REPUTATION,PRICE, AND DEATH: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ART PRICE FORMATION

We analyze how an artist's death influences the market prices of her works of art. Death has two opposing effects on art prices. By irrevocably restricting the artist's oeuvre, prices, ceteris paribus, increase when the artist dies. On the other hand, an untimely death may well frustrate the collectors' hopes of owning artwork that will, as the artist's career progresses, become generally known and appreciated. By frustrating expected future name recognition, death impacts negatively on art prices. In conjunction, these two channels of influence give rise to a hump‐shaped relationship between age at death and death‐induced price changes. Using transactions from fine art auctions, we show that the empirically identified death effects indeed conform to our theoretical predictions. We derive our results from hedonic art price regressions, making use of a dataset which exceeds the sample size of traditional studies in cultural economics by an order of magnitude. (JEL Z11, J24, G12)     

JOB MOBILITY AND GENDER-BASED WAGE GROWTH DIFFERENTIALS

Studies of gender differences in the returns to job mobility have yielded conflicting results. We examine whether there are gender differences in mobility patterns or in the returns to different types of mobility. Our results, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, imply that there are gender differences in mobility patterns, but there are not gender differences in the wage growth associated with different types of mobility. Therefore, it appears that empirical estimates of the gender differences in the returns to job mobility may be misleading if they do not consider the cause of separation.     

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ADOPTION

This paper estimates the supply of adoptions using a decision-making economic framework of desired fertility and family size. The empirical results show that the decision to place a child for adoption is negatively related to a woman's labor force participation, the size of Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments and the unemployment rate, and is positively related to her marital status, education, and religious affiliation. The price and availability of abortions are found to have no statistically significant effect on the adoption decision. Furthermore, state regulations designed to encourage adoptions have no impact on the adoption option.     

PROCEDURAL UNFAIR WAGE DIFFERENTIALS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR

In this paper, we investigate how payment procedures that are deemed unfair can spur unethical behavior towards innocent coworkers in a real-effort experiment. In our Discrimination treatment, a highly unfair payment procedure with wage differentials, half the workforce is randomly selected and paid by relative performance whereas the remaining receives no payment. A joy-of-destruction game measures unethical behavior subsequently. Non-earners in Discrimination destroy significantly more than in the non-discriminatory control treatments. In Discrimination, unethical behavior is generally high for all non-earners, independent of individual inequality aversion and relative performance beliefs. In the control treatments, inequality aversion is the main driver of destructive behavior. (JEL C91, D03, J33, J70, M52)     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE QUALITY DIFFERENTIALS IN MALE-FEMALE ACADEMIC PLACEMENTS

This paper attempts to determine if a significant differential existed in the quality of the academic placements of male and female economists for the period 1960 to 1974, and examines the factors at work in such placements. Several reduced form equations of a formal three equation model of the hiring process in the academic labor market are estimated by ordinary least squares regression analysis. The analysis indicates that males had a 22.2 percent advantage in placement quality over women for the period and most of this can be attributed to some form of discrimination.     

MALE MARITAL WAGE DIFFERENTIALS: TRAINING,PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS,AND FIXED EFFECTS

Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we replicate previous estimates of the marital wage differential for white men, extend the analysis to African American men, then explain the within and between race differentials. We first control for formal job training, then for cognitive skills, parental background, and self‐esteem with little effect. By contrast, the white differential but not the black differential disappears in fixed‐effects estimation. We reconcile the cross‐section/panel differentials by focusing on the distinct identification conditions employed by each technique. Men who never change marital status play a significant role in white cross‐sectional estimates. (JEL J31, J12)     

