Building a World Trade Model: Some Lessons We Are Learning

International Relations/Trade,

Stochastic Problems in the Simulation of Labor Supply

Modern work in labor supply attempts to account for nonlinear budget sets created by government tax and transfer programs. Progressive taxation leads to nonlinear convex budget sets while the earned income credit, social security contributions, AFDC, and the proposed NIT plans all lead to nonlinear, nonconvex budget sets. Where nonlinear budget sets occur, the expected value of the random variable, labor supply, can no longer be calculated by simply 'plugging in' the estimated coefficients. Properties of the stochastic terms which arise from the residual or from a stochastic preference structure need to be accounted for. This paper considers both analytical approaches and Monte Carlo approaches to the problem. We attempt to find accurate and low cost computational techniques which would permit extensive use of simulation methodology. Large samples are typically included in such simulations which makes computational techniques an important consideration. But these large samples may also lead to simplifications in computational techniques because of the averaging process used in calculation of simulation results. This paper investigates the tradeoffs available between computational accuracy and cost in simulation exercises over large samples.

The Effects of Students’ Middle-School and High-School Experiences on Completion of the Bachelor’s Degree: How Can School Counselors Make a Difference?

Trusty and Hutchinson present a brief overview and analysis of the Research Monograph, Effects of Students’ Middle-School and High-School Experiences on Completion of the Bachelor’s Degree. They offer a discussion of the association between certain middle and high school student variables on the completion or non-completion of the bachelor\u27s degree. In addition, they provide best practices and suggestions for school counselors to apply the findings to their own contexts

Technical Paper No. 2: Student Evaluation of Faculty Teaching Performance: Analysis of Four Years' Data

Student evaluation of faculty teaching performance has provided an important source of evidence in making faculty personnel decisions at Sangamon State University. Students have been asked to rate the competency and the teaching ability of their instructors; specifically, near the end of each term, students have rated faculty using the following two items: 1) Do you think this teacher is competent in the content or matter offered in this course? 2) Overall, do you consider this person a good teacher? The two items were administered from 1971 to 1975, and a record of the resultant data has been maintained. The research reported in this paper was motivated by a desire to look at the stability and reliability of the evaluations obtained from the two item evaluations over the four year period.The present paper reports on the amount of agreement between the ratings given on the teaching item and the ratings on the competency item. The effect of rewording the teaching item on the ratings is also reported.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

The Changing Face of Medicine: Women Doctors and the Evolution of Health Care in America

[Excerpt] This book is a case study of one profession that plays a key role in the health care sector, which now represents about one seventh of the U.S. economy. It examines the most dramatic demographic change in this sector in the last century. But the issues we raise are likely to be of interest more broadly for what they say about the changing roles of women in contemporary society. Women\u27s entry into medicine is taken as dramatic evidence that the barriers to opportunity for women are rapidly falling in America. Does the experience of female physicians to date bear out this optimistic view? An alternative view is that gender roles remain deeply entrenched in our institutions and culture. Specifically, the gender division of household labor continues to constrain the choices of all women. The trade-offs between work and family may be clearest in the most demanding professions, such as law and medicine, which require a high degree of professional devotion. Our study builds on the fine histories of women in medicine written by Walsh, Morantz-Sanchez, and More. The analysis presented here focuses on the period since 1970, thus complementing the important studies of Bowman and colleagues and Bickel. Lorber examined the experiences of the generation of women who pioneered the transformation of the profession. With the benefit of additional decades of perspective, we are in a position to examine whether the role of gender in medicine is changing