Yoram Weiss

Match Quality, New Information, and Marital Dissolution

This article investigates the role of surprises in marital dissolution. Surprises consists of changes in the predicted earning capacity of either spouse. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 is used. We find that an unexpected increase in the husbands earning capacity reduces the divorce hazard, while an unexpected increase in the wifes earning capacity raises the divorce hazard. Couples sort into marriage according to characteristics that are likely to enhance the stability of the marriage. The divorce hazard is initially increasing with the duration of marriage, and the presence of children and high levels of property stabilizes the marriage.

Return Migration: Theory and Empirical Evidence from the UK

In this article, we discuss forms of migration that are non-permanent. We focus on temporary migrations where the decision to return is taken by the immigrant. These migrations are likely to be frequent, and we provide some evidence for the UK. We then develop a simple model that rationalizes the decision of a migrant to return to his/her home country, despite a persistently higher wage in the host country. We consider three motives for a temporary migration: (i) differences in relative prices between host and home country, (ii) complementarities between consumption and the location where consumption takes place, and (iii) the possibility of accumulating human capital abroad, which enhances the immigrants earnings potential back home. For the last return motive, we discuss extensions that allow for immigrant heterogeneity, and develop implications for selective in- and out-migration.

The Formation and Dissolution of Families: Why Marry? Who Maries Whom? and what Happens Upon Divorce?

A sealed primary sodium-halogen cell is disclosed which comprises a casing, an anode positioned in the casing, the anode selected from the class consisting of sodium, sodium as an amalgam, and sodium in a nonaqueous electrolyte, a solid sodium ion-conductive electrolyte positioned in the casing adjacent the anode, and a cathode positioned adjacent the opposite side of the electrolyte, the cathode comprising a mixture of bromine, iodine, bromine and iodine, or bromine and aluminum bromide with phosphoryl chloride or phosphoryl bromide.

Social status and economic performance:: A survey

This survey combines ideas and results from sociology and economics, recognizing that economic decisions are often shaped by social concerns and influences. Based on the sociological literature, we define social status and describe its measurement. We then describe the role of social status in economic analysis of saving and consumption, wages and economic growth. We review recent work on status determination in equilibrium, including evolutionary models. We conclude with some remarks on the need for further interaction between sociology and economics. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

On the Wage Growth of Immigrants: Israel, 1990-2000

This paper develops a descriptive methodology for the analysis of wage growth of immigrants, based on human capital theory. The sources of the wage growth are: (i) the rise of the return to imported human capital; (ii) the impact of accumulated experience in the host country; and, (iii) the mobility up the occupational ladder in the host country. Using human capital theory, we derive a non-linear model that imposes restrictions across the earning equations of natives and immigrants. The two earning functions are estimated jointly, using repeated cross section data. Using data on immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel, we find: Upon arrival, immigrants receive no return for imported skills. In the ten years following arrival, wages of highly skilled immigrants grow at 8% a year. Rising prices of skills, occupational transitions, accumulated experience in Israel and economy-wide rise in wages account for 3.4, 1.1, 1.5 and 1.4 percent each. In the long run, the return for schooling converges to .028, substantially below the .069 for natives. We do not reject the hypothesis that the return for experience converges to that of natives, and immigrants receive higher return for their unmeasured skills. We find that there is some downgrading in occupational distribution of immigrants relative to that of natives. Moreover, the average wages of immigrants approach but do not converge to the wages of comparable natives. The main reason for that is the low return to their imported skills.

Immigration, Search and Loss of Skill

This article develops and estimates an on‐the‐job search model of the entry of highly skilled immigrants from the former Soviet Union into the Israeli labor market. The estimated parameters of the model, together with information on the wages of immigrants from earlier waves, imply that, on average, immigrants can expect lifetime earnings to fall short of the lifetime earnings of comparable natives by 57%. Of this figure, 14 percentage points reflect frictions associated with nonemployment and job distribution mismatch, and 43 percentage points reflect the gradual adaptation of imported schooling and experience to the local labor market.

Chapter 11 The determination of life cycle earnings: A survey

Publisher Summary The chapter presents a survey on the determination of life cycle earnings. The chapter describes the theoretical work on the determination of life cycle earnings. The common thread in this work is the notion that workers can influence their earnings through various investment activities. A person who spends time in school or in on-the-job training sacrifices current earnings in the hope of increasing his future earning potential. Consequently, the observed life cycle earnings profiles reflect individual economic choices as well as purely technological or biological processes such as “depreciation” or “aging.” There is, however, considerable controversy on the market situation in which investment choices are made. The welfare and policy implications are very different if schooling enhances productivity or is merely used as a mode of transferring income by signalling and screening. In this survey focus is on the “human capital” approach and on its testable implications to individual earning profiles setting aside the aggregate and policy implications. There are various stylized facts that the theory attempts to explain: a life cycle earnings profile, which is increasing at early ages and is declining toward the end of the working period; a wage profile that tends to increase over the life cycle with a weak tendency for wage reduction toward the end of the working period; an hours of work life cycle profile, which is increasing at early ages and declining at older ages, with the peak occurring earlier than in the earnings or wage profiles.

Uncertain Health and Survival: Effects on End-of-Life Consumption

The paper analyses the impact of health and survival uncertainty on the saving and consumption decisions of retirees.

Experience, Vintage and Time Effects in the Growth of Earnings: AmericanScientists, 1960-1970

Analysis of longitudinal earning data indicates higher earnings growth for scientists of the same experience but more recent vintage. Theoretical justification for such a relation is suggested, and the implied biases in cross-section data are noted. Because of a basic identification problem, an alternative interpretation, time-experience interaction, is also considered. The general conclusion is that earning growth is not uniform or neutral. There is no simple mechanical method by which lifetime profiles can be inferred from single cross-section data.

Partner Choice and the Marital College Premium

Several theoretical contributions have argued that the returns to schooling within marriage play a crucial role for human capital investments. Our paper empirical investigates the evolution of these returns over the last decades. We consider a frictionless matching framework a la Becker-Shapley-Shubik, in which the gain generated by a match between two individuals is the sum of as ystematic effect that only depends on the spouses’ education classes and a match-specific term that we treat as random; following Choo and Siow (2006), we assume the latter component has an additively separable structure. We derive a complete, theoretical characterization of the model. We show that if the supermodularity of the surplus function is invariant over time and errors have extreme value distributions, the model is overidentified even if the surplus function varies over time. We apply our method to US data on individuals born between 1943 and 1972. Our model fits the data very closely; moreover, we find that the deterministic part of the surplus is indeed supermodular and that, in line with theoretical predictions, the “marital college premium” has increased more for women than for men over the period.