We report preliminary results of an analysis of the reaction of stock prices to
announcements of reductions in force (RIFs) using a large sample of such announcements
during the 1970-1997 period collected from the Wall Street Journal index. We find…

Despite earlier evidence to the contrary, recent inquiries appear to reach a consensus that the poor
pay more for food. However, these studies utilize samples drawn on the basis of prior
knowledge of unfair pricing strategies, proximity of volunteer surveyors,…

We study the reaction of stock prices to announcements of reductions in force
(RIFs) using a sample of nearly 3878 such announcements in 1176 large firms during the
1970-97 period collected from the Wall Street Journal Index. We note that,…

This paper provides a long-term follow-up of students who participated in the Tennessee STAR experiment. The Tennessee STAR experiment randomly assigned l 1,600 elementary school
students and their teachers to a small class, regular-size class or regular-size class with a…

This paper examines evidence on the effect of class size on student achievement. First, it is
shown that results of quantitative summaries of the literature, such as Hanushek (1997), depend
critically on whether studies are accorded equal weight. Hanushek summarizes…

An instrumental variable can be used to identify the labor market return to schooling by
allowing comparisons between groups of individuals whose differences in schooling levels are
uncorrelated with their underlying marginal benefit from schooling and with other aspects of

Who sets CEO pay? Our standard answer to this question has been shaped by principal agent theory:
shareholders set CEO pay. They use pay to limit the moral hazard problem caused by the low ownership
stakes of CEOs. Through bonuses,…

This paper summarizes and tries to reconcile evidence from the microeconometric and empirical
macro growth literatures on the effect of schooling on income and GDP growth. Much
microeconometric evidence suggests that education is an important causal determinant of income
for…

In this paper we take a “market-based” approach to examine whether increased school expenditures
are valued by potential residents and whether the current level of public school provision is inefficient. We
do so by employing an instrumental variables strategy to…

Some argue that a high union wage premium and the industrial council system are important causes
of inflexibility in the South African labor market. We estimate union premia on the order of 20 percent for
African workers and 10 percent…