The Influence of Higher Moments of Earnings Distributions on Career Decisions.

A model where choice of occupation is sequential is applied to college graduates from the National Longitudinal Study of High School Class of 1972 to investigate how higher moments of occupational earnings distributions influence initial field of work. Individual specific life-cycle earnings projections that incorporate option values of occupational mobility are generated, and the relationship between these pay measures and choice of initial occupation is explored within a multinomial logit framework. The findings indicate a strong positive relationship between these earnings predictions and the likelihood that college graduates enter an occupation. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.

Compatibility and Market Structure for Network Goods

This paper analyzes the economics of industries where network externalities are significant. In such industries, firms have strong incentives to adhere to common technical compatibility standards, so that they reap the network externalities of the whole group. However, a firm also benefits from producing an incompatible product thereby increasing its horizontal product differentiation. We show how competition balances these opposing incentives. We find that market equilibria often exhibit extreme disparities in sales, output prices, and profits across firms, despite no inherent differences in the firms' production technologies. This may explain the frequent domination of network industries by one or two firms. We also find that the presence of network externalities dramatically affects conventional welfare analysis, as total surplus in markets where these externalities are strong is highest under monopoly and declines with entry of additional firms.networks, network externalities, coalition structures, technical standards, compatibility

The New Economics of Teachers and Education.

Rapidly growing costs of elementary and secondary education are studied in the context of the rising value of women's time. The dramatic increase in direct costs of education per student in the past three decades is empirically linked to increasing demand and utilization of teacher and staff inputs, attributable to growing market opportunities for women and changes in the structure of families. On the supply side, the 'flexibility option' that female teachers who take temporary leaves do not suffer subsequent wage loss upon reentry is shown to be an important attraction of the teaching profession to women. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.