Wage Changes, Establishment Growth, and the Effect of Composition Bias

This paper examines the relationship between wages and employment at the establishment level. It exploits a sample of Italian firms and workers. To correct for a potential labor composition effect, estimations use both the change in the firm's average wage and the mean of individual wage changes within the firm. Expanding firms are characterized by higher wage growth. The establishment's effect also prevails on the industry's effect, suggesting that wage changes result from the workers' accumulation of firm-specific skills, or from some rent-sharing mechanisms. The role of this "inside" factor seems also symmetric between expanding and declining firms.Bias; Employment; Wage

An assessment of the impact of online quizzes and textbook resources on students' learning

Publishers often market their textbooks by offering additional online textbook resources. This project analyzes quantitative and qualitative data to assess the learning outcomes of using a textbook website to administer online quizzes. This practice was found to be successful in increasing students' diligence in the completion and submission of their assignments, and students commented favorably about their learning experience with online quizzes. However, the opportunity to preview and practice online the material covered in the text did not result in improved performance: students did not show a significant increased ability on in-class exams to answer correctly the multiple choice questions they had already been exposed to. These findings suggest that while this online technology increased students' involvement and participation in the class and in their coursework, it did not result in improved performance on exams.

Wage Changes, Establishment Growth, and the Effect of Composition Bias

The correlation between real wages and aggregate employment growth has beenthe object of several empirical studies conducted with both aggregate and micro data.Despite the new availability of linked employer-employee data, however, we still havelimited empirical evidence [Belzil, 2000] to describe how real wage cyclicality can beexplained by what happens between workers and employers at the firm level. Thispaper makes a contribution by making use of Italian data to explore whether a posi-tive relationship between wage growth and employment growth is induced mainly byan establishment effect or by an industry effect, at least as long as these effects aremeasured in terms of employment changes.As in the case of wage cyclicality studies, this research takes into account theconsequences that a composition effect can have on the factors that affect the employeeearnings in each establishment. When a firm is growing, as well as in the growthphase of a cycle, new workers enter the job market. They are traditionally low-skillemployees or young people or previously “discouraged” workers. They earn low wages,and so lower the average wage in the firm. This can explain the negative or insignifi-cant correlation between real wages and employment level that has been found inseveral studies conducted at the aggregate level. For the first time, this study teststhe existence of a composition bias with firm-level data where both employment andwage growth can be measured for each establishment. Checking whether employ-ment growth, within firms and within sectors, differently affects the change in thefirm’s average wage or the mean of the individual wage changes does this.This research makes use of 1981-83 records for a sample of Italian firms. Informa-tion about each establishment is combined with information about its employees. Thestudy explores cases in which firms are experiencing an employment decline, an employ-ment increase, or no more than the national rate of labor turnover. The same analy-sis is conducted for categories of workers that, within the same firm, differ because ofjob qualifications or gender.The paper is organized as follows: part 2 presents some of the theories concerningthe relationship between wage changes and employment growth. It also illustratesthe problem of a possible composition bias. Part 3 presents the empirical framework.Part 4 describes the data set used for the estimations. Part 5 discusses the results.The conclusions summarize the major findings.

Coordination in Networks Formation: Experimental Evidence on Learning and Salience

We present experiments on repeated non-cooperative network formation games, based on Bala and Goyal (2000). We treat the one-way and the two-ways flow models, each for high and low link costs. The models show both multiple equilibria and coordination problems. We conduct experiments under various conditions which control for salient labeling and learning dynamics. Contrary to previous experiments, we find that coordination on non-empty Strict Nash equilibria is not an easy task for subjects to achieve, even in the mono-directional model where the Strict Nash equilibria is a wheel. We find that salience significantly helps coordination, but only when subjects are pre-instructed to think of the wheel network as a reasonable way to play the networking game. Evidence on learning behavior provides support for subjects choosing strategies consistent with various learning rules, which include as the main ones Reinforcement and Fictitious Play.Experiments, Networks, Behavioral game theory, Salience, Learning dynamics

Advocatus, et non latro? Testing the Supplier-Induced-Demand Hypothesis for Italian Courts of Justice

We explore the relationship between litigation rates and the number of lawyers, in a typical supplier-induced demand (SID) frame. Drawing on an original panel dataset for the 169 Italian courts of justice between 2000 and 2007, we first document that the number of lawyers is positively correlated with different measures of litigation rate. Then, using an instrumental variables strategy we find that a 10 percent increase of lawyers over population is associated with an increase between 1.6 to 6 percent in civil litigation rates. Thus, our empirical analysis supports the SID hypothesis for the Italian lawyers: following an increase in their relative number, lawyers may exploit their informational advantage to induce clients to access to courts even when litigation is unnecessary or ineffective.Lawyers, Litigiosity, Causality

Spacetime metric from linear electrodynamics

The Maxwell equations are formulated on an arbitrary (1+3)-dimensional manifold. Then, imposing a (constrained) linear constitutive relation between electromagnetic field $(E,B)$ and excitation $({\cal D},{\cal H})$, we derive the metric of spacetime therefrom.Comment: 4 pages' latex-scrip

Optimal Contracts and Contractual Arrangements Within the Hospital: Bargaining vs. Take-it-or-leave-it Offers

We study the impact of different contractual arrangements within the hospital on the optimal contracts designed by third party payers when severity is hospital's private information. We develop a multi-issue bargaining process between doctors and managers within the hospital. Results are then compared with a scenario where doctors and managers decide independently by maximizing their own profit, with managers proposing to doctors a take-it-or leave-it offer. Results show that, when the cost of capital is sufficiently low, the informational rent arising on information asymmetry is higher in a set up where managers and doctors decide together through a strategic bargaining process than when they act as two decision-making units.Strategic Bargaining; Optimal Contracts; Hospitals; Asymmetric Information