ILR Impact Brief - Phased Retirement: Opportunities for Some but Not for All

Nearly three-quarters of employers surveyed indicate that some form of phased retirement could be worked out for white-collar employees aged 55 and older. Workers’ willingness to take advantage of this option, however, may diminish when employers\u27 terms and conditions are factored in. In other words, the majority of white-collar workers are presented with constrained opportunities for phased retirement when the possibility arises

Does Downloading PowerPoint Slides Before the Lecture Lead to Better Student Achievement?: Reply

This reply responds to a comment by Cannon (2011) that opens the debate on consistency of the effect of downloading PowerPoint slides before lectures on students’ exam performance. Cannon (2011) points out potential endogeneity problems in Chen and Lin (2008) and attempts to explore the unconditional mean effect of downloading PowerPoint slides for the full sample. In this reply, we firstly argue that the estimates in our original article are consistent since the effect of interest is the “conditional†treatment effect but not the unconditional mean effect. We provide explanations for our rationale of estimating the “conditional†treatment effect. Secondly, we propose a modified downloading variable to replicate Cannon’s analysis. Our results suggest that downloading PowerPoint slides before the exam does not produce a significant effect on absent students’ exam performance which is different from the results in Cannon (2011). Our analysis does support Cannon’s argument that students fixed effects are different across different attendance status.

Glass ceiling effects: the case of taiwanese top executives

Gender discrimination in labor markets has been an important issue in labor economics. The main purpose of this paper is to empirically study glass ceiling effects, and investigate whether female workers are indeed being discriminated against, particularly during the promotion process, in top management positions in Taiwan. This paper uses data from 4,485 large firms in Taiwan to study whether there are gender preferences when the chairperson of a company chooses a chief executive officer (CEO). The data show that there are few female top executives (about 6%). In addition, a chairperson tends to team with same sex CEOs. This is especially noticeable among female chairpersons. The empirical results from our random matching model further confirm that gender is neither irrelevant nor neutral when a chairperson names a CEO.gender discrimination, glass ceiling, CEO

A quality adjusted wage index

In this paper, a new method of estimating a wage index is proposed and implemented. We construct a wage index by controlling for quantity, as well as quality of labor. Our approach uses a set of year dummies as the basis for calculation of a wage index. The March Current Population Survey Supplement (1983-2000) is employed, and empirical wage equation models are estimated in this paper. The estimation results of the proposed wage index suggest that the existing Employment Cost Index perhaps overestimates the increases in wages adjusted for quality.quality of labor

The Role of Employers in Phased Retirement: Opportunities for Phased Retirement Among White-Collar Workers

[Excerpt] While the labor market for older workers has many unusual features, the small number of phased retirements is certainly one of the more curious. The basic idea of phased retirement is that an older worker remains with his or her employer while gradually shifting from full-time work to full-time retirement. For decades experts have proclaimed the advantages of this type of retirement. Moreover, employees often express an interest in taking a phased retirement. In a recent national survey of the older population, more than half of the respondents age 55 to 65 said they would prefer to gradually reduce their hours of work as they age. Yet, all indications are that phased retirements are rather rare. Past studies indicate that within a cohort of older workers, less than ten percent took phased retirement; most people simply moved from full-time work to full-time retirement. Nothing in the more recent data indicates that this has changed greatly.Hutchens1_The_Role_of_Employers_in_Phased_Retirement.pdf: 490 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Cumulative class attendance and exam performance

This study considers the effect of cumulative class attendance while estimating the relationship between class attendance and students' exam performance, using an individual-level data. We find that, cumulative attendance has produced a positive and significant impact on students' exam performance. Attending lectures corresponds to a 4% improvement in exam performance, and the marginal impact of cumulative attendance on exam performance is also close to 4%. It is of note that the impact of attendance on exam performance is reduced about 0.4% after one controls for the cumulative attendance effect.

Custodial Fathers-Do they Work More or Fewer Hours?

Custody, Father, Working hours,

Physicians Treating Physicians: Relational and Informational Advantages in Treatment and Survival

We use the medical specialties of physician-patients with advanced cancer to study the role of knowledge versus networks in treatment choices and patient survival by matching comparable patients with doctors and admission periods to control unobserved doctor quality. Physician-patients are less likely to have surgery, radiation, or checkups and more likely to receive targeted therapy, spend more on drugs, enjoy a higher survival rate, and spend less on coinsurance than non-physician-patients. Knowledge mechanisms play a crucial role because the network effect explains some, but not all, patterns. For less informed physician-patients, possessing a network is equivalent to reducing medical knowledge