This paper seeks to identify the characteristics of applicants to
graduate school in economics that predict successful job placement after
completion of graduate school. Although there is considerable uncertainty in
predicting the success of prospective Ph.D. students, the results indicate…

Inequality in the unconditional distribution of observed wage rates in the U.S. rose substan-
tially during the 1980s, mostly in the lower tail of the distribution. The causes of this rising
wage inequality are obscured by the fact that concurrent…

One of the best documented relationships in economics is the link between education and
income: higher educated people have higher incomes. Advocates argue that education provides
skills, or human capital, that raises an individual‘s productivity. Critics argue that the documented

Anecdotal evidence suggests that uncontrolled managers let wages rise above competitive levels.
Testing this popular perception has proven difficult, however, because independent variation in the
extent of managerial discretion is needed. In this paper, we use states’ passage of anti-takeover

In this paper I review the existing evaluations of the effect of the Milwaukee Parental Choice
Program on student achievement. Two of the three existing papers report significant gains in math for the
choice students and two of the three…

This paper empirically examines the role of social networks in welfare participation. Social theorists from across the political spectrum have argued that network effects have given rise to a culture of poverty. Empirical work, however, has found it difficult to…