Wayne A. Grove

The Gender Pay Gap Beyond Human Capital: Heterogeneity in Noncognitive Skills and in Labor Market Tastes

Focused on human capital, economists typically explain about half of the gender earnings gap. For a national sample of MBAs, we account for 82 percent of the gap by incorporating noncognitive skills (for example, confidence and assertiveness) and preferences regarding family, career, and jobs. Those two sources of gender heterogeneity account for a quarter of the “explained” pay gap, with half due to human capital variables and the other quarter due to hours worked and current job characteristics. Female MBAs appear to pay a penalty for “good citizen” behavior (choosing jobs that contribute to society) and characteristics (higher ethical standards). Journal: Journal of Human Resources

Incentives and Student Learning: A Natural Experiment with Economics Problem Sets

More than three decades of intense interest in and scholarship about the determinants of student learning of economics has led to surprisingly few insights about what a typical faculty member can do differently to increase student academic success. Based on data from a natural experiment, we estimate the gains in student cognitive achievement in an introductory economics course due to assigning graded versus non-graded problem sets. We identify statistically significant and meaningful problem set effects for. Graded problem sets raised the average students’ exam performance enough to increase their course GPA by one-third of a letter grade. Hardworking, scholastically below-average students’ receive additional academic achievement. These results offer the typical faculty member strong evidence about a simple way to dramatically improve student learning that they can implement.

Returns to Field of Study Versus School Quality: MBA Selection on Observed and Unobserved Heterogeneity

While a substantial literature has established returns to college major and to school quality, we offer the first such estimates for Masters of Business Administration (MBAs). To control for their nonrandom selection of fields, we estimate the returns to MBA concentrations using both ordinary least squares (OLS) with detailed control variables and including individual fixed effects. We find approximately 7% returns for most MBAs but roughly double that for finance and management information systems (MIS). Thus, MBA area of study can matter as much or more than program quality: only attending a top 10, but not 11‐25, MBA program trumped studying finance and MIS at a nontop 25 program.

Better Opportunities or Worse? The Demise of Cotton Harvest Labor, 1949–1964

Following World War II millions of cotton workers, especially African-Americans, left the fields forever, and farmers mechanized the cotton harvest. Prevailing empirical studies argue that high factory wages lured farmhands away. Based on newly reconstructed data, we estimate the causes of the demise of harvest employment in 12 major cotton-producing states from 1949-1964 and find important roles for mechanization, government farm programs, higher nonagricultural wages, and falling cotton prices. On net, our estimates indicate that factors affecting farm labor demand, not labor-supply influences, caused the disappearance of hand-picked cotton - results that reverse the best econometric work to date.

'Machinery Has Completely Taken Over': The Diffusion of the Mechanical Cotton Picker,1949–1964

Hand picking of cotton in the United States virtually disappeared twenty years after the first mechanical harvester was marketed in 1949. Contrary to received accounts, southern social institutions did not impede the diffusion of the mechanical cotton picker from the West to the cotton belt in the South so much as environmental factors and educational attainment did. Rising cotton yields and exogenous technological change drove diffusion by reducing the costs of machine harvesting. Labor displacement resulting from the cotton picker occurred only in a concentrated burst after 1959.

Labor Markets, Regional Diversity, and Cotton Harvest Mechanization in the Post World War II United States

As hand-harvest labor disappeared from the American cotton fields after World War II, labor market dynamics differed between two key production regions, the South and the West. In the South, predominantly resident African Americans and whites harvested cotton, whereas in the West the labor market was composed of white residents, domestic Latino migrant workers, and Mexican nationals temporarily immigrating under the sponsorship of the U.S. government (braceros). We use newly reconstructed data for the two regions and estimate for the first time the regional causes of the demise of the hand-harvest labor force from 1949 to 1964. Whereas cheaper harvest mechanization substantially affected both regions, the downward trend in cotton prices and government programs to control cotton acreage played important roles in the disappearance of hand-harvested cotton in the South, but not in the West.

Survive Then Thrive: Talent, Research Motivation, and Completing the Economics Ph.D.

This study investigates the completion of the Ph.D. in Economics. We use ex ante information, based solely upon reviewing a set of individual applications from former doctoral students. Estimation for determining success is done by logit, multinomial logit, and generalized ordered logit. We find that students need different skills and attributes to succeed at each distinct and sequential stage of the doctoral program. Significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include high GRE verbal and quantitative scores, a Masters degree, and a prior focus on economics. Research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation, but having a Masters degree and economics preparation becomes insignificant. GRE scores disappear as a significant determinant for completion in the generalized ordered logit estimates, which emphasize the sequential nature of the Economics Ph.D. program.

The superstar quest: Does youth talent predict professional success for female and male tennis players?

We estimate the relationship between international youth and professional tennis rankings. We find no difference between the predictiveness of rankings from age 14 & Under versus age 16 & Under competitions. The most persistent predictor of professional success is beating older top ranked juniors. Our results reveal stark gender differences. For example, ordinal junior rankings are more strongly associated with professional success for males than for females. In addition, future tennis stars are better signaled by U14 competition outcomes for females, but by U16 results for males.

Preferential Admission and MBA Outcomes: Mismatch Effects by Race and Gender

We consider the “mismatch” hypothesis in the context of graduate management education. Both blacks and Hispanics, conditional on a rich set of human capital variables, prior earnings and work experience, and non-cognitive attributes, are favored in admission to top 50 Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs. To test for mismatch effects, we provide two comparisons: (1) comparable individuals (in terms of race, gender, and credentials) at different quality MBA programs and (2) individuals of differing race or gender (but with similar credentials) at comparable MBA programs. Despite admission preferences, blacks and Hispanics enjoy similar or even higher returns to selectivity than whites.

Cotton's Renaissance: A Study in Market Innovation (review)

Henry Ford II establish the Ford Foundation and, with Robert Hutchins, incorporated the Fund for the Republic. Ferry and the Fund were subsequently enrolled in the blacklists of the Joseph McCarthy era since Ferry had the odd habit of publicly attacking J. Edgar Hoover, director of the fbi, and the Fund had the even odder habit of supporting projects analyzing the intolerance of the Red-hunting apparat. If the Fund for the Republic eventually lost its edge, Ferry never did. When Chester Bowles was headhunting for the Kennedy cabinet, Ferry recommended a Ford man—Robert McNamara. But when McNamara proved a hawk on Vietnam, Ferry called a press conference to announce his resignation from the Democratic party in protest. Old habits remained as well. Other press conferences were called to attack the fbi director again, and time could be still found to go on the road for drinking bouts with Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk. Even while slowing down as he neared retirement, Ferry would always have pet projects to be pursued with the usual twist. His anti–death penalty phase, for example, promoted televised executions as the most expedient path to abolition. He always managed to and new companions—most notably, in the 1980s, Edward P. Thompson and others involved in the European nuclear disarmament movement. His new wife, Carol Bernstein, had money and just as strong an urge to send checks to virtually any left-of-center activist or scholar who took the time to mail a seventy-ave word letter describing his or her complaint. (In fact, such was this writer’s introduction to Ferry twenty-ave years ago.) Ward, has written something of an unauthorized authorized biography, a readable and fascinating work that is much more than an obscure study of a marginal historical agure.