This paper reports the results of surveys of specialists in labor economics and public
economics at 40 leading research universities in the United States. Respondents provided
opinions of policy proposals; quantitative best estimates and 95% confidence intervals for
economic parameters;…

This paper analyzes data on 11,600 students and their teachers who were randomly assigned to
different size classes from kindergarten through third grade. Statistical methods are used to
adjust for non-random attrition and transitions between classes. The main conclusions are:…

This paper examines the effect of technological change and other factors on the relative demand
for workers with different education levels and on the recent growth of U.S. educational wage
differentials. A simple supply-demand framework is used to interpret changes…

This paper analyzes the labor supply behavior of food and beverage vendors at a
single major league baseball stadium over an entire season. In contrast to the conven-
tional labor supply model, the vendors who I study are paid a…

I examine the extent to which workers who lose jobs find work in alterna-
tive employment arrangements such as temporary work, part-time work, and independent
contracting rather than as conventional full-time “regular” employees. The analysis is
based on data from…

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…

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…