THE STATE OF COLLECTIVE RELIGIOSITY IN CANADA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

On affirme que la spécialisation institutionnelle qui caractérise l'industrialisation est concomitante du déclin de la présence répandue de la religion. Soutenant de plus que les collectivités sont essentielles à la sustentation idéationnelle, l'auteur explore l'état du judéo-cristianisme dans un Canada s'industrialisant par un examen de la participation à la religion formelle. En se servant d'un cadre démographique de base, et de données de recensement et d'enquêtes, l'auteur commence par un apery général de la participation actuelle et ensuite examine les tendances à l'engagement. On constate que la religion formelle éprouve une baisse de participation que l'on trouve peu probable de s'inverser à l'avenir prévisible. L'auteur termine avec une discussion de la portée des constatations de ce genre pour la religion traditionnelle dans la société canadienne.
It is asserted that the institutional specialization which characterizes industrialization knows the concomitant of a decline in the pervasiveness of religion. Maintaining further that collectivities are essential to ideational sustenance, the author explores the state of Judaic-Christianity in an industrializing Canada through an examination of participation in organized religion. Using a basic demographic framework and census and survey data, he begins with an overview of current participation and then examines involvement trends. It is found that organized religion is experiencing a participation decline which is unlikely to reverse itself in the forseeable future. The author concludes with a discussion of the implications of such findings for traditional religion in Canadian society.     

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION

"Equality Of Rights Under The Law Shall Not Be Denied Or Abridged By The United States Or By Any State On Account Of Sex"— Proposed Equal Rights Amendment     

UNEMPLOYMENT RISK AND COMPENSATING DIFFERENTIALS IN NEW JERSEY MANUFACTURING

We present evidence that low-skill workers received larger compensating differentials than more skilled workers when facing unanticipated unemployment in an era without unemployment insurance. Using information from surveys of New Jersey workers conducted during the 1880s, we test the theory of compensating wage differentials. We find that workers who faced a higher probability of predictable unemployment received compensating differentials and that the size of the differential differed across industries and skill levels. With few firm- or industry-specific skills, unskilled workers were less subject to "informational capture" than skilled workers who had more but less easily transferable human capital. (JEL N31 )     

RULES OR POLITICS?: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ITC ANTI-DUMPING DECISIONS

This research analyzes the International Trade Commission's anti-dumping decisions from 1980 to 1986. The results suggest that commissioners use criteria consistent with the instructions set forth in U.S. legislation. The analysis also indicates that political variables help predict commissioner decisions. Petitions involving Senate oversight committee members' constituencies may be systematically favored in the process. Evidence of possible bias toward less-developed-country exports is presented as well. The methodology also yields estimates of commissioner-specific fixed effects.     

AN EMPIRICAL MODEL OF PRICE AND OUTPUT BEHAVIOR

This paper proposes a model of short-run price and output behavior and undertakes an initial empirical investigation of the model with data from the manufacturing sector of the U.S. Economy. The model provides a relatively precise specification of the various factors that influence prices and output, and joint maximum likelihood techniques are used to estimate the parameters of the model. The empirical results support the proposition that demand-oriented forces primarily influence output while cost-push forces primarily influence prices and indicate that real interest rates affect both prices and output.     

INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE AND MONOPOLY POWER IN THE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Predictions of various models of public sector supply rely on the assumption of bureau monopoly power. This assumption is tested first by measuring industrial structure of the federal public sector using the concentration ratio and Herfindahl index, and second by examining the relationship between the resulting estimates and bureau monopoly power. The findings indicate that monopoly structure of the federal bureaucracy is more limited than is generally assumed. Interpretations on the basis of traditional industrial organization theory and contestable market theory suggest that bureau monopoly power is questionable and may not be the source of observed inefficiencies in bureau supply.     

RACE AND DISCIPLINARY REPORTS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS

This research examines the likelihood of one racial group of correctional officers writing more disciplinary reports than another. It also examines interracial and intraracial disciplinary reports. Two theoretical models are used to explain why correctional officers use official write ups to control prisoners. The importation model emphasizes the impact of individual factors on correctional officers behavior, and the institutionalization model stresses the effect of organizational factors. Using data from 115 correctional officers, we found no significant differences in Black and White officers writing of inmate disciplinary reports. No significant difference was found between interracial and intraracial disciplinary responses, either. The findings were consistent with the hypotheses derived from the institutionalization model.     

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF OIL PRICE SHOCKS IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD

This paper presents results that indicate that oil price shocks were economically important in explaining movements in industrial production, and, to a lesser degree, movements in wholesale prices in the period between World Wars I and II. The framework for analysis is a vector autoregressive model estimated using monthly data over 1924:2–38:6 that employs a financial intermediation variable, a measure of relative oil prices, and other variables typically found in small macroeconomic models. The impact of oil price shocks is evaluated through computation of variance decompositions and an historical decomposition over the 1929:9–38:6 period.