Comparable-Worth Wage Adjustments and Female Employment in the State and Local Sector

Our paper simulates the likely effects of a comparable-worth wage-adjustment policy in the state and local sector on female employment in the sector. The simulation is based on estimates of within-occupation male/female substitution and across-occupation occupational employment substitution that we obtain using data from the 1980 Census of Population

Do Historically Black Institutions of Higher Education Confer Unique Advantages on Black Students? An Initial Analysis

[Excerpt] Despite the declining relative importance of HBIs in the production of black bachelor\u27s degrees, in recent years they have become the subject of intense public policy debate for two reasons. First, court cases have been filed in a number of southern states that assert that black students continue to be underrepresented at traditionally white public institutions, that discriminatory admissions criteria are used by these institutions to exclude black students (e.g., basing admissions only on test scores and not also on grades), and that per student funding levels, program availability, and library facilities are substantially poorer at public HBIs than at other public institutions in these states (Johnson 1991). In one 1992 case, United States v. Fordice, the Supreme Court ruled that Mississippi had not done enough to eliminate racial segregation in its state-run higher educational institutions (Chira 1992). Rather than mandating a remedy, however, the Court sent the case back to the lower courts for action. What should the appropriate action be? Should it be to integrate more fully both the historically white and the historically black institutions by breaking down discriminatory admissions practices at the former and establishing some unique programs at the latter? Should the HBIs be eliminated and their campuses either folded into the historically white institutions or abandoned? Or should effort be directed at equalizing per student expenditure levels and facilities between campuses, rather than at worrying about the racial distribution of students at each campus, even if such policies might result in voluntary separate but equal institutions? From an economic efficiency perspective, the appropriate policy responses depend at least partially upon the answers to a number of questions: Do HBIs, per se, provide unique advantages to black students that they could not obtain at other institutions? If they do, is this because of the racial composition of their faculty or the racial composition of their students? If they do, would enrolling more black college students in higher expenditure per pupil integrated institutions actually leave these students in a worse position

Do Historically Black Institutions of Higher Education Confer Unique Advantages on Black Students: An Initial Analysis

Do Historically Black Institutions (HBIs)of Higher Education confer unique advantages on black students? Our paper consists of two separate analyses that begin 10 address this issue. The first uses data from the ?National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972? to ascertain whether black college students who attended HBIs in the early 1970s had higher graduation rates. improved early career labor market success and higher probabilities of going on 10 graduate or professional schools than their counterparts who attended other institutions. The econometric methods we employ control for the characteristics of the students. characteristics of the institutions, and the process by which black students decided 10 enroll (or were prevented from enrolling) in different types of institutions. We find that attendance at an HBI subswltia1ly enhanced the probability that a black student received a bachelor?s degree within seven years. however it had no apparent affect on the student's early career labor market success and probability of enrolling in post-college schooling. The second uses data from the 1987 to 1991 waves of the National Research Council's ?Survey of Earned Doctorates? to provide evidence on the patterns of black citizen doctorates with respect to their undergraduate institutions, their graduate institutions, and whether they achieved academic positions in major American liberal arts and research/doctorate institutions. Among the major findings is that black doctorates who received their undergraduate degrees at HBIs were much less likely to have received their graduate degree at a major research institution than those black doctorates who attended a major research or selective liberal arts undergraduate institution. Similarly, among the black doctorates who entered academic careers, those with graduate degrees from HBIs were less likely to be employed in major American research or liberal arts institutions than those who received their graduate degrees from major research institutions.

Estimating Wage-Fringe Trade-Offs: Some Data Problems

Our paper attempts to identify the types of data nee3ed to estimate tradeoffs between wages and fringe benefits (such as pensions); it also explores the usefulness for this estimation of one particular employer- based data set collected by gay Associates. We stress three things: first, that employer-based data sets are required. Second, because pensions and many other fringe benefits are actuarial functions of wages or salaries, these technical relationships must be accounted for in estimation. Third, to take account of unobservable heterogeneity of employees across employers, one must use econometric methods that control for these unobservable variables. The paper concludes with a discussion of our attempts to estimate the tradeoff between wages and fringe benefits using a unique database for 200 establishments that contains information on wages and actuarial valuations of employer costs of fringe benefits at three different job levels.

Comparable Worth in the Public Sector

Proponents of comparable worth assert that within a firm jobs can be valued in terms of the skill, effort and responsibility they require, as well as the working conditions they offer, and that jobs that are of comparable worth to the firm should receive equal compensation. After documenting the major push that has occurred for comparable worth in the state and local sector, Section II of our paper discusses the case for and against comparable worth from the perspective of analystical economists.The reminder of the paper is empirical in nature and focuses on issues that arise when one attempts to implement comparable worth. Section III addresses attempts by various states to infer if comparable worth "wage gaps" exist from job evaluation studies they have conducted and tests how sensitive their results are to the statistical methods used to infer discrimination. Section IV estimates whether male/female comparable worth wage gaps nay partially be compensating differentials for differences in opportunity for occupational nobility. Finally Section V presents estimates of systems of demand curves for state and local government employees and tests whether within occupational groups male/female substitution occurs as male/female wage rates change and whether substitution occurs across occupations as occupational wages change. These estimates are then used to simulate what the likely effect of a comparable worth wage policy would be on employment of females in the state and local sector.

Start-Up Costs in American Research Universities

Our report briefly summarizes findings from the 2002 Cornell Higher Education Research Institute survey of start-up costs at the over 220 universities classified as Research and Doctoral universities by the Carnegie Foundation in 1994. It reports the mean start-up cost packages across institutions for new assistant professors and senior faculty, broken down by institutional type (public/private), Carnegie classification and field (biology, chemistry, engineering, physics and astronomy) and also discuses the sources of funding for start-up costs

General dynamics of the physical-chemical systems in mammals

Biodynamic regulator chain models for physical chemical systems in mammal

Do Historically Black Colleges and Universities Enhance the College Attendance of African American Youths?

Recently, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have become the center of intense policy debates. Do HBCUs enhance the college attendance of African American youths? Previous research has been inconclusive. Among other improvements, our study adjusts for the relative availability of HBCU enrollment opportunities in each state. We find that African Americans are more likely to choose HBCUs over other colleges if more HBCU openings are available. However, more HBCU openings don\u27t increase overall African American enrollment. As we have shown elsewhere, attendance at an HBCU does enhance African American students\u27 college graduation rates