech Republic the situation is more complex. In recent periods, little connection exists between lagged economic variables and equity market returns. Although this finding might be viewed as consistent with semi-strong efficiency, in fact there is also little connection between current economic values and stock prices in the Czech Republic. Thus, instead of processing information efficiently, the Czech market appears to be entirely divorced from the real world. It is suggested that the difference in the current status of these markets may be due to the different methods by which they were created.

The Usefulness of Predicted Values for Prior Work Experience in Analyzing Labor Market Outcomes for Women

This paper proposes an improved way of treating experience in estimating wage equations for women when measures of actual experience are lacking. It shows that using a predicted value for experience from occupation-specific equations estimated on another data set containing actual experience is preferable to using either potential experience (time since school leaving) or predicted experience without taking account of the womans occupation. Results also show that the use of potential experience may bias the estimated impact of factors such as race and schooling on womens wages.

Do Stock Markets Promote Economic Growth

One of the most enduring debates in economics is whether financial development causes economic growth or whether it is a consequence of increased economic activity. Little research into this question, however, has used a true causality framework. This paper fills this lacuna by using Granger-causality tests and finds little evidence of a causal relationship going from stock market development to economic growth. We do find evidence that stock market development can cause currency appreciation, which may confound studies that use dollar denominated measures of economic growth.

Debt, Operating Margin, and Investment in Workplace Safety

We investigate how a firms financial performance affects workplace safety. We provide empirical estimates of the relationship between a firms financial condition and its investment in workplace safety using plant-level proxies for safety performance from OSHA records for thirteen large U.S. industries for the period 1972-87. Our results suggest that, at the lowest levels of operating margins, firms with higher operating margins have safer workplaces. Firms with more debt also have safer workplaces, but only when operating margins are relatively low. These results are consistent with a number of theoretical models in which financial factors influence operating decisions.