Location and the return to education

The return to a college education varies widely across U.S. cities.Education ; Demography

State Aid for Industrial Enterprises in Belarus: Remedy or Poison?

In this paper the impact of various types of state aid on aggregate productivity growth in Belarusian manufacturing is investigated by combining the data on government support with firm-level accounting data for period 1998-2007. Obtained results indicate that the state aid provided for restructuring truly leads to the modernization of the enterprises (capital-to-labor ratio grows), that this modernization leads to an increase in effectiveness (TFP grows, especially at large enterprises), and that this growth of TFP allows the newly restructured enterprises to raise their market share which results in the growth of the allocative efficiency. However, when the state aid is provided to support enterprises in financial distress, while it leads to an increase in employment (only for enterprises receiving aid, especially for large enterprises, but not for the total sample) and to an expansion in the market share of large enterprises (not small and medium size), this achievement comes at the expense of the decrease in TFP.State aid; total factor productivity; allocative efficiency; Arellano-Bond method.

From community college to a bachelor's degree and beyond: How smooth is the road?

Community colleges ; Education

Community colleges and economic mobility

This paper examines the role of community colleges in the U.S. higher education system and their advantages and shortcomings. In particular, it discusses the population of community college students and economic returns to community college education for various demographic groups. It offers new evidence on the returns to an associate's degree. Furthermore, the paper uses data from the National Survey of College Graduates to compare educational objectives, progress, and labor market outcomes of individuals who start their postsecondary education at community colleges with those who start at four-year colleges. Particular attention is paid to the Federal Reserve's Eighth District, the geographic area served by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.Community colleges ; Education

The gender wage gap

The actual gender wage disparity (which compares the wages of male and female workers with similar labor-force characteristics) is lower than the raw gender earnings gap.Wages ; Discrimination in employment

Jobless recoveries: causes and consequences

Unemployment ; Employment

Gender wage gap may be much smaller than most think

Wages ; Discrimination in employment

Revised data show that district gained, not lost, jobs in 2010

Federal Reserve District, 8th ; Labor market ; Employment

The labor supply of married women: why does it differ across U.S. cities?

Using Census Public Use Micro Sample (PUMS) data for 1980, 1990 and 2000, this paper documents a little-noticed feature of U.S. labor markets that there is wide variation in the labor market participation rates and annual work hours of white married women across urban areas. This variation is also large among sub-groups, including women with children and those with different levels of education. Among the explanations for this variation one emerges as particularly important: married women's labor force participation decisions appear to be very responsive to commuting times. There is a strong empirical evidence demonstrating that labor force participation rates of married women are negatively correlated with commuting time. What is more, the analysis shows that metropolitan areas which experienced relatively large increases in average commuting time between 1980 and 2000 also had slower growth of labor force participation of married women. This feature of local labor markets may have important implications for policy and for further research.Women - Employment ; Labor market

Local price variation and labor supply behavior

In standard economic theory, labor supply decisions depend on the complete set of prices: the wage and the prices of relevant consumption goods. Nonetheless, most of theoretical and empirical work ignores prices other than wages when studying labor supply. The question we address in this paper is whether the common practice of ignoring local price variation in labor supply studies is as innocuous as has generally been assumed. We describe a simple model to demonstrate that the effects of wage and non-labor income on labor supply will typically differ by location. We show, in particular, the derivative of the labor supply with respect to non-labor income will be independent of price only when labor supply takes a form based on an implausible separability condition. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the effect of price on labor supply is not a simple "up-or down shift" that would be required to meet the separability condition in our key proposition.Labor supply ; Price levels