Testing Fair Wage Theory

Fairness considerations often are invoked to explain wage differences that appear unrelated to worker characteristics or job conditions, but non-experimental tests of fair wage models are rare and weak because of the limits of available market-generated data. In particular, such data rarely permit researchers to (a) identify suitable reference points that employees and employers might use in determining what is fair and (b) control for employees’ marginal output and its value. This study utilizes a unique dataset from the baseball labor market that solves both problems. We find no support for fair wage theory in this market. We also find that fairness premia can be illusory: Wages appear to be adjusted upward for reasons of fairness in regressions that control for variation in individuals’ physical output, but such premia evaporate when the value of that output (which can be market- or firm-specific) is held constant. This suggests that avoiding proxy measures of workers’ marginal revenue products in wage studies might reduce the number of labor market "anomalies" economists must resolve.fairness, efficiency wages, wage differentials

The Existence and Persistence of a Winner’s Curse: New Evidence from the (Baseball) Field

This study takes advantage of recent developments in the measurement and valuation of individual output in the baseball labor market to (i) reassess prior evidence that this market is afflicted by the winner’s curse phenomenon and (ii) test whether bidders learn to avoid this curse over time. Though we find no evidence of negative average returns on player contracts for the earliest cohort of baseball free agents, we conclude that teams in that era failed to efficiently discount their bids in accord with available information, especially about risk. What is more, evidence from a larger sample of players signed in the late 1990s shows that teams have continued to overvalue inconsistent free agents and failed to limit their bids to conform to players’ lower values in small markets. This is consistent with experimental evidence that finds bounded-rational behavior when bidders are faced with complex valuation problems involving multiple elements.market efficiency, bounded rationality, overbidding

Initial Public Offerings of Ballplayers

As a field study of choice under uncertainty, we examine baseball teams' investments in amateur players. Though most prospects fail to deliver any return on their multi-million dollar signing bonuses, returns on the minority who succeed easily offset these losses: the expected annual yield on the median first-round draftee is 33 percent. However, the pattern of returns is inconsistent with market efficiency. Yields are lower for high schoolers than collegians (27 percent vs. 43 percent), lower for pitchers than position players (24 percent vs. 41 percent), decline for later round long-shots, and may be negative under competitive bidding.Market efficiency; Bounded rationality; Prospect theory; Winner’s curse

Trade Adjustment Assistance by Industry: Florida

International Relations/Trade,

Exploring Agricultural Production Systems and Their Fundamental Components with System Dynamics Modelling

Agricultural production in the United States is undergoing marked changes due to rapid shifts in consumer demands, input costs, and concerns for food safety and environmental impact. Agricultural production systems are comprised of multidimensional components and drivers that interact in complex ways to influence production sustainability. In a mixed-methods approach, we combine qualitative and quantitative data to develop and simulate a system dynamics model that explores the systemic interaction of these drivers on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of agricultural production. We then use this model to evaluate the role of each driver in determining the differences in sustainability between three distinct production systems: crops only, livestock only, and an integrated crops and livestock system. The result from these modelling efforts found that the greatest potential for sustainability existed with the crops only production system. While this study presents a stand-alone contribution to sector knowledge and practice, it encourages future research in this sector that employs similar systems-based methods to enable more sustainable practices and policies within agricultural production

Policy Recommendations for Meeting the Grand Challenge to Close the Health Gap

This brief was created forSocial Innovation for America’s Renewal, a policy conference organized by the Center for Social Development in collaboration with the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare, which is leading theGrand Challenges for Social Work initiative to champion social progress. The conference site includes links to speeches, presentations, and a full list of the policy briefs

Social Movement Learning Research: International Comparative Perspectives on Challenges and the Current Status of the Field

Studies of social movements have a long and contradictory relationship with adult education research. In this symposium contributors address the question: What is the current status, themes and the potentials and limits of current social movement learning (SML) research internationally

(±)-9-exo-Amino-5,6,7,8-tetrahydro-5,8-methano-9H-benzocyclohepten-8-ol Hydrochloride

This is the published version, also available here: http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1107/S0567740878004458

The ‘caged torch procession’: Celebrities, protesters and the 2008 Olympic torch relay in London, Paris and San Francisco

Along with the opening and closing ceremonies, one of the major non-sports events associated with the modern Olympic Games is the torch relay. Although initiated in 1936, the relay has been subject to relatively little academic scrutiny. The events of April 2008 however will have cast a long shadow on the practice. This essay focuses primarily on one week (6–13 April) in the press coverage of the 2008 torch relay as the flame made its way from London to Paris in Europe and then to San Francisco in the USA. It discusses the interpretations offered in the mediated coverage about the relay, the Olympic movement, the host city and the locations where the relay was taking place, and critically analyses the role of agencies, both for and against the Olympics, that framed the ensuing debate

Evaluation of the Illinois Soil Nitrogen Test in the North Central Region

Data from 96 locations across the North Central Region was complied to evaluate the usefulness of the Illinois soil nitrogen test (ISNT) in identifying fields where corn will not respond to additional N fertilizer and predicting the yield optimizing N rate (YONR) for each field. The ISNT could not accurately predict non-responsive sites, nor could it predict YONR. Sub-setting the data based on soil drainage class and previous crop did not improve the predictive capability of the ISNT. The ISNT was related to soil organic matter and was measuring a constant fraction of total soil N. The ISNT is not a meaningful tool upon which N rate decisions should be based